These days most businesses are using one or more social media platforms to various levels of success. As a method of driving traffic to your website, social media has been proven to deliver up to 30% of total traffic according to a survey carried out by Shareaholic.
However, to achieve this level of traffic you have to be consistent as it really depends on your activity and engagement levels.
Often it’s difficult to decide what to say and where to say it on social media. One of the main problems is selecting the right social media channels for your business centre business to engage your audience. The best solution is to select two platforms that are most relevant to your target audience. That might be Twitter and Linkedin or Instagram and Twitter. It really depends on who your target audience is. So some thought so should be given to this before you start.
One thing is certain. It’s not appropriate to be on all the main platforms for appearances sake. This is because each channel needs a different message that’s said in a different way. If you fail to use each platform well they could do more damage to your brand than you imagine.
So why should you bother with social media? Well, it’s a great way to network with your clients and future clients. It allows you to stand out by sharing content that’s useful and informative. But social media is not a sales platform so don’t use it to just promote products otherwise you will be wasting your time.
Making your content stand out when viewed on mobile is becoming very important as viewers are bombarded with new messages. More content is now viewed on a mobile device than on a desktop.
So how do you make yours leap off the screen? There are some radical new ideas being used that could help your content really engage with your audience. Here are six ideas you could use to start making a real difference to your social media posts. They are not all radical and new but they should be considered if you want to make a real difference.
Start to Build Facebook Groups
Engagement on company Facebook pages is often difficult so why not create and manage a Facebook Group? The biggest benefit is that group members can opt in to receive direct updates and important notifications.
Insert embedded “call to actions” on Facebook
If you haven’t already look at making your Facebook posts stand out by adding a call to action. Facebook ad’s are not new but they can be effective for certain types of message like announcing networking events or the launch of a new Coworking lounge. We found this brilliantly simple to follow tutorial from eConsultancy. It makes getting started really easy.
Make your Tweets look interesting
Making Tweets stand out is often difficult. They can become clogged with too many hashtags. So why not add interesting fonts, a symbol or even an emoji to make it look interesting. You can paste interesting options at iEmoji.com.
Picture this
According to Buffer, Tweets with an image can increase Retweets by 150%. But most lack images because of the need to reduce the short form message further to allow the link. But if engagement is likely to be so much higher with an image you should attempt to add one most of the time. However, it’s also important to note that you can’t just copy and paste images from the web. Often images are protected by copyright. We suggest taking your own images using a good quality camera. Unique and engaging images are more likely to get noticed than generic and cheap stock shots that look staged.
Sharing your content more than once
When you have great content you can share it several times. It’s important to make sure you adapt the message content by changing the title but by doubling up you can receive more Retweets and although the number of Retweets goes down each time you share it, it does create more traffic to your site through the links to the content. It also allows you to see what headlines work best too.
Anchoring the message with visual cues
We’ve mentioned using images to liven up your Tweets and social posts, but adding a branded visual statement like the one below to support the message content can increase engagement. By making a series of these images you can build up trust and the likelihood the message will be shared. You can go one step further and create an “infographic” to support your content. But don’t worry. You may think this type of content can be expensive to produce and take time but with platforms like www.canva.com you can now design exciting infographics and image statements at no cost.
Many business centres are already using social media to engage their audience and many are using a number of different platforms. It should be remembered that each one is very different and requires different content. It’s also important to make sure your social media pages reflect your brand using well produced headers and logos. Sometimes the lack of effort here can put your audience off.
Sources: Buffer and eConsultancy
Images courtesy of Buffer and Loc8 Commercial