As a millennial (but not one of the whiny ones that baby boomers complain about), I increased in the age of online friendships and followers, which has exploded into a world of digital living. When I would like to find a restaurant, I hop on Yelp. What about is recipes or clothes? This is Pinterest. Do you like trying to be an adult? Getting to LinkedIn. Other people have already vetted the best thing about these options! I am going to trust a Facebook friend who recommends a product 1000x more than a description on the product OCTOSUITE.
The second most popular way to research brands are social networks, and the most popular way is search engines according to data from Mainstreethost. Although we can search “Faux-suede shirt” and get an ad from UNTUCK it, it is fairly unlikely that I would purchase that shirt before doing my research on the brand.
Firstly, you should check them out on Facebook, and see some review to check Twitter and Instagram for discounts. This is like doing recon for a blind date! I want to understand I will not get ripped off; and the brand should utilize these social channels to develop a relationship with me as a client in the process.
That being said, I think we agree that social media management can be a stream of irritation. Your brand needs to be sharing, posting and engaging constantly—but who has time for that? A list of tips has been gathered that my colleagues and for WordStream’s social management I use to help save time, save money, and engage and increase your audience.
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To Focus on Quality
Although it is always good to have a constant flow of content and announcements, I would much rather have nothing at all than abysmal posts with incorrect information. We would like to sure that we are sharing content that is good enough to be retweeted or re-shared, passed on to colleagues across industries.
We also try to find content that will last, not just trend for a week and disappear. When you are able to develop insights or produce content that will stay relevant in the industry, these are gold. For us, social media content does really well on surprise. In mid-June, this tweet was posted and I am still seeing it being retweeted even now.
When you think about it this way, someone writes a terrible post without citing shares and sources it on social media, will you interact with it? And as a brand what does that post say about your credibility?
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To Analyze Data to Look for the Perfect Quantity
And quantity is almost as important. Let’s face it, so social media is about what is going on NOW, right this second. Especially, this is true for Twitter; we currently found that engagement rate grew 46 percent week over week after publishing 30 more tweets than the week prior. In fact, those 30 extra tweets helped push 30 percent more traffic to the website with 60 percent more link clicks than the previous week.
During the week with 30 extra posts, it was an average of 5.9K link clicks daily.
To get visibility as organic reach continues to decrease, it can be hard, and the one way we have found to combat this is to post more often. My favorite trick is to re-post content multiple times for blog posts, I will share it on Twitter up to five times on the day it is published. On Facebook, to ensure you are not being spammy. People hate that. Truly, I have seen feedbacks…
On trending topics, in your industry’s sphere to stay aware of demand maintain your eye is another good trick. Chime in if you can! This will grow your engagement rate and potentially garner more followers.
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To Be Charming (It can be help by tools)
My mother complains about social media, so she references her friends that only post to brag. “Tommy got into Harvard AND Yale! Such a hard choice!” *she also insert picture of the son as the homecoming king*. However, she is being the charmer, she will congratulate them (with a “xoxo”) and as a result, they will like, share and comment on her posts. Be my mother! What goes around, comes back around: when you engage with others and they will engage with you. Although this sounds silly, Larry swears by it.
To find content is one of my biggest challenges for tweeting and posting about! Social media management tools is a way to tackle this like Buzzsumo and Mention which will send alerts your way when a keyword you choose is posted online. I recently make use of keywords like “Larry Kim” or “WordStream” to watch others are posting about us. After that, their content can be retweeted. Feedly is another great resource, an RSS feed website that helps you, all in one space, read your favorite blogs, or Klout, which suggests original content that your audience yet has not seen.
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To Use Scheduling Tools
Because no one expects you to control your social media accounts so intensely that you are manually posting 20+ times/day. Actually, who is reading these daytime posts?! Procrastinators, I see you…
I personally use Hootsuite, because it had been conveniently established before I began working in social media. Similarly, I have also tried Buffer for the same work. On Social Media Management Tools, check out our post for a complete list.
I have found that their ability to auto-schedule posts is the most important part of these tools (other than the obviously time-saving) when your account is most likely to see high engagement. It takes a certain amount of brain power to pick times for 10+ posts/day, and this a huge help. When you would like to easily analyze your twitter sphere timing, Hubspot has a handy tool called Tweet When which will choose your most retweetable time of day, and Tweriod will choose the best times to tweet.
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To Automate Repetitive Tasks with IFTTT
A social media recipe website is IFTTT, short for If This, Then That. In a series of simple steps, this website will help you set up simple commands which link up different applications to automatically perform actions if triggered. For instance, a high UV index is IF the weather app tells you, THEN a reminder to put on sunscreen is triggered. IF you are tagged in a photo on Facebook, THEN save the photos to dropbox.
, we have a few blogs that we follow and trust to post quality content consistently that is of interest to our audience at WordStream. We were able to establish a recipe that automates the sharing process. IF a certain blog posts new content, THEN tweet the post to our followers on twitter.
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To Utilize Social Media Analytics
Does this need an explanation? When you do not look at the numbers, so how do you know how many people are seeing your posts and engaging. To decide based on data.
Although I will not pretend to be an expert in analytics, I appreciate the vast number of metrics available. Fortunately, there are experts on the Internet that analyzing tweets at Kissmetrics, Buffer themselves, and Twitter, who are kind enough to give us a beginner’s guide to Facebook insights. Personally, I tend to view post engagement (based on audience size) and URL clicks when controlling social media because our goals are to engage and expand our followers during to drive them to the site.
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Be a Real Person
As individuals, we have a higher tendency to follow accounts of “real people” vs. businesses even if we do not personally know the person. I have tried my hardest to show on social media that WordStream is a real place with a real person with a real personality behind it! To get some ideas, Gizmodo and Contently have companies that control their social accounts with flair and sass and everything people love…about real people. My personal favorites are Seamless, Nutella and Chipotlea. This says nothing about my real-life favorite things, I swear.
To find disgruntled customers and respond is my favorite thing to do on Twitter, trying to solve their issues. In a survey from InSites Consulting, 83 percent of companies reported that they deal with questions or complaints sent via social media, so I’m not alone. This is a great way to show that your company cares and a face and personality behind the façade.
We already know from Larry that posts with emojis receive more attention. Similarly, when examining our tactics with images, we found that photos will generally draw more attention. This was further affirmed by Convince&Convert, who report that posts with pictures generate 150 percent more retweets. we analyzed posts on Twitter and Facebook at WordStream, and found that the most retweeted or liked posts featured images of real people–#PPCkid and images of our employees worked fairly well, but even memes featuring a real human work as well.
Just like PPC, constant work in progress is to manage social media accounts. I am keeping an eye out to view how Facebook’s new algorithm will affect our organic visibility when being vigilant about metrics and engagement across all channels. Have you get any great tips that I missed? Please let me know!