<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1639164799743833&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Diagram Views

Social Media Skills: Tips for Getting Eyeballs on Your Content

Katelyn Ahern Digital Project Manager
#Digital Marketing, #Inbound Marketing, #Social Media
Published on March 20, 2014
warren-wong-323107-unsplash-1

Publishing your content to social media is a great way to engage visitors, but keep these 5 things in mind to make sure you don't lose followers.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone checked your website every day for new content? Unfortunately, unless you are the local news source, that probably won’t happen. You can’t expect visitors to come to your website just to check in on what you’re doing, so you need another way to draw them to you. That’s where social media comes in.

Social media is an effective platform to start a conversation with your followers, clients, and prospects. You want to make it as easy as possible for your followers to know what you’re up to and what your company is talking about. As long as you continue to create useful, quality content, your readers will be thankful for the reminder that there is something new to read from your company. Publishing your content to social media channels is a great way to do this, and you’ll want to make sure you test out which social media channels are most effective for your target audience. When you are promoting your content via social media channels, here are 5 things to keep in mind:

What Should I Post on Social Media?

When you are promoting your content on social channels, keep in mind that each social channel typically has different types of users that are looking for different things. The content people are looking for on Facebook (pictures of their new niece), and LinkedIn (information about job opportunities), are very different, and you want to cater your messaging based on which platform you are posting to. Don’t let the differences in audience discourage you from posting your content, but make sure to cater to that audience and constantly test which content and messaging is resonating with each particular platform.

80/20 Rule

When you are posting content onto your social media channels, you don’t want to overwhelm your followers with an influx of sales and self-promotional material. A good way to avoid this problem is to use the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of the time, you want to provide quality content for your followers that is typically from other resources but is not self-promotional, such as news about your industry or other information that your audience might find helpful. The other 20 percent of the time is when you want to include information about your company that also is helpful. This way, you provide value to your followers to get your updates in their news feed without overwhelming them with info about your company. Providing this balance will help make sure you continue to provide value and create engaged followers instead of followers that un-follow or simply ignore you.

Images

Some social media platforms have always focused on visual content (for example Instagram and Pinterest), but more and more other social platforms are becoming visual as well. With this in mind, you must be ready to compete for people’s attention by providing quality visual experiences for your followers as well. If you choose to ignore this aspect of promotion or don’t educate yourself on image dimension standards you will begin to stick out like a sore thumb.

You might find that there’s a bit of a learning curve to getting the use of images right. Don’t beat yourself up about it in the beginning; I know there are times when I have posted something on our social channels and thought “Wow, that looks awful!” after it gets posted. It’s going to take some practice, but if you keep with it, you will soon realize that your visual content is really grabbing people’s attention.

Related Tags

A great way to get more reach with each of your social media messages is to include relevant hashtags on certain channels like Instagram and Twitter. A recent change to the Facebook algorithm encourages tagging other companies in your post when relevant. This allows the post to possibly be seen by followers of the tagged company, even if they don’t follow your company. If you are going to spend time and energy crafting messages for your followers, you want to make sure you are getting the most reach possible. These sorts of tags are beneficial for trying to reach new audiences that may not know who you are, but could be interested in the things you share and are an expert at. Don’t miss out on these opportunities when promoting your content, and make sure you keep up-to-date with algorithm changes on the social media channels you are active on.

Be Clear (There is no satisfaction in deceit)

When you are posting your content on social media channels, the most important thing is to remember to be clear about what the content will provide for your followers. There is nothing worse than clicking on what looks like an interesting link in social media, only to find some spammy website that has nothing to do with what you’re looking for and doesn’t answer your question. People these days have a lot of information competing for their attention, and wasting their time with irrelevant links is not only inconsiderate, but will also lead them to un-follow you very quickly. Make sure to focus on providing quality content that is clear and helpful.

The social media world is consistently changing and revamping, which can make it very overwhelming to keep up with. The best way to get started is to simply begin sharing links and content, testing to find out what works for you, and continuing to make changes based on your social media metrics. Do you have any questions about social media strategies? Let us know in the comments below.