How to create successful social media posts

Saturday October 4 was Small Business Day in Victoria and I was asked to present a 20 minute seminar on how small businesses in the Shire of Hepburn could use social media to market their own Small Business Day efforts and Deals.

About 35 people attended the seminar, many of whom I knew and some of whom I had mentored in social media for the Digibiz Program 

I knew that there was a wide range of skills and understanding so I kept it simple on the premise that it doesn’t hurt to go  back to basics every now and again and those people who needed basic would have a better understanding of what I was talking about.

Following is a précis of what I considered were essential to any social media marketing efforts that were to succeed:

Visuals

Every post needs an accompanying image – people don’t read text that doesn’t look interesting, (use your own or Pinterest, Flickr, Google images all have share-worthy images available)

Video (social video)

With the huge popularity of VINE, video on Instagram, video is a must on social media.

When posting videos to Facebook, keep them short. A Socialbakers study confirms that the average length of a video uploaded to Facebook is 44 seconds.

Understanding of SEO and Key words

The better your understanding of SEO and key words, the more successful your social media strategy will be. There are plenty of people offering to solve all of your problems by doing your SEO for you. And that may not be a bad idea, but do your research, many people have paid out significant sums of money without any appreciable difference to their google ranking or anything else.

Hashtag

The hashtag has a known place in Twitter and Instagram and it is being used more often in Facebook. This is a great article about how to use hashtags on Facebook, and gives you pause about the  value

http://www.postplanner.com/how-to-use-hashtags-on-facebook/

Think before posting

The biggest risk to your business reputation is to post something offensive, inaccurate or nasty. If someone posts critical comments on your page, respond, but think carefully and make sure that your response is polite and not defensive. Despite people’s fears about receiving nasty comments, the next bigger risk is to bore your audiences until they turn off.

Listen

One of the greatest advantages of social media marketing is that you can hear what people are saying about your business, your industry or sector or products. This is invaluable market research which is often underutilised by business. Listen and respond and you are engaging with your fans.

Inspire

People seem to love inspirational quotes on social media. Not sure why, but if you want engagement with your audiences they certainly seem to work

Etiquette

Thank people for commenting, liking, engaging; respond to people who are unhappy with your business or service; treat them as you would if they were coming into your place of business (assuming that your customer service is fabulous).

Understanding the social element of social media

Social media is not a website where you may place a piece of informaitn that sits unchanged for a time. It is a space for interaction. If you don’t want to interact with your fans and followers, they will soon turn away.

Advertise, Competitions

If you have a Facebook business page, you will have noticed that fewer of your fans see your posts. One way to remedy this and to reach a broader audience is to advertise on Facebook or to create competitions, (Instagram is a great place for competitions as well.) Make sure your competition meets Australian legal requirements, (and they differ from state to state). It is cost effective and reduces the hassle to use a third party app for your competition. I have used Woobox and Short stack to good effect.

 older people online

 

Accessibility