Social Media Optimization

The answer to this question depends again on what your business makes and what your demographic is. Each social media platform is enticing in its own way, but use the wrong type of content on the wrong audience and you’ll be labeled unprofessional

All platforms support embeddable multimedia content and text descriptions, but on some it’s also acceptable to post text-only updates. Facebook and Twitter also support live video, which is something to keep in mind if your brand has a strong visual identity. Snapchat and Instagram also put a lot of focus on the visual content, but these two platforms are worth considering only if you take the B2C road. Given the main purpose of LinkedIn, updates unrelated to the professional life will be frowned upon.

To get a better idea of what works on each platform and why, take a look at one of our eBooks, The Psychology of Social Media Marketing.

Here’s where the difference between quality and quantity becomes obvious. Posting frequent updates where you’re asking people to follow you or to bring in more followers is obviously not going to work. Buying followers might sound like an enticing solution, but it’s not a viable one. Paid followers aren’t particularly known for engaging with content, and neither are they loyal.

Creative #Content can motivate #SocialMedia followers to drive #Virality.

You can drive engagement by delivering high-quality content to the right people at the right time. Creative and unique content will more than just that. It can also determine your followers to share it with their family members, friends or professional contacts. If this turns into a snowball you can’t stop from rolling (not that you’d want to), your content has gone viral. Read more on how to use 5 ingredients for engaging visual content marketing campaigns.

Some brands have this common misconception that social media is a place full of negativity. Even if it were so, it’s better to know that there is a place where customers express all sorts of opinions, rather than being oblivious. When it comes to handling this type of comments, you only have two options.

First of all, you can choose to address your customers’ concerns in an attempt to regain their trust. Bear in mind that in some cases there can be no retention if you’re not doing so. Even satisfied customers will start questioning your customer service standards if they notice such approaches.

Secondly, you can turn to the content moderation solutions provided by the social media platforms. Facebook and Instagram are only two of the social networks that provide comment filtering options.

If you’re having a hard time raising awareness for your products or services, social media advertising might be the best option you have. You shouldn’t rely on this approach every time you post an update, but boosting updates every now and then could have a major impact.

Research conducted by eMarketer at the end of 2015 concluded that 76% of B2C respondents relied on promoted posts and only 61% of these users believed that paid ads are effective. Out of the 74% of those surveyed claimed to use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for their efforts. In addition, 59% of respondents rated these three networks with 4 or 5 out of 5 points for effectiveness.

Things don’t look so good in the B2B department, where less than 50% of social marketers believe paid ads to be effective. To make sure you’re not throwing money out of the window, make sure the platform you choose for is the one your ideal audience spends the most time on.

After selecting the right platforms and planning the campaigns, you should decide what metrics to check in order to determine the ROI. In one of our posts on this topic, we’ve discussed reach, traffic, engagement and conversions on social media, and why each of them is important for measuring return on investment.

Social Media ROI = (Return from social media – cost of social media marketing) / cost of social media marketing

Using the above formula you can determine how the results compare to the initial goals. It’s best to look at as many metrics as possible, in order to ensure that any changes are minor.