Social Media Marketing / Design / Princeton, NJ

There’s a ton of information being shared on social media, designed to lure readers, engage them, make them click, buy, retweet, etc.  When you are just one voice among these millions of other voices, how will you make sure you’re heard? How can you be certain that the content you’re sharing is engaging your followers, and attracting new ones?  Here are some strategies for smarter sharing on social media sites.

1. Mind your post frequency.  Too often and it’s annoying, too little and you get lost in the crowd.  Deciding on how often to tweet or share takes time, and you’ll find your rhythm as you go.  For starters, shoot for a handful of posts per day - more than 3 - and see how that goes.  The key here is consistency.  If you suddenly vanish, the social media world will forget about you and keep moving on.  Dedicate yourself to a regular number of posts - blog posts, Facebook and Twitter posts - and stick with that frequency. 

2. Maximize your reach.  If you’re managing multiple accounts, consider this point raised by Robert Caruso, author of bundlepost.  He argues that strategic posting across each of your social media channels increases the exposure of your post.  If you’re sharing your new blog post on Twitter, share it on Facebook at a different time, and engage a new audience.  The audience on your social media sites fluctuates throughout the day, and if you only share it one time, double-posting on social media sites, you’re only reaching one audience, one time.  With that in mind…

3. Work the metrics.  There are many apps that can work to your advantage when it comes to content sharing.  One of my favorites at the moment is an app called Buffer, which allows you to schedule tweets and Facebook posts ahead of time, and then provides you with the analytics for each afterwards.  (Read my review of Buffer here.)  The benefit to this is being able to see how effective each post was - how many people saw it, how many clicks it got, etc. - so that you can fine-tune your sharing strategy. 

Thinking strategically about how you share will increase traffic to your site, engage your audience, and help you grow your social media presence. 

Maybe in your dream world, you have a whole marketing team devoted to sharing your business’ message with your loyal fans.  But for now, you’re it.  Running a business means wearing a lot of different hats - perhaps juggling customer service, personnel, book keeping -  in addition to trying to keep up with your fans on social media sites.  With all those tasks to consider, finding ways to save time is key.  Lucky for you, there are several great tools available to make your social media marketing more efficient!

Buffer is a popular app that allows you to compose and schedule your tweets or Facebook posts ahead of time.  There is a lot to love about Buffer, but the biggie is the amount of time it can save you.  Instead of making time throughout the day to stay involved and share things on social media sites, you can prepare a few days’ worth of content in one sitting.  Type them into Buffer, they’ll be added to your queue.

Buffer also provides you with the analytics for each tweet.  See how many clicks it got, how many potential viewers it had, along with retweets, mentions and favorites - all from your Buffer dashboard.

After trying a few similar programs, I decided to try Buffer myself.  I’ve been using it for a few days now, and have found it to be user-friendy, intuitive, and a very helpful tool.  Take one thing off your daily to-do list, and download Buffer to make your social media marketing a little easier!

(Source: ohsobeautifulpaper.com)

So, you’ve put your business on Facebook and you’re steadily building your fan base.  You’re adding content, and your fans are responding.  You have a sense for what content your fans like, but you are yearning for more information.  How can you tell what posts are getting the best reactions?  How can you measure how successful your company’s Facebook campaign is? 

Facebook allows businesses access to metrics from their page - aptly named ‘Insights’ - that measure ‘likes’, reach, check-ins, virality and more.  Understanding how to interpret these statistics is a key step in crafting a successful social media campaign.  Once you’ve learned how to interpret your Facebook Insights, you’ll have a better picture of what your consumers are looking for from your company, what they like and what they are less interested in.  Here’s a brief overview of this valuable tool.

To view your pages’ Insights, you must be logged in as an Admin.  On your Admin Panel, click on the ‘Insights’ box.  This will take you to the Insights Dashboard, where you’ll see an overview of the various metrics.  A chart below will visualize the frequency of your posts, the number of people talking about your page(resharing your info), and your weekly total reach(people who have seen your posts).  It will look something like this: 

Below that, you’ll see a list of every post, organized by date.  You can view data for each specific post and learn the reach, the number of engaged users, the number of people talking about that post, and the post’s virality(a percentage based on the number of people who talk about a post out of the number of people who saw the post.)  This breakdown gives you the chance to determine what your fans want more of.  Remember, the more your content is seen, interacted with and reshared, the more your fan base will grow - that’s the whole point!

Scroll back up and you’ll see a few tabs running across the top of the Insights Dashboard.  Click on ‘Likes’ and you can see the demographics and locations of the people who like your posts.  Below that, you can learn where these likes came from.  Were they already on your page when they clicked ‘like’?  Or did Facebook recommend your page to them based on other businesses they had already liked?  Do you have a ‘Like Us On Facebook’ button on your site or in your e-newsletter?  You can see how many ‘likes’ that actually got you.

Click on ‘Reach’ and you’ll find out the demographics of who’s seeing your posts.  Towards the bottom of this page you can learn more about your reach, including how people are encountering your content.  Your ‘organic’ reach is related to your content showing up in a fans’ news feed, or perhaps someone looking at your page on their own volition.  Your ‘viral’ reach refers to content that people encountered through a friend - either something someone reshared, or something they saw through a friends’ activity.  If you are using paid Facebook ads, this is where you can determine how effective they have been.

Good news!  People are talking about your page!  But in what ways?  In the ‘Talking About This’ section you can see what types of stories got you the most chatter.

Finally, Check-Ins.  Again, demographic info can offer you some insight into your clientele.  A great way to build a fan base is to craft a location-based promotion… (more on that next week!)