Did you know over 300,000 tweets are tweeted per minute? Over 150 million emails and 38,000 Instagram posts are sent in that same time frame. That’s right; in one minute, all this happens online and more.
How can you make your social media minute stand out?
How do you stand out above the crowd? Social media is especially inundated with “noise.” It’s no easy feat to stand out above millions of Facebook posts, Twitter tweets and Instagram posts made every day. And yet, your business needs social media to stay relevant and present among your audience.
In fact, if you do not use social media to market your business you miss out on a huge opportunity to reach millions of people so how do you get the most out of your social media efforts? The following are a few tips to help you stand out above the social media noise and truly make social media marketing a valuable investment.
Make Your Social Media PRESENCE Count
Be authentic. Be yourself.
If you are authentic and genuine people will take notice. Show your passions in life and in business, and your audience will respond positively to that. People know when you are being real or being fake, so don’t get caught being fake to your followers – because they will call you out on it.
Engage your audience.
Reply to questions, retweet or share valuable posts, and always respond to negative posts or reviews within 24 hours. You don’t want your customers or patients to start complaining about you online. Your responses should be meaningful. Your replies to negative reviews should be genuine and humble.
Even if the customer is wrong, allowing yourself to get into a social media battle over your services will never look good for you. Be gracious for negative reviews, for each review is a chance for you to learn and grow.
If a customer complaint gets too out of line you can always delete it from social media and take the customer service route in-house.
Add valuable content.
One of the most important rules for standing out in social media is to give your audience value. Post content that they will find interesting, engaging, entertaining and valuable and you will naturally gain followers and engagement levels. Create content that you know your audience will want to read, and post it regularly to keep them interested.
This sounds cliche but simply share what you find interesting. It’s likely that others will feel the same way. If you like cat videos that’s fine, if you like Star Wars that’s fine too. We use social media to connect with other people not learn about your business. It sounds counter intuitive, but the people within a company make it a success more often than the name of the company.
Be consistent.
Did you not get a lot of notice this last week of social media posting? Was that awesome piece of content you created not as engaging for your audience as you hoped? That’s okay. It takes time to build your audience, and they won’t always be super engaged with your stuff. As long as you keep posting valuable and relevant information that represents your company and your values, people will start to notice. Give your social media the time it needs to grow with consistent posting and engaging.
Post three times per week at a bare minimum. If you want to get really good, you can see when your audience is generally online and be sure to post during those times.
You can also share the same content more than once. Statistically less than 10% of your followers will see each post so you aren’t going to make people mad if you share the same post a few times per month. We generally recommend making it at least a week apart but you can recycle posts if creating new content is too time consuming.
Add media.
Visuals and video attract significantly higher engagement than simple text posting. A compelling visual will increase willingness to read a content piece by 80%.
Content with compelling images gets read 94% more often than content missing images.
Then think about it… When you scroll through your own social media news feeds, what makes you stop in your tracks? Chris Hemsworth? Kittens? Ted Cruz Pornstar Look-Alike? We bet the answer almost always includes a visual or video that breaks up the blocks of content you so often scroll past.
ABT: Always Be Testing.
When doing social media for your business, you should always be testing your posts. Which ones got the most likes? Which posts got the most engagement? Which posts got no engagement? While testing your social media post performance, you can also test if your posts really do get more attention when an image or video is attached. So you can test for yourself what is most attractive to your audience, and then recycle and re-share your best performing and similar posts.
Read 5 easy ways to increase your social media presence.
Know the trend.
If you are working with dogs, you should know which day is national dog day and have a post prepared with the associated trending hashtag. If you are working with marijuana, you should know when 4/20 is (duh! *cough cough) and have a post prepared with the trending hashtag. Know your industry’s top trending hashtags and use those in your posts regularly. Sure you can’t always know when a trending topic will blow up Twitter, but you will be able to foresee annually trending hashtags with a little research. Know the trend that is best for your business and be prepared to join the conversation when it’s time.
At Post Launch we generally recommend planning about ⅓ of all your posts in advance. You can sit down for an hour and schedule a month’s worth of relevant posts but let some of them be about “trending topics” if you have a day scheduled for a “trending topic day” just check and see what’s happening on Social Media and find a way to tie it to your business.
How to stand out.
Standing out above the social media crowd is no simple task. It may only last a minute but the preparation will take more time and effort. Many SEO companies (ours included) constantly look at social media analytics and adjust strategies accordingly. Social media is not a simple marketing campaign with a deadline. It is an ongoing marketing strategy that should be a part of every one of your marketing campaigns.
Don’t be afraid to:
- Take a stand
- Be Sexy
- Be Funny
- Be Brazen
- Be an Authority
- Be Controversial
Remember: It’s about being the signal, not just part of the noise.
If you are looking to gain more followers, promote a special event or get more leads quickly, social media advertising is a fantastic way to gain quick targeted visibility. It’s way cheaper, easier and more effective than you think. Our next newsletter will cover the ins and outs of advertising on Social Media.
Sounds like too much work? Don’t sweat bae, we’ve got you covered. Contact a local SEO company like Post Launch to get the advice and service you need to succeed on social media.
