Social media is another forum for putting your brand in front of a global audience. It's tougher than ever to achieve prominence on social media without paying for sponsored posts so it’s critically important to enhance your social media presence with content that will pique interest in your business.
This article is designed to give you some tips on social media marketing, providing the do's and don'ts for posting articles and interacting with your audience. Much of this information is particularly relevant for anyone using Facebook. This app is used as a marketing tool by more than 200 million businesses world-wide, and it has an audience of over 35 percent of the global population.
Before writing, stop to think about who you're trying to sell to!
If you know who your intended audience is, you can write material that’s relevant and interesting to them. You might need to adjust your writing style slightly to accommodate a particular age demographic.
Even if you’re not creating a public post, remember that material distributed privately can be shared by your connections. So you should write accordingly as if your post was in the public domain.
You’re seeking to promote your brand so you need to keep it out in front of users as a reminder of your presence in the marketplace. A business that has a social media page but leaves it idle looks unprofessional and risks painting the picture of being inactive.
How often should you post? The optimal frequency of publishing depends on a number of factors such as your business type and size (and therefore how much interesting information you have to share), as well as your audience and their appetite for more information about your business. However, the approximate rule-of-thumb is post three times a week, if you can.
However, avoid posting mundane material that doesn't add value, just for the sake of posting. If you oversaturate your audience, you run the risk of being unfollowed. Always lean towards quality over quantity.
If you understand your audience, you can post at times when they’re likely to access the social media platform you’re using. For example, if a large percentage of your audience is employed, it could be beneficial to publish during a lunch break when they're taking a well-earned rest and looking for some interesting material on social media! As a general rule, the peak traffic on week days occurs during the early afternoon between the hours of 1 and 3 pm. And if you're writing to an audience located outside of your local area, it will pay to research time zones.
Generally speaking, posting on a public holiday isn’t a good idea if your audience is going to be offline celebrating with friends and family. For example, if you wish to post a Christmas message, it may be more effective to publish it on the morning or early afternoon of Christmas Eve.
Social media platforms aren’t the place for long content. Have a strategy in mind and determine the required outcome from your post before publishing. This will help you to get to the point of your desired message quickly.
You should choose content length according to the type of platform you’re posting on, eg for Facebook we suggest using up to three brief paragraphs. It's also a good idea to end with a Call-to-Action such as an invitation to call your business or by providing a URL (link) to access further details on your website, where appropriate.
Without a doubt, the English language contains many nuances. Some words can have multiple meanings and the use of these words may greatly affect how we understand written content, especially when a reader is relatively new to the language and has difficulty determining the correct context. Where possible, it's desirable to use terminology that's unambiguous and choose words that only have a singular meaning.
If you’re posting to Facebook, try to avoid using text only. There's a lot of posts in most people's feeds and yours will need a level of vibrancy to capture someone's attention so they pause scrolling to read your post. Otherwise they'll tend to scroll straight past text-only posts and on to the next one! You can captivate audiences by posting videos and images.
Your visual media should be inviting and not overcomplicated. Use high resolution images that have the specified dimensions for the social media platform you're posting to. Otherwise you risk the image being distorted or cropped when it's resized on different devices. You should also try to avoid using stock images - it's best to be original. At the very least, make sure you're aware of and respect any copyright restrictions with images extracted from other sources.
If you include text overlays on top of your image, try to limit the volume of text (around 20 to 30 per cent of the image size is a good rule-of-thumb) and avoid small text characters. This is because text is prone to distortion when the image is resized on your device. Therefore, text overlays should always be bold and using a simple font so they remain legible. Choose your colours carefully and make sure there's sufficient visual contrast between the text and the image background so that the text is readable. Text shadows can help to enhance contrast.
If you have a website that's been built with social media integration, a graphic will be automatically added to your post, incorporating a smart link that will drive traffic to your website. Ask us how!
When you post, asking your audience to share with their friends is a useful strategy. Depending on the number of shares for your post, you could significantly extend the distribution of your brand. Alternatively, you could consider paying for sponsored posts if your material is relevant to a wider audience.
Encourage user feedback and always promptly acknowledge/respond to comments. To a new audience, comments on your posts demonstrate engagement and an interest from others, and can be used by an audience to determine if a business is posting material that is legitimate. Comments, likes and shares on Facebook can help to promote your business since the post is likely to be shown to more people in their feeds.
If you're writing on behalf of your employer, you shouldn't personalise the text. In other words, if you’re representing a business or other organisation, use the collective terms “we” or “us” rather than “I” or “me”.
A post with spelling and/or grammatical errors looks unprofessional. If you’re not sure, there are plenty of resources on the internet to check spelling. Alternatively, we recommend you use a word processor with spell check functionality to draft your material before posting. And remember, if you spot errors after that you can edit your post retrospectively if necessary.
Unfortunately, plagiarism tends to flourish on social media. You should always post original material so your posts remain relevant to your business activities, that puts your business in the best light possible. Please don’t plagiarise, after all, that can be a form of copyright infringement.
Avoid overstating. You want to ensure your audience gets a feel that your enterprise is genuine as well as being fair and reasonable. The latter point includes not being critical or derogatory in any way, eg downgrading competitors unfairly. However you’ll still need to reflect that you are a successful and progressive business, even when business is a little bit slow at any given time (those ups and downs are a natural characteristic for a lot of businesses).
Be factual, don’t write about events that are in the ideas or even planning stage. It doesn’t reflect well on your business or organisation if you have to retract an earlier post because you thought something was a good idea at the time but didn’t have any real justification for that concept. It makes you look a little disorganised and unprofessional.
