Top 10 Social Media Optimization Tips For Businesses
The realization that social media is a landscape that can turn your business around is becoming more prominent in today’s digital world. We have around 4 billion people using social media daily, and that is a user base like no other.
Social media optimization comes into play when a brand or business decides it needs to elevate its capabilities in reaching its audience online. But, as we said, the social media environment is enormous and challenging to navigate since you must keep so many different elements in mind.
Optimizing your social media presence can be beneficial, such as increasing brand awareness, improving your social media reach, bringing in more sales from products and services sold on social media and finding more conclusive leads on these platforms. The bottom line is that optimization will make your brand stand out among the sea of businesses that are currently operating within that space.
There have been multiple changes on social media platforms in terms of their algorithms, which makes it harder for your brand to be seen without effective optimization. So we are going to explain several tips you can use to ensure you don’t miss out on every platform’s true marketing potential.
Here are the tips:
1. Get Your Timing Right
The art of mastering when you need to post your content is essential in securing a significant presence on social media. You not only have to be consistent with your content but also have to make sure the right people are seeing it. This will ensure that your posts receive daily engagement.
The optimal time to post your content varies from platform to platform, but it has been narrowed down to a general period. Most experts say it is between 10 am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Please take this information with a grain of salt because it could be different for your audience.
The best way to ensure your content is always posted during your calculated time is to incorporate a scheduling tool like Hootsuite or Socialpilot to post your content for you. In addition, you must fill in the content, and the time you want it posted. This will ensure that your content will be posted on time when your audience is most active and can react to them.
2. Optimizing Your Profile
Ensuring your social media profiles are up to date is crucial to any social media strategy. For example, it might sound simplistic to create an account and fill in your details, but this is where most brands fall short. Your business profile or page is the backbone of your strategy and should be given significant attention.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
Profile Picture
If a user stumbles upon your brand page, the picture is the first thing they will see before your account handle. So you must ensure that your brand logo is clear and visible. This solidifies the brand’s image in any user’s mind and improves brand recognition over a platform.
Username
The main focus of creating a username is to ensure it is uniform across all the platforms you operate on. A consistent username will ensure that users find your brand easily on social media and avoids confusion with other similar brands.
Bio
Filling in your bio is essential in portraying what your brand is about, and using keywords will help your profile stand out more. Neglecting this section of your profile would be a critical mistake in your SMO strategy. Also, include links to your website or other pages to direct users to your other social media profiles across platforms.
3. How Often You Should Post
The art of posting the right amount of content is vital in keeping your online presence alive. However, you must balance not posting too much that you overload your audience or too little that you fail to grab their attention.
Getting your optimal schedule is crucial in improving your posts’ engagement and user interactions on the platform. The perfect amount to post on the big social media platforms has been researched and confirmed.
Follow these frequencies to get a baseline:
Post 3-7 times a week
Post 1-2 times a day
Post 1-5 tweets a day
Post 1-5 times a day
Remember that experimenting would be key to finding your perfect slots to post. So you have to see what works best for your brand and audience.
4. Start Conversations By Tagging People
When you create quality content, it can reach a lot of users on any platform. For example, you can tag relevant users to ensure they receive the right amount of exposure. However, remember that do not overdo it on every post because it might discourage many users from engaging with your posts.
You have this tagging feature on most social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Along with creating helpful content people can share, you can also give your audience a shoutout on posts through tagging. Getting attention to your posts by tagging people is immediate, and you can see how engagement with your content increases.
5. A Review Of Your Social Media Strategy
Before you start your journey on social media as a brand, you need to plan your strategy to be effective within the space. You need to ask yourself questions to narrow down what you’re striving for on these social platforms.
For example, do your social media goals align with your overall marketing strategy? Is the content that you’re posting right for your audience? And finally, does your content impact users on social media platforms?
These can be answered by utilizing the inbuilt analytical tools that most social media platforms give you access to. These tools will tell you if your audience is responding well to your content or not. You can also conduct A/B testing to see what social media optimization strategy works for you by comparing the results from other strategies.
6. Contests and Giveaways
Who doesn’t like winning a prize or receiving products free of charge? The answer is no one. When users see brands promoting contests, polls and giveaways, they feel the brand is credible. A sense of trust is formed through the action of giving.
Gaining followers and starting conversations on platforms through discounts and offers is easy. Regular offers would have users keeping up with your brand consistently. What you should keep in mind when you’re creating these kinds of interactive activities is what is the purpose of them.
For example, are you looking to gain more likes or followers or promote a product you just launched? Creating contests is a great way to keep the creative thoughts following and allow your audience to spread awareness about your brand.
7. External Links
Including external links in your content can be an excellent way for search engines to rank your website better on SERPs. For example, when you have a high-quality article at your disposal, you can associate these pieces with high-ranking links.
The process of link building can be challenging, but it is worth the outcome. That is to drive more traffic to your websites and social media accounts. Not to mention increasing the reach that your brand posses.
Your website ranking on SERPs can improve if you have top-quality external links. In addition, it gives more exposure to your brand, which would likely result in more followers and likes.
8. Headlines
A lot of work goes into making a post go viral and having it shared thousands of times by users across social media platforms. Posting content at the most suitable time and frequency does not cut it. Instead, it would help if you had an exciting design, a catchy headline, and a thought-provoking caption. The idea of headlines is fantastic enough to capture users’ attention amongst the millions of other posts floating around social media.
Remember not to reuse the same headline multiple times, or your audience will get bored. Instead, keep a couple of headlines aside that you can recycle into your feed occasionally. It would be best if you also thought of different headlines for different platforms. This is to show your audience you’re not just copy pasting content from platform to platform. The level of creativity you put into each post will reflect the kind of engagement you get on it.
To make your headlines pop, you don’t need to be a gifted writer. Instead, you can always hire a copywriter who can do the creative thinking for you. These professionals will help you quickly craft relevant and interesting captions and headlines you can use for your brand. For example, experimenting with different kinds of wording and expressions as a headline on Instagram might not have the same impact on a platform like Tiktok.
9. Stay Away From Traditional Marketing Strategies
Users come to social media to discover new content and share them with other like-minded individuals. Unfortunately, they are not coming on platforms to be bombarded with marketing jargon and sales talk. An effective way for brands to truly reach an audience is to come across as genuine.
When users consider your business as an entity trying to create a connection, you draw the most attention. Creating authentic bonds with your audience is the perfect way to stand out from other businesses on the platform. The more connected they feel with your brand, the more likely they will promote it.
Your content should be personalized and should not include sales jargon. A tip to remember is to incorporate trendy expressions into your posts to relate best to audiences on these platforms.
Setting up business accounts on social media platforms is free and gives you access to various tools that you can pay for or not, depending on your marketing budget. Staying on top of your social media accounts keeps your audience engaged and makes the brand more consistent.
10. Social Media Influencers
The rise of social media influencers is evident in today’s world. The individuals have learned the algorithms of various social media platforms and made them work for their benefit. A helpful tip for any business venturing into social media is to reach out to these creators and share your content.
The chances are that if your content is high quality, you could do a collaboration or have them talk about your brand on their platform. Every industry has its influencers leading in terms of reach and followers.
It would help if you found an individual or brand with which you can align your business. It has been advised that this kind of marketing could increase your traffic and followers by 90%. The relationship you build with these influencers can maintain your brand visibility on social media.
For example, you could run different campaigns with different influencers on various platforms. It could range from shoutouts to product reviews to interviews. It would be best if you found what your audience would respond best to. Narrow down a few influencers your audience would like to see that would positively impact your presence on social media.
Conclusion
Now that you have the best tips you can use on your social media accounts. First, let’s summarize what we just discussed. First, you must focus on several elements of your account to succeed on social media. These include your content, profile, analytics, design, strategy and connections. Then, when you have these figured out, your social media accounts will be fully optimized and ready to take on millions of users daily.
Do not forget to experiment with different strategies and content to see what works for you. The social media landscape is constantly changing, and staying on top is the only way your brand stays relevant. Being relevant on social media is the deciding factor in the success of your business on every platform out there.