14 Jan How To Master Social Media: 7 Steps To Excellence

Have you ever thought that social media may bring profit to your company?

If all your social media marketing attempts have failed and you rarely get any feedback on your page at all, it’s hardly possible to speak of any customer engagement. Lots of shares from your and your employees’ profiles will only worsen the situation. Obviously, such links never look organic.

Yet, it doesn’t mean that you should say goodbye to social media. Such problem isn’t hard to fix at all. Let’s get clear on which steps you should take to master the social media. Today we are going to teach you some extremely easy hacks and help you understand whether you need social media at all.

#1 What To Begin With

If you are ready to start incorporating blogging into your business strategy, you should be sure to have a solid base for it. It includes social media and a blog where those social media will link back to.

Writing a blog is the fundamental step for leading off your customer-building campaign. No matter what your niche is, there is always something for you to write about in your blog. Choose the topic which is perfect for both your business and your potential customers.

Here’s the key to a successful blog: give your potential clients some high-quality content. Do you want to impress your readers? Show your expertise and give them some practical advice.

#2 Why To Bother At All

In case you are asking this question at the moment, we will gladly give you a strong motivation to start a blog. Let’s have a look at your blog. Most probably, the time gaps between posts are several weeks or even months and the image at the front page has been stuck there for eons.

It is the proven fact that most business owners ignore blogging and social media posting. They just consider it a waste of time. They usually think it takes too much effort that won’t be paid back. In fact, they are losing even more. The huge part of the modern Internet users is all into blogging and social media.

The recent study has shown that 68% of adults have a social media account of some kind and 79% of them use Facebook. If you are wondering which age frame stays behind the word ‘adults’, you may be surprised that 62% of people over 65 use social media. That is a whole 14 points more than in the same data report from 2015.

Over 30% of all adults use Instagram. Does that look convincing enough? If not, look at the companies which have already introduced social media into their businesses. They had the astonishing 434 percent more appearances in Google search results as compared to those who still believe social media to be redundant.

Once you want to attract more customers, your pages should be easy to find in Google search. How to make it possible? First, be aware you don’t do the worst social media mistakes.

#3 What You Should NOT Do

• Look it’s my product.
• Here’s a press release about our services!
• Did you know that we sell this product?

If that’s how most of your blog posts look like, you are posting too much self-promotional content. By doing this, you will only harm your business instead of promote it. Your readers will very soon get frustrated by such tactics. Let’s be honest: by doing this, you show you have no tactics at all.

A tip for you is to get acquainted with the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Well, not with him exactly, but rather with his 80/20 principle. It applies to all the spheres of our life, including blogging and social media.

Pareto once noticed that, back in the late 1800s, the 20% of the population owned 80% of Italy. Just in the same way, he found that 80% of the peas were in 20% of peapods in his garden. How can you apply it to social media? Make 80/20 the rule for your non-promotional and promotional posts. Your 80% should be commerce-free posts. They are created to engage your audience by offering valuable insight information they can use in their everyday life. This will lead to more shares in social media and thus the viral spread of your company name.

True-to-life Examples

This may sound easy in theory, but how can you imply this strategy in the real life? Let’s imagine that you are running several social media platforms and a blog for an ordinary real estate office. All you need to do is to offer your readers some valuable content, helpful for them and relevant to your business. For instance, create a visual guide to what fits in storage units of different sizes so that your clients would know which one they need to order.

Thus, your users get actionable advice. This is an indirect promotion that encourages further conversation with your readers, regardless whether they’ve used your tips or other information in the long run or not.

Once you write a blog post about storage units and link it to your visual guide, you give some precious information for people who are going to move. If they find your post useful, they will repost it on social media like Facebook. Then, probably, their friends will share your post as well, creating a whole viral chain of posts. It may attract lots of new customers to your business – for free.

Try to answer the questions your readers may have and always give them quality content. This should be something interesting and educational at the same time.

#4 How It Is Done

For example, a company that sells Scandinavia tours, like nordicsaga.com, may write a blog post on individual choice of tours. It helps the users to decide depending on the budget, time of the year and dozens of other factors. They will link to product pages dwelling on the details on each kind of tour. Such information is useful for everyone who considers visiting Scandinavia. It still promotes the company’s tours at the same time.

Going back to the Pareto model, you will always have that 20% of posts for direct promotion of your products, services, coupons, events and whatever else your company is offering. Increase the search engine optimization by linking such posts to other parts of your site.

#5 How To Choose A Topic

You are ready to start a blog but have no idea what to write about. You have a piece of advice, some jokes and pictures to share, but it’s still not enough. You search for something really engaging, but can’t think of a thing. Don’t worry, you are not the only one who struggles with writer’s block, this is completely normal for everyone, even for experienced bloggers.

Start with a deep dig: use social media to research your customers’ profiles and find out their needs. Check out the posts they’ve already liked and shared, note which trends they follow and which products they prefer. This will fuel your imagination and give you hints on what to blog about.

Taking into account the posts your readers have already liked. That will increase your chances to engage them with your blog. Make sure to check as much of your customers as possible so that you get the image of what they need.

#6 Where You Should Post

As soon as you are sure about your content idea, it’s high time to decide which social media to use. This depends on both your followers’ needs and the type of products or services you offer. Here’s a short guide to start with:

• a bulky text – company blog;
• an infographic or short text – Twitter;
• a long how-to video – YouTube;
• a photo or short and fun video – Instagram.

Major brands already make the most they can out of these networks. Let’s have a look at Red Bull and their strategy. It’s not a secret that they build their promotion campaign on extreme sports. Look at this Instagram video they’ve posted a couple of months ago. The compilation of various types of extreme activities is exactly what their followers are looking for. Those videos are extraordinary, captivating and fresh. Also, they grab more attention than just photos. This post has already gathered more than 900,000 of views and over 5,000 comments. Still, the Red Bull name or logo doesn’t appear for a single second. See, what we mean by the 80/20 ratio? Entertain your followers and they will be glad to follow you on the social media.

If you are not sure which type of content you need, then you’d better repeat your research. Another useful tip is to have a look at your competitors. Note: you should not copy them by no means. Your task is to find out what type of media they post. Then you can use this knowledge to improve your content and create a unique combination that will help you to outrank those competitors.

#7 When To Post

The biggest mistake you may make so far – even if you are following all our previous tips – is to neglect the part of the day you publish your posts. This will definitely influence the users’ feedback.

Researchers prove that each type of social media has its own hours with highest CTR and you should count in those hours depending on the platform you use. For instance, the surveys show that nearly 23 out of 1000 Instagram users have scrolled to videos during working hours, while on free time this number jumped by over 10 points to 33.4. If you are not new to social media, such results won’t surprise you at all – it is normal that people are less active while they are at work.

Let’s consider a more specific example. A pin with a dress on it on Pinterest will get the biggest feedback at around 3 p.m. on Friday. Can you guess the reason why exactly this time? The answer is quite simple: at 3 p.m. you already start thinking about your date at night. At the same time, you still have an opportunity to decide on your outfit according to weather or activities you are going for.

Don’t worry, there is no need to cancel important meetings just because you need to post something to Instagram. Lots of special solutions, like Hootsuite or Buffer, will help you to work whenever it’s convenient for you and schedule your posts to the right time beforehand.

The Takeaway

Start with answering three main questions: what, when and why you should post. This will help you to boost your presence online and increase clients’ engagement.

Follow our tips and you will see an increase in the readers’ feedback on your blog and all the social media accounts. The wise strategy will bring you more comments and shares together with personal involvement from your potential clients. Don’t forget about the main rule: quality over quantity.