These days we all live on social media. Before you start protesting “not me”, just think how often you check your phone and how well you would survive for even a day without it.
So how can we make best use of social media as part of our digital marketing strategy? Those of us who may well have started using Facebook or Twitter for purely social reasons would now be foolish to ignore the massive potential of social marketing.
Here is our 52 guide to success …that’s 5 squared by the way, 5 social media sites, 5 tips each!
- Post interesting content – don’t hard sell! You will want value based content to reel them in!
- Videos and images work well and tend to be the most shared types of content.
- Use questions in your posts to encourage response threads – then monitor and respond to comments.
- Keep it short and snappy so people don’t lose heart!
- Watch your timings – different groups of people will be active at different times of the day.
- Tweet constantly otherwise your followers will lose interest. 140 characters does not take long to create!
- It is ok to include non-business tweets – e.g. the office party – to show you do have a human side (if you do!).
- It is also fine to republish old content, either past achievements or evergreen content.
- DO use hashtags to get your posts noticed but DON’T overdo this or it will turn people off.
- Follow other people in your industry and why not ask them nicely to mutually share content?
- Make boards topical and relevant – for example your product range or the time of year or current events.
- Be creative when naming your Pinterest boards. Make them sound interesting and intriguing!
- Add links to your Pin descriptions so that traffic continues through to your ecommerce site or content pages.
- Use relevant eye-catching images, including third party images as well as your own.
- Try including inspirational quotes. You may think they’re cheesy but everyone loves them!
- Make as many relevant connections and influential followings as you can.
- Become a regular and active part of the site by joining groups and conversations.
- Post your best content in the LinkedIn publishing platform (LinkedIn Pulse) to encourage people to follow you.
- Use groups to promote content and make sure that this is helpful and relevant to the group’s members.
- Tag connections in posts if it is directly relevant to them or they may share it with their followers.
GOOGLE+
- Format posts carefully so that the title and summary are easily readable without having to “Read More”.
- Keep posts relevant to your business: educate and entertain your audience.
- Share your business posts to your personal Google+ page to reach a wider audience and add personality.
- Include links to – and comment on – other people’s blogs and posts as well as your own.
- Analyse the metrics from the Google+ dashboard to see what is working for you then tweak accordingly.
Needless to say, many of the tips apply across platforms. So, for example, the Facebook tips could all be applied to Twitter, Pinterest to Facebook, LinkedIn to Google+ etc.
Do try some of these out and let us know how you get on …. we’d love to feature some of your success stories on this page in the future!
Needless to say, many of the tips apply across platforms. So, for example, the Facebook tips could all be applied to Twitter, Pinterest to Facebook, LinkedIn to Google+ etc. Do try some of these out and let us know how you get on …. we’d love to feature some of your success stories on this page in the future! 