4 Tips For Maximizing Your Social Media Effectiveness

To some people, social media is the place they go to interact with friends and to catch up on the latest trends. For businesses, though, social media is a big pond full of fish. The goal is to put out some bait and to tempt as many of those fish over to your part of the pond as possible. If you want to make sure you get as many fish following you as possible, here are four tips for maximizing your social media effectiveness.

Tip #1: Pictures Really Are Worth (More Than) A Thousand Words

The importance of the visual components of any social media post cannot be overstated. When a user is on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram or even LinkedIn, they’re scrolling through their feed. Your post has to catch their attention and hold it long enough to make them stop. Words alone cannot do that. The right image, though, or a video, can make a scroller stop in their tracks to see just what it is they’re looking at.

This is why, whenever possible, your posts should be accompanied by high-quality images or video. Especially since posts that have those things are more likely to be shared, as well as seen in the first place.

Tip #2: Track Your Posts And Follow Your Own Trends

Social media pages have built-in metrics. You can easily see, at a glance, which posts get the most likes, shares, and comments. Analyze that history and ask yourself what aspects those posts share. Is it their subject matter? The format? The day of the week? Whatever commonalities those posts share you need to examine them to figure out what’s working.

The same is true for your posts that don’t do so well. What is making them fail? Can you avoid doing that in the future?

Tip #3: Consistency is Key

People are creatures of habit. Even the most spontaneous among us tend to like a certain amount of routine. Even if it’s just a cup of coffee in the morning, or a shower before bed. Nowhere is this tendency more pronounced than when it comes to social media and content updates.

If you ran a comic, say, and you updated every Friday, your fan base would start to grumble if you posted Saturday without warning. If you skipped a week entirely and gave no reason for it, you’d lose fans. Potentially a lot of fans.

To avoid this problem you should make sure you always have some content ready in advance. That way if something does come up and you’d miss your deadline your readers and followers never even notice. The whole process is greatly simplified by social media sites which give you the ability to set post times in advance for content links. That way even if you’re closing for a holiday, or you’ll be away at a convention, your updates march on without so much as a blip.

Tip #4: Use The Right Headlines

Everyone hates clickbait but there’s no denying that it’s effective. Whether it’s “the five best cookie recipes for the holidays,” or, “7 ways to keep your kitchen clean without lifting a finger,” people want to know. Even if they look at your headlines and see the hook they’ll bite anyway because you’ve tickled their curiosity.

Think of your headline as putting your foot in the door. The better the headline is the more likely someone will click-through to see what it is you’re talking about. If you use good keywords then you’re even more likely to get shuffled to the top of the pile when your topic crops up.

These are, of course, just a few things you can do to maximize your effectiveness on social media. For more tips and tricks, simply contact us today!