In digital marketing, content is everything. Depending on how you construct your message, the value you offer and platform you use to engage, you’ll see massive success or failure. In the early days of social media, homogenous posts would suffice to build authority – as long as they were regular. As these environments have grown and now taken over however, you now need to offer value. You need to take all the social media tips you can find, and build something that will excite your customers.
One significant step to building the right strategy is understanding how different platforms work. Every demographic interacts with different content types. The consume material in different ways and redistribute it relative to how they find it.
Before you go and invest in blogs or a social outreach campaign, ask yourself a simple question. How does your ideal customer engage online? Once you know the best avenue by which to catch them, your strategy can focus on these areas.
Not only do customers behave differently, but so do different content types. This is why it’s so important to get it right from the start! Why produce a bunch of blogs if your clientele want videos? Why tweet if all the engagement you need to tap into is on LinkedIn? The infographic below offered originally by Maria Peaglar will kick off this journey.
social media tips infographic
Social Media Tips: How Long Will Your Content Survive?
Your content strategy will differ massively depending on what platform you use – but they’re all equally important. You may think that the 18 minutes a tweet will be relevant doesn’t match a blog’s 2 year life, but they’re completely different.
The UX on twitter is all about regular updates on-going engagement. Users are constantly active so if it offers value, they’ll engage. In contrast, a blog may be informative and valuable, but engagement will only come as the customer has time and may take weeks before they show interest. They’re separate in effect but equal in importance.
Let’s quickly look at the 7 focal points of the above infographic. Peaglar offers some really good insights, but this will get us started in understanding how different content works.
Social Media Tips: Twitter
Twitter is the king of shorthand interaction. Contnet has a brief lifespan but there’s a lot of Schedule regular updates and recycle longerform content like blogs for further reading to supplement your engagement. Retweeting, replying and direct messaging are great for outreach and building authority.
This platform oftens sees younger demographics who enjoy informal engagement. Because it’s easy to manage, it should be ustilised as part of nearly all social media strategies. Use hashtags to tap into conversations and posts that fit your brand.
Social Media Tips: Facebook
Of all platforms, the average user online will spend more time here than anywhere else. Literally everyone is on Facebook. Within business strategy the platform can blow hot and cold though. There’s just simply so much content here that unless something offers certain and immediate value, it’s lost.
Focus on something captivating or eye catching. Like twitter, you can recycle longer blogs or videos to encourage further research. Informal engagement can be received well but posts you have ambition for might require boosting. Use targeted advertising to hit your demogrpaihc with tools like AdEspresso LINK!!!!.
Video is also becoming a much bigger part of facebook, but that’s a separate conversation.
Social Media Tips: Instagram
If your product or brand has a strong aestethic, this platform is your friend. It’s a newer platform but it’s particularly deeprooted in younger demographics. This is one of the most powerful tools to online influencers, but the average brand won’t see the same success.
Where Instagram’s utility lies for the layman, is the accessability to other apps. Throw a nice filter on your post and automatically plaster it across your Facebook and Twitter too. Again this is an informal avenue, but for the right audience an essential one. Similar to Twitter, hashtags will assist greatly in reaching the right audience.
Don’t expect your instagram post to hang around for too long, but if you hashtag it correctly you can often see huge engagement. This platfrom needs quality, not quantity.
Social Media Tips: LinkedIn
The professional social network. This platform will work if you wish to outreach to the prim and proper aspect of your industry, from university graduate to seasoned veteran. Although there is an element of informality in some engagement, this is where everyone wants to put their best foot forward.
Connect with relevant people and offer informative content. This can be written or video, as long as it’s of value to whomever may see it. Leave the cat memes for Facebook, this is where your blogs will pick up traction. In terms of growing professional authoirty and networking, this is where you’ll see the highest return. Ensure you don’t spam potential clientele, but do try to be a familiar face.
Like the previous sites and apps mentioned, content won’t last forever here either. But regular interaction, along with replying and reposting, will offer fantastic opportunities for networking.
Social Media Tips: YouTube
If you really want to win online, video is the future. Attention spans are shortening and most demographics will choose watching over reading. Blogs and written still have an important place in outreach, but video is showing its power in a real way.
Videos need to be informative or problem solving. The focal point of video needs to be of benefit to the consumer – that’s what’ll get views. Video is also strong as it can be recycled so easily across all other platforms.
It’s expensive we know, and no video can often be better than bad video. But regardless of the demographic, this content and platform can take your strategy to the next level.
Social Media Tips: Pinterest
Essentially an online mood board, this platform saw great success in aligning users of similar interests together. By pinning, you can get your blogs, images and other content in front of the right audience easily. And in particular relation to the potential lifespan of content, with the right pin your content could double its life.
The development within new apps (Instagram, Snapchat) has seen a decline in pinning generally. It definitely still has a positive role in social media strategy, but potentially a declining one. Unfortunate articles like Digital Trends last week showing users how to permanently delete their accounts may show how consumers have moved on.
If you find your audience is active their, you’ll find it to be a useful tool. But for the average strategy, a personal feeling is that time and resource could be better utilised elsewhere.
Social Media Tips: Blogs
The original resource for outreach! We love blogs and believe they do still hold a relevant role in digital strategy. Like video, it’s all about what value you can offer. Whether informative or entertaining, give the customer something they actually want, or can look forward to.
Depending on the demographic, short or long form content will have different success levels. Test both and see what works best. You can update articles to recycle them or replace outdated imagery/video.
Blogs are one of the best assests to engagement across other platforms. Raise a question or challenge, and offer a solution in your blog. Once there’s value, there’ll be interest.
This content will have its longest lifespan, so reuse it and boost whatever gains attention.
What Works For You?
These strategies all have a bit of trial and error to them. We know the heartache of a failed targeted Facebook campaign, but you have to start somewhere. Analyse your clientele and identify their behavioural habits.
The difficulty in these strategies is not producing content, it’s hitting them the right way. The reason we now spend so much time on social media is that we want to consume value. So if you can work out where/how to engage correctly, your outreach will sky rocket.
These are only the baby steps. If you want to get started on the right path, get in touch today. We want to see business like yours succeed online. Let us help put your digital strategy on the right path and help you win now!
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