More than 4 billion people are actively using social media. And even more, people have chosen them as their primary marketing tool. That’s why in 2021, it’s more important than ever to dedicate a more significant percentage of your marketing efforts to social media.
There’s no doubt that social media is the best way to promote your brand. However, competition is increasing, and social networks are actively updating their algorithms. Because of this, every year, it becomes more and more challenging to promote your brand through this channel. To engage the modern user, you need not only to publish relevant and interesting content but also to develop a quality strategy for social media optimization. And that is what we will talk about in this article.
SMO or social media optimization is the optimization of your social media profiles and websites to make it easier for your business to be discovered by your potential online audience!
This type of optimization bridges the gap between your social media accounts and your company website. With social media optimization, you become more “visible” online, and your potential customers have more chances to contact you.
Properly applied, social media optimization increases your site’s ranking in search engines and increases traffic from organic search and various social networks. In addition, awareness of your brand also increases significantly.
According to Hubspot research, 21% of followers unsubscribe from brands that post repetitive content. The same study says 19% of respondents unfollow companies that post too often. Hubspot respondents also cited a lack of engagement in posts.
This is the reason marketers are so proactive in checking the engagement of a brand’s audience across all social networks, determining the relevance and usefulness of the content posted to followers.
Social media optimization ensures that you’re investing in the right activities that are sure to work and have a significant effect on your online presence.
Next, we’ll cover the top 15 techniques and strategies that are sure to have a positive impact on your productivity!
You can be a large corporation or a small business. No matter what, social media sites offer you many ways to upgrade your online presence and increase your reach and number of followers. Most strategies and techniques take time, not money, although it may be the same thing.
You can apply some techniques to many social networks. For example, visual content is always better, and users like and share infographics on brands’ social media three times more often than any other kind of post. And on any platform, you’d better use calls to action to inspire your audience to take the next required step.
As a rule of thumb, it’s advisable to include as much information as possible about each of your social media platforms. For example, you want to take advantage of customizable images. Still, you also need to ensure that your “about you” information, profile image, and so on are the same across your platforms. That way, people will immediately recognize your brand, no matter what social media they use.
Optimize your social media strategy
The lack of a quality social media strategy is a serious problem for brands. It’s also one of the primary reasons why your company may not do well with social media marketing.
Make sure you set clear goals and are specific about what you want to achieve with your social media marketing campaign – increasing brand awareness, attracting new leads, or something else.
Focus your efforts on increasing your business’s online presence and achieving measurable results. This is where you need to focus as much as possible on goals that can be accurately tracked and measured to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign.
When optimizing your strategy, decide which social media platforms you need. Choose those in which people interested in your brand will be able to reach you. That way, you will be most effective on social media.
Do your keyword research
As with SEO, keywords play a significant role in your social media strategy.
You need to know topics, hashtags, and keywords your followers are using to find information about companies from your industry. When you understand the way they use the search on social media, you can optimize your strategy to draw more people to your page.
When you’re choosing keywords for your campaign, use specific tools for social media keywords.
Optimize your social media profiles
Creating a social media profile is easy. But many companies don’t find it necessary to optimize it. Nevertheless, it is a great way to optimize social media that always helps attract more valuable users to brand pages.
A competitive and successful marketing campaign always needs a solid foundation. And it starts with social media accounts.
Here are three things you should pay attention to first:
Optimize your social media content
You can’t succeed in social media marketing without quality content. For proper social media optimization, it’s worth considering optimizing content for your followers.
There are generally two types of content published on social media – original content and curated content. And to create a quality social media optimization strategy, you should combine them.
Original content is the type of content that you create and post on your social media profiles.
Curated content is the one you publish from a variety of sources on the Internet.
Use the right hashtags
Hashtags are an essential social media element for finding relevant content on a specific topic. Using them is one of the best ways to optimize your social media as well as increase your audience reach. Even if a social media user is not familiar with your brand, they have a better chance of reaching you and becoming your customer thanks to hashtags.
That said, you mustn’t use any hashtags and without a specific purpose. Relevant hashtags can be found through publications by opinion leaders in your industry, as well as through specialized services.
Schedule your publications
As you explore other social media optimization techniques, don’t forget to optimize your publications themselves, namely their timing and frequency.
Publishing content at specific times is just as important as paying attention to its quality. To maximize your audience’s engagement with social media algorithms, you need to develop a clear publishing schedule and stick to it across all social networks.
Monitor your campaign
When launching a social media campaign, it’s important to track and monitor it to make sure it’s effective. If you want to do consistent social media optimization for your brand, track metrics that will help you better understand the effectiveness of your campaign.
Track the number of reactions, subscriptions, likes, reposts, comments, and conversions you get through your company’s website. These can be used to track your effectiveness on social media very clearly.
Test your headlines
When you post something on social media, you need an optimal and catchy headline.
Your headlines should be striking to attract attention almost immediately. Ensure that you use diverse headlines to avoid dull or repetitive content. Use a new headline for each post, or create several that you’ll use all the time.
You can also set up different headlines for multiple social media platforms to prevent you from posting the same message thousands of times.
Use visuals
Too much text without pictures is terrible for your social media optimization. Create content that is not only useful but also beautiful and eye-catching.
Publish memes, training videos and articles, beautiful photos and infographics, and other such content. This way, you can optimize your social networks and attract more new audiences.
Be unique
Maintain individuality in the design and content of your social networks. A distinctive tone of voice and brand identity will allow your brand to stand out in the crowd. Think outside the box and generate unique content with a special meaning and delivery. This approach will elicit a particular response from users and be remembered by them. When publishing different content, remember to include something special, such as unique stories from your employees, funny stories, or helpful tips for non-obvious uses of your product. All of this and more will go a long way toward optimizing your social media.
Use external links
Add links to your site in your publications to increase your ranking in search engines and to allow people to learn more about your product or services on your site. This is how you will attract more traffic. Write interesting and relevant articles, linking them to your site. Choose topics that are related to your business and potentially cause your audience to want to share your content with their subscribers.
Add social media plugins to your company website
Having social media plugins on your brand’s website allows your audience to share your content on different social networks faster. That way, they can share content with a single click on the appropriate social media button on your site. This will greatly improve your chances of success with social media optimization.
Run contests on social networks
Run contests, giveaways, surveys, and more to increase your users’ reach, trust in your brand and simply entertain your audience at the same time. Giving away discounts and promo codes makes it easy to gain new subscribers and increase conversions quickly. Promotions like these, done with relative regularity, will allow you to retain your audience for a long time.
Review your content for different social networks
The type of content or its delivery that’s right for Instagram is totally inappropriate for LinkedIn. Choose a specific type of content, tone of voice, and visuals for each social network. The best way out is to develop a strategy for each social media platform based on the audience you want to reach, your industry, and your social media campaign goals. It’s a good idea to use social media analytics tools to analyze which content resonated more with your followers.
Use branded colors in your posts
Using bright, branded colors in your social media posts greatly increases the chances that your content will be liked. Colors attract attention, expand audience reach, and make any ordinary post more noticeable. Make your visual content more aesthetically appealing so that it resonates with your text content and elicits an emotional response.
So, we’ve covered the 15 best techniques for social media optimization! Using them, you can definitely improve your online presence. Good luck!
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