Businesses are taking advantage of social media now more than ever. Business owners and operators are realizing that they can reap so many benefits from the platform to help elevate their businesses to the next level.
Today, it is even possible to know your firm’s social media share count to gauge your performance on different avenues. This lets you know whether you are sending the message that your audience wants or whether you need to make some changes.
Sometimes, however, despite our best efforts our business may need a little boost to help get the ball rolling. You can read more about SimplyGram here if you find yourself in that situation.
If you realize that you are not getting the desired numbers, it may be time to spruce up your social media practices. Here are a few suggestions that can help improve the performance of your posts.
1. Keep the Posts Simple and Short
Shorter posts that are straight to the point are more conducive to the way that majority of users utilize social media. You can increase engagement on your posts significantly by having direct and brief posts. An example of character limits you should stick to on various platforms include:
- Facebook – Post less than 119 characters but more than 40.
- Twitter – Post from around 71- 100 characters.
- Google+: Lets the headlines be around 60 characters.
Having posts that remain within the ideal characters will get you more comments, likes, and retweets.
2. Include High-Quality Images
Try as much as possible to include attractive and relative images with your social media posts. These help to grab the attention of the viewers. Studies report that engagement increases significantly when a post has an engaging and creative photo.
Do not randomly pick photos if you do not have in-house resources to take expert photos or generate beautiful photos. You can explore free or paid resources to get befitting graphics that will spice up your content. Never steal photos from other websites to avoid copyright issues as this could end up hurting your pages and ultimately your entity.
3. Feature Links
Before you publish a social media post, you want to make sure that you leave the readers wanting more. You can give the audience an easy way to get more by adding a link in your posts.
Note that social media avenues are an excellent tool for driving more traffic to your other digital properties. Just make sure that the link you use is relevant to the content where it has been placed, otherwise you can lose many clients this way. Additionally, make sure that your audience can share your posts easily on the page so that they do not backtrack.
4. Interact with your Audience
Opening social media pages and leaving them unattended will not do your entity any good. You must be social on all the networks. This can help you retain clients and attract new ones because they feel like you invest in them as much as they are supporting you.
There are different ways to do this. For instance, you can follow some of your engaged followers and respond to all your mentions. Do the same on Facebook where you share posts and like posts by your followers. On Instagram, you can respond to comments and also tag friends on the photos that you think they will find relevant.
Do not mistake this kind of engagement for reciprocity. It is more of building and maintaining beneficial relationships. Take time to monitor hashtags on various social media platforms and participate in the conversations you find relevant. Even in cases where you prefer not to express an opinion, it is best to acknowledge the conversation or even ask what your fans and followers think. Use social media as a tool to interact with members of the community.
[Real also: How Social Networking Can Help Your Brand]
5. Diversify What You Post
You must be creative when posting on social media pages. Do not put your audience to sleep every time by having boring and repetitive content. Diversify the topics you handle by striking a balance between personal, promotional and conversational posts. Having one type of posts is a sure way of losing followers.
Knowing how to handle social platforms in the right way will put you on the path to becoming a social media maven. Your efforts will be highly rewarded as you will be able to gain both followers and clients as you actively engage with your target audience.
[Image via: Google Images]
