If you’re a millennial, you’ve grown up in the era of online networks and followers that have erupted into a world of digital living. If I want to browse for a specific product or service, I’ll hop on one of the many social sites. The best thing about those options is that a lot of people have tested them already! I’ll have faith in a Facebook friend who recommends a product 100 times more than a description of the product on the website.
Social networks are the 2nd most common way to study brands. I can google black leather jackets and get several options from which to choose one, but it’s pretty unlikely I’d buy that jacket before I do my own homework.
Firstly, check them out on Facebook, see the reviews; look for deals on Twitter and Instagram. It’s like getting a blind date, but doing your homework first! I want to know that I won’t get cheated; and in that process, the company should use these social networks to create a relationship with me as a consumer.
Having said that, I think we accept that control of social media can be a source of frustration. Your brand needs to be actively engaging, tweeting, and sharing — but who’s got time for that? I’ve collected a list of tips that my colleagues and I use for social management at Northern Kites to help save time, save money, grow, and engage your audience.
1. Look at Quality
Getting a constant flow of content and updates is always nice, but I would much rather have nothing at all than woeful posts with incorrect details. We want to ensure we post content that is good enough to be re-shared or retweeted, passed on through industries
We always aim to search for content that will last and not just trend for a week. When you can generate content or build perspectives that will remain important to the industry, that is gold! For us, content on social media is key.
Think about it this way, if someone is writing a bad post without citing sources and posting it on social media — would you engage with that? And what does the post say about your brand credibility?
2. The Right Quantity
Social media is about what’s happening right NOW. This is definitely true for Twitter; after posting 10 more tweets than the week before, we recently found that the interaction rate had increased from the previous week. These extra tweets had also helped to push traffic to the website.
Visibility can be difficult too as your organic growth decreases, and the one way we’ve found to combat this is to post more frequently. A good way to do this is to repost content several times —
For interesting blogs, I’ll share it on Twitter several times on the day it’s posted. Having said that, be careful with platforms like Facebook. This would be classed as spam, and people can get quite annoyed with this type of reposting.
Another smart strategy is to keep an eye on demand or emerging issues related to your particular business. Comment whenever you can, or engage in chats. This would increase the participation rate on social media and potentially draw more followers.
3. Be Friendly
Social media is full of internet warriors, keyboard combatants, and people who love nothing more than to talk about golden opportunities that they’ve just been presented with. It might be tempting to come back with a smart remark, or quip, but instead, be the charmer and you’ll find that the response can be one of gratitude instead of negativity. What goes around, comes back around: engage with others and they will engage with you.
The biggest problem for me is finding something to write about and to tweet. One way to address this is through social media management tools like Mention and Buzzsumo, which can provide you with updates when sharing a keyword you pick online.
Another great tool is Feedly, an RSS feed platform that lets you read all of your favorite blogs in one room, or Klout, which offers original content that your audience hasn’t seen yet.
4. Use Social Media Analytics
This should be self-explanatory. How do you know how many people see and participate in your posts if you don’t look at the stats! Allow data-driven judgments!
I’m not going to claim to be an analytics expert but I appreciate the large number of available social media metrics. Luckily, there are experts out there, including the good people at Buffer analyzing tweets, Twitter itself, and Kissmetrics. I myself prefer to watch for post-engagement.
5. Be an Authentic Individual
As individual people, we prefer to follow accounts of “real people” as opposed to companies even though we don’t know the person personally. I try my best to prove on social media that Northern Kites is an actual place with a real personality behind it! To get some ideas, many companies have social media specialists that manage their social accounts with flair and individuality, and everything people love…about real people. Not only that, but it’s also time-saving and frees up your time to take care of the important money moving tasks in your business.
My favorite thing to do on Twitter is to find and respond to unhappy customers, trying to fix their problems. In an InSites Consulting survey, 83 percent of companies reported coping with questions or grievances received via social media, so I’m not alone. It is a perfect way of demonstrating that your business cares because under the exterior is a face and personality.
We already know more attention is being paid to posts with emojis. Likewise, when we analyzed our strategies with pictures, we noticed that more attention would usually be paid to photographs. At Northern Kites, we examined posts on Twitter and Facebook and noticed that photos of real people were included in the most retweeted or liked posts.
Monitoring your social media accounts is a constant developing activity. I keep an eye out to see if our organic exposure will be impacted by the latest Facebook algorithm while being cautious about metrics and interaction across all platforms.
Any other tips we’ve missed? Please, let us know.