Social media is on a roll today. The thirst to know more has only propelled the popularity of these networks. The undisputed leader in the heavyweight category that includes the big 4 has got be Facebook. With freshly released data that says Facebook has over 1.4 billion active users as of now, any detractors who seem to be quoting the changing demographics of the user base can have a dose of this info. New social networks are launched every other day and some have gone on to give strong competition to the big 4, such as Instagram, the core group have developed an ardent fan following due to certain USPs that they capitalized on. Social media is used by companies for a variety of reasons. A majority of them use it for lead generation purposes. There are also a bunch of companies that are on these networks just to be seen there.
Social media posting- The perfect post
Does the perfect social media post exist? Well, that depends. It depends on a whole lot of criterion. Firstly, quantifying a social media post is a tricky affair. Each social network has its own way of pushing out the numbers. Making sense of these numbers is a whole new ball game. If it is impressions that you are looking for; then the more impressions, the better the post. Link visits are usually seen as a solid metric for most social media posts. Then again, if you are trying to capitalize of content syndication and wouldn’t mind linking to a 3rd party website, then this metric is obsolete. Retweets can be a favorable metric for twitter, but even then, it is seen that retweets are hard to come by, what with the short shelf life of a tweet. For networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, reach is another metric that is taken into consideration. This matters if you are running a campaign to generate leads and increase interaction.
With so many different metrics to consider, social media can be quite the numbers game. Tracking and reporting social media reach gives you the opportunity to understand how each network works and how each post needs to be optimized for their specific network. Coming to the perfect post, each network has its own set of standards and best practices. Most posts on Facebook are now heavy on pictures and graphics. This is because visual content captures the viewer’s attention a lot better than just plain text. This can be useful for a network such as Facebook because the average user is not looking for serious business ventures to pop up there. Statistics show that B2C is a whole lot stronger on Facebook than a B2B company. Some of the popular Facebook company pages are sporting goods companies, sports clubs, and apparel manufacturers and so on. There are always exceptions such as the Maersk Line Social account that seems to blow all conventional wisdom out the window with an average post like of over 2000+!
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Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter demand continuous monitoring, updates and crispy, interactive content to keep the masses interested. LinkedIn has been known to favor B2B businesses as it is usually used by business executives and hiring firms. Twitter is an anomaly when it comes to social media guidelines. It can be exceptionally interactive when the viral trip wires are set off, taking a tweet to unimaginable heights. It is also exceptionally difficult to crack through to your audience on Twitter. Twitter users, when on Twitter, seem to have the attention span of a Hamster! A steady stream of tweets is essential to maintain interest here and it needs to be smart, funny as well as informative. One very significant issue with these networks is the ability for anyone to ‘purchase’ followers and likes. The usage of the metric of how many followers you have to ascertain your social media presence does not seem to be of any use today. Capitalizing on your existing followers and keeping them interested is and should be your real metric to follow.
How to create the perfect social media post
Here is a step by step guide on how to create a good social media post that gets likes; is shared and sees a good amount of interaction generated from it. (Courtesy of our in-house social media team)
Let’s take a generic post as an example and see the various elements that are incorporated.
Title- The title needs to be short, and to the point. We have understood today that not many users are interested in reading a lot of text while they are on Facebook. The interest to read increases when they are on blogs and other sites. Shorten URLs as a compulsory task. Lengthy URLs are ugly and turns off a whole lot of people. Facebook has incorporated the use of hash tags for search. Though it isn’t as popular as the network that created it, use it whenever you have the chance to, such as when a topic is trending.
Image- use clear, copy right free and appropriate images that echo the message of the title. Stay away from risque pictures. Controversy is not easy to handle of social media channels. Refrain from using names and other personal information on the image, if possible, always blur it out.
Tagging- Some companies do it, some don’t. It does not harm anyone to use tagging, but beware, indiscriminate usage is never good. If you feel that it is essential to tag someone or some other business for the post, do it, but first, ask for permission.
Most users of Twitter go with a mix of a standard tweet and one’s that allow you to put an image on it. Let us first look at the simple tweet.
Since Twitter only allows you 140 characters, it is necessary to keep the tweet interesting, simple and easy to read and understand. As always, shorten the URL, and include hash tags. You can tag tweets too, so decide if you want to tag you tweets.
Including a picture on a tweet actually increases the chances of it being viewed. This is because visual content gets picked up faster than non-visual. The rules of engagement are primarily the same as Facebook, wherein you make sure it is a high quality image, non-controversial and is in sync with your headline.
A LinkedIn post is the same as the above. There are not many differences that can be shown. The same rules apply here too. Keep it simple, interesting and clickable.
Points to keep in mind while managing social media accounts
1) Ensure your accounts are secure with good password security
2) Make sure you know who is posting and what they are posting
3) Stay away from controversy
4) Maintain consistency
5) Try and respond to comments. Good or bad
6) Track your posts with proper metrics and standard tracking tools
7) Follow those that matter to your business
The perfect social media post does not need to have a million likes and go viral. That is a rarity. The perfect post is the one that gets the job done, and that is to push forward ideas and innovations and how your business and services can make the readers life better.
