What’s a “Like” got to do with it? Everything! At least when it comes to social media. If you are wondering how to drive engagement and follower increase, wonder no more. I sat down with our social media guru here at Grandstream and compiled a list of useful tips to boost your social media strategy through relevant content.
Understand Your Community
Social media provides a unique opportunity to create a loyal community who look to engage with your brand and one another. Understanding this community of people is the first step to creating an effective social media presence. Consider what type of content they want from you. Then, think about what communities you are a part of. For example, Grandstream is part of the IP Communications community, so we make content that is informative, educational and useful for that community. This helps us grow audiences and expand our brand.
Create a Social Media Calendar
Nothing good comes out of just going with the flow— at least not when we are talking about social media. Always start out with a plan of action. Brian Van Meter, Community Marketing Specialist at Grandstream recommends creating a social media calendar that maps out your posts for the quarter. It might seem like a lot of work, but in the long run, it saves time and creates a content plan that your whole marketing team can work from. Jot down high-level ideas or themes for each week and then build out a more detailed plan once that week approaches.
Build a Posting Schedule
After you create a content plan, scheduling your posts for the week should be a breeze, right? Think again. One big challenge is not knowing how often to post. The simple answer is that each brand and industry is different and certain aspects like business size and amount of content available are determining factors. Brian recommends to start off with 4-5 times a week for Facebook and LinkedIn. For Twitter 6-8 times, keeping in mind retweets and curated content. Soon, you’ll figure out a posting schedule customized to your brand and community based on your followers’ interactions.
Created vs Curated
Created content refers to content that you own and create from scratch, for example blog posts, webinars, eGuides, presentations, etc. It’s a no brainer that original content brings engagement, but curated content can also do the same. Curated content refers to content you share from other sources, for example sharing an article or review written by another brand. A big advantage of using curated content is that it helps build relationships between other brands and their audience. Understanding the difference between the two helps create relevant content that caters to your community.
Stay Relevant
Just because you mapped out a whole quarter worth of content doesn’t mean you should disregard current events or what your audience wants. Paying attention to hashtags, trending topics and what your audience is re-sharing are ways to stay relevant. I asked Brian how to tackle this. He suggested to start off with your social media calendar. When planning posts, include a filler category that can either be industry quick facts or a post to connect your content to trending topics and/or hashtags. This is also a good opportunity to repurpose old content that performed well with your audience. Engage, engage, engage!
Be Creative, Visual but to the Point
There is a reason why Twitter only allows 140 characters or less. Sometimes less is more. Use your creativity when drafting posts but don’t write a novel either. The best way to compliment your content is to use engaging imagery that relates to it. The standard image size to share over social media is 1200 x 628 pixels. Remember that when using imagery, you shouldn’t have more than 20% of text space. Let your post do the talking! The most effective posts have an eye-catching image followed by creative and informative content.
You can increase productivity if you plan topic ideas for your content calendar that can complement your marketing strategy, figure out ways to target specific audiences within the social media community and even create lead generation strategies that can spread across different channels, including yours. In no time, you’ll become a social media guru.