An expertly crafted social media marketing strategy can help brand reap rich rewards on social media. The right social media optimization strategy helps in brand building, making sales conversions and building a strong community online.
In recent years, social media marketing has emerged as the preferred choice of digital marketing, for brands both big and small. In terms of affordability, autonomy and reach, few other digital mediums can compare to social media. With over 3.2 billion users on social media, no brand can afford to ignore social media marketing.
However, social media is getting cluttered and chaotic. With so many brands vying for the same audiences, making a brand stand out can be a difficult challenge. This is why social media optimization is necessary. It helps in creating the right boost and guidance to any social media marketing strategy.
In the following section, we look at the Top 10 Tips and Tricks for Social Media Optimization that brands can follow for success.
1. Pushing More Videos on Social Media
In the last year or so, video as a content type has seen a rapid increase. This is because videos garner wider engagement as compared to other content forms. Reports published by Facebook and others show that vide outperform other forms of content 3:1.
According to Hubspot, 54% of consumers want more video content from their brands. This means that social media optimization of content should concentrate on creating more videos. According to experts, if you are posting twice a day on social media, one of your posts should be videos.
This is a huge ask, as making videos is not as easy as it sounds. However, if we consider the ROIs in terms of engagements, leads and sales, videos outrank any other content type.
2. Maintain a Complete Profile on Social Media Channels
I will not lie; I have seen multi-million dollar brands not having an ‘Overview’ section on their social media pages. While they might get away with it, millions of others will not. It is important that you maintain a complete and updates profile on social media.
According to Hootusite, 60% of all users on social media check out their brand pages on social before making a purchase. A complete profile on social media helps convey genuineness, authenticity and credibility.
I will also go ahead and state that regular postings, also falls under the purview of social media profile. Brands, which post regularly show activity, and display good health to their consumers. Posting regularly should be a topmost priority for brands.
3. Concentrate on a Few Social Media Channels
I have often seen brands maintain a presence on as many as eight to ten platforms. This is unnecessary. Most brands who maintain a presence across so many platforms stretch their resources. This makes them create substandard content.
I feel every brand should focus on not more than three to four platforms. (If you have a market in China, then all the best!). By focussing on a few markets, you will be able to maintain a strong intent and concentrate on the content creation part.
Remember, creating content and posting it, is not enough. You need to do your evaluations, studies, data analysis and work towards new campaigns and promotions. This is a lot of work, and requires an active and focussed approach to work.
4. Create Shareworthy Content
Let me talk about the hierarchy of social media engagement for a while. At the lowest rung of the engagement, hierarchy stands the ‘likes’. The ‘comments’ occupy the second rung of the hierarchy. ‘Shares’ sit right at the top; like a cherry on an ice-cream sundae!
Your aim should not be to create content that just generates likes. Your content should generate shares. This means people should share it publically, as well as personal messages. The communication can be on lines of a sales announcement, or something humorous and topical.
People love content, and social media channels promote quality content organically if they start seeing traction. (There might be some disagreements on this, but we will leave that to another sunny day).
5. Respond to Audiences Actively with Personalization
If you are paying your social media marketing agency for CRM functions, ask them to stop acting like a bot! Nothing rubs people the wrong way, as humans acting as machines. You need to ensure that every comment, every message and every like is responded in a personalized manner.
The best brands maintain a 1-hour window as a response period. If you are serious about building your reputation on social media, you need to take this very seriously. Another problem that I find with brands is that they delete negative comments.
I will ask you to carry out an experiment. Address a negative comment publically. Sort the issue out immediately and make a social media post on it. Use a negative and transform it into a positive for your brand. Once people see this on their feed, they will have a new and improved perception of your brand.
6. Keyword Integration on Social Media
I am sure many of you reading this are unaware of this. Do not worry; it happens to the best of us. The digital space exists and functions like an ecosystem. Search engines pick up keywords from social media all the time.
This helps them place and rank websites. For example, if Google sees a lot of action and traffic flow between your social media (for a keyword on ‘social media marketing’- it might be a blog link) and your website (which has an article on ‘social media marketing’), Google will start ranking that blog article for that particular keyword.
Search engines also rank social Media profiles. In some instances, when your social media sees more engagement than your website, it is ranked higher on search. Keyword integration as a form of social media optimization is often overlooked by most agencies and brands.
7. Use Social Media Marketing Tools
If you are still doing manual postings, sifting through the internet for topics, you are falling behind! With social media increasingly becoming competitive, the need is to move towards automation.
A number of social media marketing tools can help you accelerate your social media performance. Tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, DigitalOcto and others can help you manage your postings. They are also helpful in giving analytics and data about performance of posts.
Unless you are using data effectively, you will not be able to optimise your future social strategies. Automation is key if you want to improve efficiency, increase performance and set higher targets for your pages.
8. Engage with Influencer Marketing
A few months back, I would never have inserted this point into a list of social media optimization tips. However, in the last few months, the fraud about fake followers and paid engagements has burst the bubble of arrogant macro influencers.
Brands are recalibrating their influencer strategies and focusing on Micro and Nano Influencers. These categories of influencers have lesser followers (>10000 and >1000). However, the engagement is truer, more genuine and leads to better leads and sales conversions.
Influencer marketing has become quite affordable and optimised because of the uncovering of these fraudulent practices. This has also made influencers shed their arrogance and work in a better spirit. A creative social media marketing strategy should always integrate an influencer marketing strategy.
9. Always Guide your Audiences what you want them to do
A social media strategy devoid of a direction to users is empty. There is something about the digital, which wants people to be guided. This behaviour of following communication and moving from one action to another is promoted subconsciously on social media.
Your social media marketing communication should always encourage people to take the next step. This next step can be anything-
- Following the link and reading an article
- Liking, sharing or commenting on a post
- Going to the Landing Page and filling out the details
- Making a purchase
- Reviewing a product or service, and so on.
A proper social media optimization should involve a CTA with every post. This will make audiences be engaged to your brand at all times. Most brand tend to ignore this aspect and confuse users of what is expected of them.
10. Invest in an Outstanding Copywriter
You might say that I am biased towards copywriters, and you might be right. However, let us not take anything away from the brilliance of great copy. Brilliant copy is able to turn around a social media marketing approach from ordinary to extra-ordinary.
The best brands work with the biggest names in the social media copywriting industry. These people are experts in writing content that moves, inspires and engages. No matter what kind of a person you are, a moving post on ‘Humans of New York’ page will force you to click on the like or share button.
This is what great copy does. It forces you to engage, even if you do not want to. You will radically be able to alter your social media strategy by getting a great copywriter. It is a completely underrated profession, with only the Burger Kings and McDonalds of the world using the best. (Think Twitter Wars!)
Conclusion
Almost every brand is doing and investing in social media marketing. However, social media marketing without social media optimization is a complete waste of effort, resources and time. By following the above ten points, you will be able to optimize your social media efforts. This will give a sizable boost to your follower base, engagement and sales processes.
I would love to hear what you thought of the article. Please feel free to drop in your suggestions in the comments section below.