5 Ways to Supercharge
Your Social Posts
If you pick your head up and look at the way the world works today, you’ll notice a dramatic shift from just 10 years ago. It’s 2018 as I’m writing this. Ten years ago Facebook was in her toddler years. She was a meager 4-years-old. Just learning how to walk. Facebook started in 2004 and the site was, “thefacebook.com.” My! How times have changed, huh? Fast-forward to now and you’ve got 80% of the people in the United States are on Facebook. And 80% of the people that are on Facebook are on it for at least 2 hours per day. Amazing!
The digital age isn’t coming. It’s here. We are dead in the middle of the biggest communication shift since the printing press. If your organization isn’t using social media as a tool and in the right way, you’re already behind the bus. But there’s hope! Reaching your audience has never been easier. When done right, your current audience will actually do a lot of the work getting you noticed! We’ve come up with a list of 5 things that you can do today to supercharge your social media presence.
5 • Show, Don’t Tell.
Throughout history, story is the way humans have relayed emotions, history, and belief systems. To show how powerful story is, for thousands of years people didn’t even write things down. They just told the stories. Tell the story of your brand, your personal story and the story of your product. As I’m typing I’m hearing the readers ask, “Are you telling me to just do testimonial posts about my products?” No, I’m not, however, saying “You should buy my product because A, B, and C” is far less effective than saying something like, “I designed this product because I saw an issue with the way X, Y, and Z.” You can, use a testimonial or two. There are three ways you can use story in a social media post:
1 - Produce a video (I can help with that {wink, wink})
2 - Post a photo and long-form caption.
3 - Simply post a long-form caption.
4 • Use the Right Platform.
I see a lot of people and businesses posting content that would be great, if it were posted on a different platform. Know your social media spaces. We’ll go into this in more detail later, but here’s a quick rundown of the top three:
Facebook is the all-purpose social platform. You can basically post what you want. Just remember that it doesn’t play nice with other platforms. If you post a video, use the native player and not a YouTube or Vimeo link. Same with photos.
Instagram is for photos! Kind of. Lately instagram is more about engagement than anything. It will promote things that get a response. Stories are huge and the new long-form video suite that they just started is gaining a lot of traction right now too. If there is one thing about IG I can warn you about, it’s posting of words inside the photo. It looks “advertisy” to people and to the instagram algorithm. Take it from a team that’s been shadow-banned and released. It’s no fun.
Twitter is your place to say what you want in a short form paragraph. Lots of people love it! Use it to be quirky, let people know about sales, upcoming events. Above all, be engaging. Spark conversation and answer your following!
3 • Post Quality Content
Now that we’ve got a basic understanding of how the top three work, we can begin to know what quality content means for each. When you’ve found your niche and post consistent quality content, you’re follower base will, undoubtedly, grow.
2 • Stay Brand-Centric
This should go without saying, but keeping with a theme is a must. You’re social media followers are expecting, they’re waiting for, what only you can bring them. They want to see the story arc or type of content that you’ve established. Pro-tip: remember that it’s a story arc and that you can change the type of content over time. Don’t make drastic changes to the type of content you provide so fast that your audience can’t follow. They’ll end up falling off the bandwagon.
1 • Stay Consistent
Consistency is the most important thing you can do. In all honesty, if you can nail this one down and forget the rest, you’ll end up with a killer following! Be consistent in when you post, what you post and the type of content that you post. The pro tip here is to have a calendar of what to post and when. There are plenty of apps, like Hootsuite and grum.co, to help with that.
I hope this article has been helpful. By no means am I saying that these are all the things you need to supercharge your social media posts. These are my top 5 though. What did I miss? Let me know! Send me a DM on one of my social platforms.