What You Need to Know Before Posting on Social Media
According to Hootsuite, “most businesses maintain between 4 and 10 social profiles,” but choose wisely.
If you can’t create valuable content for social media, share it regularly, and engage with your audience - don’t use it at all.
The audience demographics and content shared on each social media platform caters to different business models and industries. Before using social media for your business, answer the following questions:
Where is my audience actively socializing?
Is my business’s content a good fit for this social space?
Not all social media platforms are created equal.
For instance, if you’re a bakery, LinkedIn is probably not going to get you the same engagement metrics as Instagram. People are visual, and if you have a product-based or eCommerce business, Instagram is a gold mine.
Go all-in on the ONE platform you know you can manage well, then expand your reach as you have the bandwidth.
Once you’ve figured out where to socialize, it’s time to figure out what to say…
HOLD THE PHONE:
3 questions to ask before posting on a social media business page
Facebook is a great, well-rounded social platform to start out on. Its user demographics have a wide range, but Facebook does tend to lean towards older adults. Even so, ignoring the value of a Facebook business page could be a costly social media mistake.
Having trouble trying to figure out what to post? Think of what you would want to see if you were following a business page. When Mark Zuckerberg updated the Facebook algorithm, we discovered that meaningful social interaction was going to be the primary purpose of the platform.
Newsfeeds now prioritize posts from family and friends over business pages. What does that mean for your business? It means it’s time to get social and stop selling!
Content should pass one (or all three) of the following questions before being posted.
01. Does the post inform or add value?
Posting content that educates and informs presents you as a resource to readers. You own a business for a reason; and most likely, you are an expert at what you do or know a lot about the products and/or services you provide. Share your knowledge and give tips to those who are less knowledgeable.
Post content that will benefit someone’s day, solve a problem, or answer frequently asked questions.
Whether people are contacting you for services, or just to gather initial information, you want to be a resource to readers. After you have proven yourself to be a wealth of knowledge and helped them learn in some capacity, you create a level of trust.
Trust is an important aspect of social media engagement. In a world of pretty posts surrounded by half-truths and marketing dollars, honesty is not a common policy online.
Be a page people can trust.
02. Does the post actively engage or encourage a response?
Stay personable as a brand or business and engage with your followers. Don’t post something to the social world without writing a short blurb about it first. People are visual, but they also need context. Think about the following questions:
Who is your target audience?
What do they already know?
What do they not know?
How can you share content that serves them?
Some social pages write lengthy entries, also known as microblogging, in the text area of a post. Other posts can simply get by with a few lines of text and the visual content will speak for itself. Ask questions in your posts that require a response or poll people using Facebook’s free poll feature.
Whatever you post, post to engage.
Rule of thumb: monitor comments, encourage shares.
Social media is not seasonal, so you need to be constantly monitoring page engagement, such as comments.
Comments are the best kind of on-page engagement you can receive (next to shares). When your post is actively being engaged with, the algorithm on any social network picks up on people’s interest in what you shared and prioritizes it in the newsfeed.
Shares are the golden engagement metric. Shares organically put your post on another person’s personal (or business) page. Sharing increases brand awareness by reaching a new audience of unique viewers who will see, and hopefully engage, with your content.
03. Does the post bring joy or positivity to someone’s feed?
Share content that requires a reaction of some sort. Literally. Reactions on Facebook (love, laugh, sad, etc.) all started performing better than a simple like in 2017.
Engage your followers with emotional responses; not in a manipulative way, but in a sincere, exciting way. Make someone smile, laugh, reflect, dig deeper, think bigger, empathize…etc. surprise them!
Engage with people online like you would in person.
Depending on the brand voice you are establishing online, post content that will encourage an appropriate response. Even negative emotions, like anger, are not bad to stir for a good purpose.
For example, social media has recently been spreading awareness that plastic straws hurt sea animals. I am sure that posts showing a hurt sea turtle are not getting “love” reactions. The angry face is probably stimulated more often than not, but that reaction is appropriate for the content shared.
Be authentic, stay social
You should believe wholeheartedly in what you are selling, saying, promoting, or providing as a service to people. Create a following of people who have the same values as your brand (i.e., save the planet) and receive value from your business (i.e., glass straws).
Now it’s time to put these tips into practice. Keep this blog handy to stimulate your idea train next time you post. If you need help coming up with a purposeful posting strategy with creative content, let’s get in touch!
Be thoughtful, be authentic, and stay social.
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