3 Most Productive Social Media Optimization Tips You Don't Know

Being a marketer, you must have heard this thing at least for once that “everybody is having their social media page, your company must also have one”. People do things just to follow the trend without having the idea whether it is going to benefit them or not, whether it is going to let you achieve your goals of joining that channel in the first place or not. Before joining the social media channels, a research and analysis is what works always- what we mean is that “knowing what everyone in your industry is doing on the social media channel”. An early research helps you know what’s working and what’s not- so you can develop your strategy without having to learn the hard way.

In this regard, Software Advice, a social CRM research firm, shares their early findings from the Social Media content optimization survey, a study conducted by the company on how marketers are making their content visible to social media users.

Social Media Optimization Tips You Probably Missed

The above talked about survey listed 7 tips for optimizing social media content, but three of them stand out as being very important: using images, videos, or photos, using hashtags and usernames, and targeting specific groups or users who are most likely to respond to the kind of products or service that you sell.

1. Using Photos, Videos and Images

As can be seen from the survey, using images and photos stands out as the best way to create engagement than with pictures.

In blog posts, it has been reported that images were found to increase engagement by 94%. That is exactly double the engagement an article without images gets. Both Facebook and Google+ were designed by their developers to include high-quality images in their recommended best practices.

For Facebook, you must use images that are at least 1200x630 pixels to generate great previews. Even Twitter has now included in-stream images. Well that’s that, but let’s have a look at why images and media are so important:

People don’t spend much time reading content on social media, hence the information that is mostly conveyed with images, catches the eyeballs. But things in regards to images that you need to be careful about are that social content with images of people got fewer user engagement in terms of likes, share and comments than posts with no people or with just a part of person. A study conducted by Taggs revealed that when Facebook users encounter a brand image or post of a product, lifestyle, or landscape without a person or just a part of it(hands, for instance), the user is better able to project himself into the image.

2. Use Hashtags and Usernames

A key to making your content visible to the public on social media, you need definitely need to use hashtags and usernames.

Concept of hashtags is familiar to many people but it also depends on how relevantly they use it in context of their content. In Twitter and Google+, they are required as keywords that ensure your posts are found by anyone using those search terms. Hashtags also provide users a way to communicate with one another in real time, especially on Twitter. Start following a Hashtag and any posts tagged with that hashtag shows up in your stream.

In Facebook however, hashtags are used to add depth and commentary to ordinary posts. Like this one:

This is more obvious to state that there will hardly be anyone who searches for keywords like: ”illtakeit” or “itfits”. These are more like commentary by a person. But what about people who are not searching and you want them to see your posts? For that, there’s usernames.

While using Facebook and Twitter, you can do this with an ”at” sign and the person’s user name. @ChristieMcgrath, for instance. This creates a tag to the user’s profile with that name. In Google+ you can do this by using a “plus” sign, like this: +ChristieMcgrath. This alerts Christie Mcgrath that content is being shared with her directly.

This strategy helps in:

• Extending your reach
• Increasing your post engagement: likes, shares, comments and retweets and plus ones
• Introduce you to new people and spark a conversation with them.
• Probably get introduced to people in that person’s network.

3. Target Specific groups and users

Building out your reach is easy but sometimes could be time consuming by using the above two methods. Sometimes, you can use tactics to boost your efforts for quicker results.

This strategy comes with one warning that if you go too much overboard, you could become more of a stalker, which will do more harm than good. When you want to build a relationship with a person or brand, you need to pay attention to their social media streams. You need to make sure that these users can achieve their goals, then only they’ll be willing to talk with you.

You can join in their groups and start communicating with people. But still we caution you that do not overdo this. You just need to like their posts, share them or retweet them time and again, and sometime you’ll be seen as a friend or a fan to them.

Recommendations

• Use High quality images to increase engagement.
• Employ hashtags to get your content found.
• Use usernames to engage specific people.
• Build relationship with influencers and fans