Tips to maximise your social marketing output

The key metrics to consider here are ones that demonstrate engagement - not just follower numbers or page views, but active participation with your content.

Tips to maximise your social marketing output

The key metrics to consider here are ones that demonstrate engagement – not just follower numbers or page views, but active participation with your content. Something as simple as a reaction can indicate willingness to engage with your social channels, and users motivated enough to comment or to actively click through to links that you share can be examples of great engagement. You should set an engagement goal based on actions which lead to the next desired action, and track this over time – and eventually link to ROI for your social strategies.

Metrics to measure against might include: Post Engagements (likes, comments, shares); and Clicks through to your website. Many brands will look at this in a ratio format, with a metric such as CTR (click through rate), demonstrating that the user has intent to learn more or commit to enquire. Treating this as a percentage or ratio is particularly important, as a proportionally higher number of clicks versus the number of times the post was seen (impressions) demonstrates the content is doing a better job of prompting the desired behaviour.  

Deliver value to your audience

Whilst this proposition is applicable across all marketing channels, and what value is can vary, for social platforms it largely boils down to serving the most relevant content to the most relevant audience in a manner that gives the audience something – whether that’s new knowledge, entertainment, or even financial value. 

As LinkedIn put it: “A successful content strategy requires an exchange of valuable content for audience engagement. Simply put, if you want and expect LinkedIn members to engage, you need to add value by providing helpful, inspiring content. Do this by staying hyper-focused on what matters most to your audience.”

High value social brand content avoids focusing on the me, in this case brand achievements or news – instead, putting the intended audience first. It is very easy to slip into the habit of telling people what you do and how you do it all the time, but this often delivers little tangible value to your audience. Try and share examples of problems your audience might be experiencing and how to remedy them, share content from your website that is genuinely interesting and engaging for your next potential lead, bring something new to the table – it can even be entertaining, rather than just helpful/educational. Research, infographics, reports, white-papers, video posts and even a funny gif can all deliver value in their own way, so use the right media strategically to meet this need. 

As long as it brings value, it will enhance your positioning with your audience and help nurture followers to take that next engagement action. A more natural, human tone of voice and style can also often help to refocus brand content towards the audience. 

Maintain engagement with tailored schedules 

Often referred to as cadence or velocity, the combination of the number of posts and how often you are posting from your channels can have a huge impact on organic growth. Most businesses will see the highest engagement when posting in the morning – with a slight resurgence in engagement again after business hours. The key is to experiment to see what works best for your business in your industry, as every audience will be different, ranging from the times they consume content to the medium they are served at that time.

Stop the scroll!

Stopping the scroll, grabbing attention and catching the eye are all vital if you’re going to start to capture your audience’s attention organically. Famously in recent years, video has been crowned the undeniable king of content on the platform, but this is becoming less unilaterally true as different audiences demonstrate a desire to consume the right variety of content before engaging or following you organically. 

The truth still remains that rather than sticking entirely to text-based social updates, choosing a variety of rich media formats such as videos can help to make your content more dynamic, standing out for other users in their social media feeds. Videos and images grab attention and will boost the chances of broadening your reach: According to LinkedIn’s research, members are 20x more likely to share a video on LinkedIn than any other type of post.

Analyse and improve

Analysing your social media results, from engagement rates to CTRs and the behaviour of social media users on your websites can make the difference in your long term platform success, helping you build strategies and plan ahead. 

By analysing who is engaging with what, you can refine your most compelling content formats and offer more of the same

You can measure each post’s popularity and level of interaction ‘ and determine what content to feature next.

If you add the relevant tracking code to the links in your posts, you can see what traffic you are driving to your company’s site and adapt accordingly.

As you optimise your posts based on performance, brands can expect to see an increase in overall engagement month over month which will drive organic follower acquisition, grow reach and generate an improved ROI.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Gray
James Gray
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