Hacking your social media posts with 5 simple steps

by Cindy Van

With the penetration of social media marketing, consumers are getting smarter and have become harder to be approached. They are no longer the listeners but have turned into curators, content generators, and ambassadors. As marketers, we need to be aware of this development and become more creative to get the right content to the right audience at the right time and turn them into our promoters. For social media marketers, there are a few ways to get around and hit the home run by applying some simple tips. This is my own rules that I follow during the time working as a social media specialist. I hope you find it useful and let me know if you have any confusions, questions or even suggestions to improve the process.

Step 1: Your social media profile should be prioritised.

If you want to get down to business and generate leads through social media approach, you'd better pay extra attention to your online appearance. Company's social media profiles are like detailed descriptions on the back of a cereal box. Providing customers with the right information on our ingredients, production location, calories intake, nutrition information and quality check will increase the chance they take that cereal box to the check-out counter. Likewise, the virtual audience are getting smarter because Google has made it too easy for anyone to search for information. Without proper branding and presentation, your audience might lose their patience and opt out for competitors' pages. Tick off that list with your company's logo, a clear and concise description about your business, especially an URL link to your current web content. You don't need to get flashy. Just get the fundamental ingredients right through consistency of your page (tone of voice, colours, logos, visual elements, etc.)

Step 2: Create a style guide for your social media posts.

You need to work with your digital team and set the common ground on how many posts per week you want to get out there, what types of hashtags you need to tackle, whether you will post videos, music, how the visual elements are presented, tone of voice (informative? humorous? light-hearted?), how the links will be built and what third-party sites you want to input to enhance your credibility.

Step 3: Not all content are the same.

By this i mean you'll need to customise different content for each social media platform of your choice, depending on your audience and the campaign's nature. Facebook is very distinct from Twitter since they are used for different purposes. Twitter post is restrained to 150 characters so you need to create precise, short and catchy content. Likewise, LinkedIn is a professional platform which would be great if optimised for B2B purpose. Again, discuss with your team to pick the right channel for your campaign's needs to meet the final objectives whether they involves meeting your conversion goals or simply raising the audience's awareness.

Step 4: Industry content should not be overlooked.

Improving your reliability is not quite easy; however, quite possible. Simply include some thought leaders, online curators and popular influencers to boost your site's professionalism and credibility. Similarly, If you launch an Instagram-based campaign, hiring bloggers and Instagram-famous individuals to feature your product or service is an effective way to build the audience you need and expand the coverage you want. Another way to do this is linking popular website to your posts. For example, if you are promoting a digital marketing service, look into pages like Moz, Hubspot or Search Engine Land for regular updates on industry news and newly published techs which helps show your interests in the field. If you are creating content for a newly established beauty product, don't forget to mention pages such as Cosmopolitan Beauty, Makeupalley or simply including some famous beauty Vbloggers on Youtube.

Step 5: Don't forget to publish regularly.

All you need to do is find the right tool to publish your social media posts which should be finely optimised and consolidated. I used Hootsuite to publish posts on various platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google+..and now they offer Instagram as well). Other tools you can play around with include Buffer, Facebook schedule, Tweetdeck or a recent one I explored called postcron. Remember to maintain the frequency and consistency of your posts weeks after weeks. In my experience, the ideal frequency would be as following: Twitter (4-5 times/ day), Facebook ( 1-2 times/ day), LinkedIn (1-2 times/ week), Google+ (1-2 times/week). The best way to schedule your posts on those digital tools is to create a Word/ Excel table in advance to input daily content you would like to post  (include links, videos, visual elements, etc) and have your team (or others) review them before putting the content out there. Do some research before posting to find the right time you should post per week, per day as well as peak hours for visitors to click through your site. I will write another blog post on this matter to show you how I did it.

Voilà!! There you have it!

To be honest, there is no special formula for successful social media posts. The key takeaway here is definitely your consistency and patience. You won't see results right away but gradually your audience may pay attention to your site if your posts are engaging enough to be shared and liked which will boost your site authority in no time!

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