Around 4.7 billion people are active on social media. So if a business does not have a social presence, it’s missing out big time. Some of the most successful companies gained a social media following before they achieved solid footing.
But as with any marketing strategy, social media marketing is easier said than done. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking a clever post is all it takes to reach a wide audience. Relying solely on Google Search Ad campaigns does not cut it, either. And with more and more brands sprouting online, going viral is unlikely to happen overnight.
Don’t worry—this ultimate guide sheds light on how business owners and marketers can gain success through social media optimization. Here we have mentioned the 7 easy tips to optimize your social media content with some different aspects.
What Is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?
The word “optimization” is often associated with search engine optimization (SEO), but SMO is more than simply adding keywords to a content piece. It is like SEO, requiring tweaking and testing, but social media is a different ballgame.
SMO involves analyzing, auditing, and adjusting their content and social profiles to drive social media success. Its benefits include the following:
- Increasing visibility and reach
- Driving engagement through traffic, clicks, etc.
- Assessing a brand’s overall ROI via social marketing
- Developing consistency in creating effective social content
If one wonders why their social posts don’t kick off, chances are, they aren’t optimized to the best social media practices. Read given below on how to get started!
Identify Your Social Media Goals
The first part of any marketing strategy is goal setting. If a business is looking to create a social media presence—what for?
It’s no news how social media has benefited businesses big and small, but it’s different for every brand. Below are some goals that business owners can consider:
- Widen audience reach
- Gaining customers or prospects
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating leads and converting them to customers
- Creating an online community
When creating social media goals, it’s best to think SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound). For instance, set numbers to make goals more realistic and achievable.
Invest In Branding
Branding should go hand-in-hand with a business’s marketing strategy. It defines who a brand is and what they stand for, which is important when trying to build a connection with a target audience.
With this, marketers must apply their branding across all their social media profiles. Below are some tips & tricks for doing so-:
- Complete your social profile– An incomplete social media profile does not look good for customers, so businesses must fill all sections of their profile—from their business description to their store hours.
- Upload branded profile and cover photos– Customers associate a brand with their photos, so marketers should use high-quality, creative images to represent their business. Using their company logo is a great option.
- Link your other social accounts– Not all people use the same social media platform. Brands should link their social accounts together to gain a wider reach.
- Link to your website– A social presence is like a gateway to one’s products and services. Marketers can use this opportunity to direct their customers to their business’ main website.
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels:
Create Valuable, Engaging Content
To achieve social media success, marketers must create different content types that appeal to their target audience. Of course, content should not only grab attention but also provide added value to the reader.
These are some helpful tips when creating content for social networks:
- Create short videos– Demand for video content is increasing by the year, which may be linked to internet users having shorter attention spans. So aside from the copy, marketers should also look into producing creative yet informative videos for their audience.
- Publish interactive posts– An effective social post should also drive engagement, whether a share, comment, or like. Creating a photo captioning contest or polls and quizzes are some great examples to follow.
- Leverage user-generated content (UGC)– People love posts they can relate to, which are usually posts made by actual customers like them. UGC is one way of showcasing that. It draws on the popularity of an already existing post and captures the creator’s and followers’ attention.
- Be human– Evoking emotion shows followers a brand’s humanity. A robotic or sales brand voice often drives users away instead of creating engagement. Whether sharing a funny story or posting a relatable meme, getting personal is one way of sparking a connection with followers.
Optimize Your Content for Search
Searchability does not only concern websites on the internet. It also applies to social media content.
Marketers need to look into optimizing their social media so that users can find them easily on their preferred social platforms. So what should businesses do?
Do Keyword Research
Keywords also work on social media, so marketers must do constant keyword research and analysis to optimize their posts. They need to ask themselves what social media keywords their customers are searching for. Here are some tips business owners can use to find the right keywords for each social media platform:
- Think of common terms that people would describe their business. For example, chicken wings or refurbished computers are some specific terms people may search for.
- Choose a keyword they want their business to be associated with, such as a food delivery app or online thrift store.
- Check the competition. If a few notable companies come up when they search for a certain keyword, marketers may want to use a more specific keyword.
Hashtags (and Keywords!) Make The Difference
Instagram is all about hashtags—words or phrases preceded by the hash symbol (#). They’re used in a social post to redirect users interested in a certain topic to find similar relevant posts.
Adding hashtags to their posts allows a brand or business to reach a more targeted audience looking for that same topic.
Engage With Followers
When consumers mention a brand on social media, 79% expect to receive a response within a day. However, only 25% of brands actually do.
Marketers make a common mistake on social media: leaving comments, mentions, and shares unattended. Responding to these actions is not just a way of showing humanity but also of creating connections and trust with their audience. While it’s more of a branding initiative, marketers can also leverage this by promoting relevant products and services to solve their customers’ concerns.
Be Strategic In Content Planning
Of course, the major driver of social media engagement is a killer content marketing plan. Once businesses have a good grasp of their target audience, it’s much easier to create engaging, attention-grabbing content.
Many content marketers still think they must constantly pump out new content to stay relevant. Doing so can be draining and futile, especially when posts are not properly optimized. A pro tip is to repurpose existing content into another type of content.
For instance, marketers can post a 30-second snippet from their 10-minute webinar to drive engagement on social media.
Monitor Your Progress
Tracking their performance allows marketers to see whether or not their optimization strategies are working. Some social media metrics to monitor include:
- Reach—the number of people that have seen their content
- Impressions—the number of times people have seen their content
- Engagement rate—the number of reactions, comments, shares, etc. in a piece of content
- Views and video completion rate—the number of times people have viewed their video and those that watched until the end
- Click-through rate—-how often people click a link that’s included in their social media post
Business owners and marketers can use several social media analytics tools to streamline the tracking process.
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Optimization Is An Ongoing Process
Like search engines, social networks constantly tweak their algorithms to keep up with their users’ needs and preferences. With this, the best advice for social media marketers is to be flexible when these changes arise and optimize, optimize, optimize. The results won’t happen overnight, but doing so will reap astounding benefits for their brand in the long run.