Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or new to the social media game, these 5 quick tips will help get your social media strategy up and running.
1. Start at Square One
Due to the high demand of social gurus, there are thousands of social content calendars floating around the internet. My advice to you? Make your own. It’s okay to look around and get ideas from other social media marketers, but the truth is that you need to tailor your calendar to meet your needs. Some people use them simply for high-level planning (think BIG picture, incorporating social into other marketing campaigns) while others use them as a place to aggregate content. So, start from square one, decide what it is you need and create a calendar that will make you most efficient.
2. Be Organic
No, I’m not talking about food… I’m talking about organic content creation. Graphics, videos, blogs, etc. Give your audience something of value that’s true to your message, mission and most importantly your brand.
3. Aggregate Additional Content
From time to time, you may not have enough organic content to keep your brand top-of-mind on a given day. Don’t go off the social grid entirely. Utilize your resources (like third-party, industry related news) to keep your presence in the social sphere. Just be sure to put yourself in your audience’s shoes—there’s no point to sharing content that doesn’t cater to your audience’s needs. Keep it interesting and relevant.
4. A Picture (or video) is Worth a Thousand Words
In the cluttered social sphere, your initial goal should be to grab your audience’s attention. It’s no secret that social content containing some kind of visual aid performs better on social media. Snapchat and Instagram are solely dedicated to picture and video. Overall impressions on Facebook are likely higher when some kind of visual content is present (take a look at the Facebook algorithm, it’s fascinating). What are you more likely to pay attention to? A post with a couple sentences of text, or a video of an adorable, fluffy puppy rolling down the stairs? You get my point.
5. Engage
Frankly, engagement is one of the most difficult aspects of social media. You can count on yourself to post amazing organic content on a regular basis, but ensuring your audience is engaged is an entirely different story. Try creating challenges, giveaways or simple prompted questions at the end of your post to encourage likes, shares and comments.
