7 simple ways to improve your social media performance

I suppose the way I should start this is by stating “I don’t know what you are currently doing”, it’s possible that you will already be using some of these techniques, hats off to you, if you are using all of them – as it will mean your social network is thriving and you can leave a comment at the end of the post and share the level of success you have achieved. In reality, it takes a lot of organisation and drive to perfect all of these, don’t see them as a check-list but as a series of objectives that you can start one at a time, trying to do all of them at once will be frustrating and demoralising… start with one and work your way up.


7 simple ways to improve your social media performance

 

  1. Amplify your social media – The more your social activity is shared, the more it will be noticed. This feels like an obvious statement, but if you go outside of the obvious, there is a lot more that can be gained. If you have multiple likes and comments on Facebook you will feature at the top of most people’s feed, this is also the case for LinkedIn and Twitter (the exception to this is where people have changed there settings, but it will still not harm you to be “busy” in the social world). The easiest way to get more likes and comments is to get your co-workers involved – don’t make it a cheap and dirty ploy, but if they are genuinely enthused by your social activity, this will reflect well on your company’s image.
  2. Promote the use of social media better on your website – so many companies seem to hide their social presence from web visitors, as if it is not associated. If you are struggling to get followers and improve your social reach, telling people who visit your site that you are social will help you grow – include a static sidebar on the home page, integrate a twitter feed into your news updates or blog.
  3. Use photos / images – If you read a lot of blogs you will have seen a lot of statistics that social posts with images are 10 times more, 50 times more etc. likely to be shared. Regardless of the actual statistic, the basic truth is that visual content is more appealing than not visual content! If you are announcing an office move – show a picture of your office. If you have won an award, take picture of it. If you have an office fun day (a big IF for most!), share a Vine of your office gathering – Images make your organisation more tangible, your story more compelling and your update more social.
  4. Consolidate social sharing – If you are being truly social, you have a multiple accounts and platforms to deliver your message – remembering all of the logins and then manually logging in to each one is time consuming and just plain tedious. Use a tool that helps you broadcast your message more effectively. Depending on your social weapon of choice each tool has it’s advantages – my personal preference is Hootsuite – I have also used buffer in the past and it is great at measuring your effectiveness.
  5. Advertise – This one is controversial – I have heard lots of people state that social media is cheap and free, the truth is that it can be free, and it can be cheap, but when it is carried out correctly, social media is cost effective. The best social media companies all advertise, whether it is through promotional tweets, LinkedIn adverts or Facebook adverts, this is how they build their followings  to monumental proportions – the reality is that most of us don’t need mass market followings, but make sure you consider advertising fully and make your decision based on this, rather than a preconceived notion that social media should be free.
  6. Spread your social networks – Use more social networks, although I have mentioned the big three B2B social networks on this post, I am always signing up to new channels and trying new social experiences. You have to find the right tools for you – if your business sells flowers, you’d be crazy not to consider Pinterest, if you are a consultancy, try Quora. Express yourself and make your content more dynamic – I have a list of suggestions for different social channels at the end of this blog if you want to try something different!
  7. Hold social competitions / fun activities – Social media, like all forms of marketing should be about engaging with an audience and more than most tools, social media has a greater propensity to be fun. Show some personality (keeping it within the expectations of your audience) by having  a theme each week – a company I follow on Twitter held a daily competition during Wimbledon to generate interest, an example was to name song titles with tennis players names – Things can only get federer? It might seem frivolous, but the constant drawl of business messages and promotions can be depressing, lighten up your social platforms!

 

So those are my 7 simple ways to improve your social media performance – one extra I ‘ll add, is don’t talk about yourself all the time, as a general rule – for every business promotion you send, you should be sending out at least 2 non-promotional messages, people won’t engage with business drones.

I hope you find these useful and as promised, below are some tools that I have found useful / entertaining, I’m sure you’ll enjoy exploring them!

  • Scoop.it – make your own newspaper, if you share lots of content from other people, collect it all here and share your stories as an evolving publication.
  • Paper.li – Don’t have the time to scoop.it – let paper.li do all the hard work for you! Automatically find, publish & promote engaging articles, photos and videos from across the web.
  • Storify – Storify helps making sense of what people post on social media. Curating the most important voices and turn them into stories – a great tool if you post a lot!
  • Quora – I mentioned this within the post and I am a huge fan of it! basically a wikipedia for opinions, it is great for sharing knowledge and experiences.
  • Vine – Also mentioned within the post – in the creators words… Vine is the best way to see and share life in motion. Create short, beautiful, looping videos in a simple and fun way.
  • Qwiki – This is also one of my favourites (only on iphone for now, but watch this space!). Qwiki turns your photos into fun and highly shareable videos – if you are at an event and want to share a quick video after the event, use this app and it will be ready in minutes.

 

My blog can be found at www.methodinthemarketing.com – please visit and comment!

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