7 Ways You Can Improve Your Social Media Presence Now

improve your social mediaSocial media has become a significant marketing function for many companies over the past few years.

It has proven to be a great way to nurture online communities, learn about your customers, stay in touch with what’s cutting edge in your industry, and as a great inbound marketing tool.

But like most things in life, there’s always a little room for improvement.  After reading some great articles on amazing social media facts, figures and statistics for 2013 (you can view the infographic at the bottom of the page), I started to think about all the little ways that companies can revamp their social media strategies based on these statistics.

A few tweaks and minor adjustments here and there could help you more easily meet your goals and improve your social media presence.

1. Learn When to Post

It can be hard to do when you’re managing several social media channels, but this is information that is definitely worth knowing. On average, 75% of engagement for a Facebook post happens in the first 5 hours. If you miss that window, engagement is likely to decrease and your post won’t have reached its full potential impact. So by trying your best to determine when your audience is logging in, your posts are going to increase in visibility and engagement.

2. Demographics Are Shifting

Social media isn’t something that just young kids are up to any more.  More adults are joining the social sphere, so if you’re targeting an older demographic, you may want to consider ramping up your digital strategy. You may be surprised to learn that Twitter’s fastest growing demographic is 55 – 64 year olds! Twitter is far from the only network seeing shifts like this. The majority of LinkedIn users are also in the 44 – 54 year old range, with the 55 – 64 year olds trailing right behind.

3. Engage! Don’t Just Post

I once heard a great story about how a mobile carrier found and gained a new customer over a negative tweet about a different carrier. Recognizing an opportunity, they tweeted the annoyed customer their sympathy in a funny way, and assumingly happy to have had their concerns heard, the client soon switched providers. Not all acts of engagement will help you acquire a new customer, but it’s important to remember that social media isn’t about you. Find other groups, conversations, and pages and engage with them as well. Create an identity for your company that surpasses a daily update or tweet, and find out what others are up to.

4. Be Real

If you’re not authentic on your social media channels, people will see right through it. We’ve all received emails and letters from companies that seem personalized but really aren’t. People will notice this, so when someone leaves a comment or tweets you back, engage with your personality and avoid giving answers that seem automated.  People are interacting with you because they expect a real person/answer to be on the other end.

5. Don’t Fear Asking People to Share

Some 28% of retweets on Twitter are due to the inclusion of “please RT”. While this should never be tagged along to the back of every single tweet, there’s no harm in doing it every once in a while when you have something really exciting happening.

6. Add Photos

It should be no surprise that people like visuals, so when it’s applicable use this to your advantage.  If someone on your team knows how to use Photoshop, edit and incorporate original imagery into as many of your posts as you can. 350 million photos get uploaded to Facebook every day. This says something about how much people obviously like photos.

7. Use Hashtags

Hashtags have been around on Twitter for a while, but that’s not where they end. Facebook, Instagram, and Google + also allow clickable hashtags.  Hashtags are a great way to increase the visibility of your posts by allowing them to appear in searches using that exact keyword.  Now, this doesn’t mean that everything should have a hashtag on it, but if something is relevant and not too popular it would be worthwhile to incorporate it into your post. Designing a particular hashtag for your location, event, or business can be really beneficial as it can make for an easy way to moderate a conversation and see what people are saying. A good hashtag will have medium competition, meaning it’s something that will be used by others, but not viral to the point where your messages will get lost in the clutter.

social media 2013

by Digital Insights

Hopefully you’ve found these tips helpful enough that you can start incorporating them into your social media strategy today!

If you have any more suggestions on simple things that can be done to improve social media presence please comment below.

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7 Ways You Can Improve Your Social Media Presence Now