Why images, analytics, and tracking are a measure of your last Tweet
Ohhh. Social media. A trigger of overwhelm for so many business owners. For most of us, it is one more thing added to our platter-size plate of “Things to do”. The number of companies committing resources, time and money to social media is increasing, but, if you don’t have someone on your team dedicated to your social media presence and the ongoing creation of marketing content, how do you keep up?
First, let’s look at the stats—is social media worth it?
Neil Patel works with companies to grow their business using digital marketing means, such as social media. For some perspective on the audience you can reach through social media, he shares the following stats:
- As of January 2014, 74 percent of online adults were using social networking sites. ( Pew Research Center )
- 66 percent of B2B marketers name LinkedIn as the most effective social platform, followed by Twitter at 55 percent and Facebook at 30 percent. ( Content Marketing Institute )
- Facebook has more than one billion daily active users. Twitter has 320 million monthly active users. LinkedIn has more than 414 million registered members.
Let’s just say, these numbers look like opportunity.
In many ways, social media is a state of mind; you don’t only need the time to post relevant content, but you have to believe that you and your business have something worth sharing . If you are on social media, but not really “on” social media—in other words, if you have a Twitter account, but do more scrolling than posting—there may be some ways to get more active on those accounts and feel good about it.
If you think about committing more to your social media presence often, but don’t know where to start, here are some first steps to consider:
1. Don’t be afraid to use images.
Pay attention to your own behavior when you are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Our eye naturally gravitates to images before we read content. Draw in your audience with images first, and then engage them with strong, relevant content.
There are many ways to make your images look professional and high quality. A smartphone camera seems to be capable of anything these days, including capturing depth of field. You can also use filters, Instagram, Canva to create your images.
2. Write the right type of content.
Patel recommends, for the sake of search engines, longer content is better. So how many words in your blog post? According to the SEO expert, “2400 words has the greatest chance of reaching the top position in the search engines.”
Best to post less often, with higher quality content than post too often with subpar.
Figure out what your audience is most interested in reading. Analytics can reveal a lot about what your audience wants to read about. Find out which of your posts is being shared, which one is more frequently read. Answer, what is the subject matter of my three most popular posts?
3. Measure your output.
Patel offers several recommendations on ways to manage your social media. Among those platforms are management tools not new to the scene: Hootsuite and Buffer.
These tools make sharing of your content across all your social media platforms a lot less work. For example, if you get a reply on Facebook, a retweet on Twitter, a “like” on Instagram, you can see view all of these on one platform. These tools are also great for scheduling updates and posts, and gathering analytics.
Patel also recommends Tweepi, a Twitter specific tool that helps you grow your Twitter following in the following ways:
- Find users who are interested in what you have to say.
- Interact with targeted users by following, adding them to a list or mentioning.
- Get noticed as Twitter notifies users of your interaction.
For more on these platforms, visit his blog post.
Patel also advises, it’s important to implement tracking tools. Which of your social media platforms is sending you the most website traffic? To be able to know where to concentrate your efforts, Patel recommends Dasheroo.
Ohhh. Social media. There is no question, it’s a moving target. Just when we think we have it figured out, there is a new platform or new creative way to put it to work. The beauty of it? The ball is always in our court when it comes to marketing our business.
https://neilpatel.com/blog/7-simple-on-site-changes-thatll-increase-your-social-media-traffic/
https://neilpatel.com/blog/learn-from-the-pros-27-social-media-tools-you-ought-to-use/