Social media is often the first impression people have of your brand, so make sure it captivates and activates your potential audience. Keep reading for our top tips for social media success.
1: Define Goals & Metrics for Success
First, ask yourself: what are you hoping to achieve by incorporating social into your overall strategy?
Setting goals ensures you’re getting value out of the time and resources put toward social media. Benefits to social media goal setting include:
- Boosting brand awareness
- Driving web traffic
- Aligning social strategy with your larger goals
- Structuring processes and streamlining workflows
- Determining your return on investment
- Managing your budget and resources
Not sure where to start? Here are some common goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track their success:
- Increase brand awareness (KPIs: followers, impressions, traffic, reach)
- Sales/lead generation (KPIs: sales revenue, lead conversion rate, email sign-ups)
- Increase community engagement( KPIs: clicks, likes, shares, comments, mentions)
- Grow brand audience (KPIs: followers, mentions, engagement rate)
- Increase web traffic (KPIs: traffic, link clicks, conversions, email sign-ups)
2: Know Your Audience – and Your Competition
Who are you trying to reach? Understanding your audience is the first step to creating engaging posts. The more you know about your audience, the more likely you’ll offer them engaging, valuable content.
Keeping an eye on the competition allows you to understand what they’re doing well (or not so well) and can give you a sense of what’s trending or happening in your industry — helping you spot opportunities and set goals of your own.
Content Tip
Social platform demographics differ, so create content to capture the attention of your target demo on each. A message that works for an audience on one platform may need to be tailored to resonate with an audience on another.
3: Build in Time for Outreach & Engagement
Social media is just that – social. Two-way communication is a must. One of the best ways to get people to engage with you is to engage with them. Develop connections and build trust with your audience by interacting with comments, responding to questions and being thoughtful.
Build in time at least once each week for engagement (even better if it’s once each day) – respond to comments, like or share others’ posts, and engage with other relevant accounts. It doesn’t need to be a large chunk of time, but it should be consistent – even 15 minutes helps.
Content Tip
Use features like polls on Facebook/LinkedIn or question boxes and quizzes on Instagram stories to encourage interaction and add to the overall conversation.
4: Use Insight Tools
Insights and analytics on social media give you an in-depth look at your audience demographics, which type of posts perform well, when your audience is online, and more. Measure results regularly and adjust your strategy as needed.
Metrics to Track
- Engagement and engagement rate: higher engagement shows that content is resonating with your audience, encouraging them to interact with likes, comments or shares.
- Impressions and reach: gives insight to how much of your content is being seen.
- Audience growth rate: measures if your audience is growing, stagnant or declining. If your audience is not growing, you may need to reevaluate your content strategy.
- Click-through rate: gauges how well ads or content with links are performing. High CTR is a good indicator that your content is useful and users want to learn more.
5: Maintain a Content Calendar
Not only will a content calendar keep you organized, it will also help you post more consistently. Advanced planning also gives you the opportunity to diversify content types. Test out different types of posts to see what works best and adjust midway if needed.
What’s included in a content calendar?
Content calendars can come in a variety of formats. The best is whatever type you will actually use. Here are some basic pieces of information to include:
- Date: when to post
- Captions: remember to tailor captions by platform, if audiences differ
- Creative element: photo, video, etc.
- Link, if applicable
- Platform: where will content be posted?
6: Spread your Story with Hashtags
Hashtags are used across social media platforms to categorize content, allowing people to search for and find content that they are interested in. Hashtags can be used as part of an organic strategy for searchability, expanding audience and reach, SEO ranking and to collect and track your brand’s content.
Branded hashtags bring discoverability to your brand and give followers a way to tie their content to your brand. Industry-related hashtags can be used to increase engagement and awareness.
With these tips and tools at the ready, you’ll be poised to better manage, understand and reach your goals on social media. Learn more about how to develop your social media content strategy.