Creating a powerful social media strategy has never been more important than it is today. Beyond the massive proportion of people who are now using social media channels, Google will be increasingly using social media signals for SEO.
To be successful at using social media is the same as being successful at anything else. You need persistence and a good strategy. This blog will help you with the strategy side of things and explain what you can do to optimise your social media presence. The persistence side is only something that you can do yourself.
Becoming popular on social media is absolutely possible and you will get there if you go about it the right way.
Choosing The Right Medium
The ‘right’ medium is going to be the one that is most suited to engaging with your target audience. Different mediums have different demographics, which means that you will need to pick what to say on which medium.
This will take some research on your part. Sites like Sensis are great for reports about how people and businesses are using social media.
A recent report by Pew Media has discovered some interesting stats about various social media pages and their user demographics.
The Report Found That:
- Under 50’s (specifically 18-29) are most likely to use Twitter.
- Facebook is the largest social media platform, with 2 in 3 online users owning Facebook accounts.
- Facebook is used more by women than men, and is used heavily by young adults.
Find Your ‘Voice’
Once you have found out where you are going to be posting, it is important that you decide on what kind of online voice your business is going to have. Different mediums will have different audiences, so you want your business to communicate in a way that appeals to your audience on each medium.
For example, if you are on Facebook and are targeting young adults, a text-heavy, clinical-sounding post is unlikely to get the attention of your audience. You may need use a photo with a short, fun, punchy bit of text.
A great way to figure out how to do this is to look at other businesses’ social media pages that are already successful. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What kind of voice do they have?
- Do they post a lot of photos or do they use a lot of text?
- What is their ‘tone’ like?
- How could you improve on the positive aspects of their strategy?
Once you have the answers to these questions, you will find it much easier to develop your own voice.
Note: you may need to have a slightly different voice for different mediums. Remember that different mediums have different audiences, so you want the voice that is going to respond to those audiences the best.
Figure Out When/How Often You Are Going To Post.
Each social network has it’s own peak times and optimal post amounts. This has to do with the structure of the sites and the primary users of the sites. Here is a basic social media strategy template for the major social media sites.
- Post at 8am, 1.00pm-3.00pm Monday to Thursday.
- Do not post after 3.00pm on a Friday because there is very little engagement at this time.
- Post at least 4 times a day.
- Post between 1-5pm weekdays.
- Wednesdays at 3.00pm gets the largest amounts of clicks and engagement.
- Respond to comments on your page regularly and quickly.
- Post at least 2 times a day but do not exceed more than about 5 per day because you will most likely be ignored.
- Post at 12pm or early evening. This will get business professionals during their lunch break or as they return from home to check their social media.
- Do not post between 10.00pm-6.00am
- Post at least once a day, and if you are a member of a LinkedIn group, post three times per day.
Source: SocialMediaSydney
A great way to make this whole process easier on you is to utilise tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and Seesmic. These are social media managing tools that allow you to organise your posts and post timing for all different social media sites in one place. You will save yourself a lot of time by going through one master site and you can set up your posts for the next few weeks at a time.
Start Posting!
The next step is the easiest. Once you have your plan in place, you need to start implementing it. It is very important that you are consistent in your posting regime and that you do not go off track for a couple weeks and then return.
Remember, your social media campaign is an investment into your business. You need to put effort into it to see a return. Do not give up! You can absolutely succeed if you are just persistent enough and have the right strategy,
Analyse
This step is crucial to making everything work. Analytics will help you see what is working and what is not working so that you can alter your plan to get the results that you want.
Many of the social media managing tools also have analytics tools built into them. These will tell you what posts are generating the most shares, what posts aren’t and give detailed graphics of your strategy’s results.
Free tools such as Google Analytics will also provide these features. Although not as detailed, it can be a great starting point to figuring out how to understand analytics before you decide to jump into a paid service.
Change Your Approach According To Your Analytics
If you realise that some things are not working, you should make changes accordingly. Remember, you must use what works best for your business. The guides given above regarding posting times and posting limits are simply to give a general framework of what works.
If you realise that posting earlier than the above times is getting more results, then use the second method instead. Don’t feel as if you are confined to the general guidelines of what works and what doesn’t. Ultimately, your business is unique and you will find that you will need to fine-tune some things until you have the perfect system for your business.
As a side note, there is no perfect system that stays around for too long. Social media is a very socially organic place and it is constantly changing. You need to be constantly changing your approach to match what is happening in the social media sphere if you want your business to remain relevant.
We hope that these tips help you in your journey to be a social media success. As we have stated before, persistence is absolutely crucial to reaching your marketing objectives. The best social media plans are consistent in their positing and as a result never waver in their efficacy. Stick with it and you will achieve success.
