I recently attended a conference where I met several entrepreneurs who complained they had used social media without any results.
When they asked what I do and I shared that I train service providers to leverage social media with snack-sized content strategy for results, the first response was “oh…sounds great, but that social media stuff has never worked for me”.
My first reaction is always curiousity - what have they been doing?
I don’t always follow up with the question out loud, but when it’s an ideal situation I will ask about the person’s strategy. What I often hear are comments like this:
“I post once a week on Twitter but I only have a handful of followers.”
“I don’t have time to be on social media 24/7. I’m running a business.”
“I spend hours on Facebook and have yet to get a client from it.”
And in those very simple statements, I can see the problem clearly – they don’t have a clear strategy in place to optimize their social media content.
You see, success with social media is not just about posting on social networks.
Your results start with your strategy.
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And your strategy begins with evaluating your business goals.
You have to know what you’re there for so you can measure if your efforts are really working or not.
For example, let’s say your goal is to grow your Twitter following to 10k. Ok, that’s great - but why?
Is it just 10,000 people who think you’re funny and will never buy a thing from you? Or would you be better off with 3,000 followers who want to interact with you, learn from you, and buy from you.
At least 50% of the time, the person I’m talking to has set no clear outcome around why they even ‘do social media’ in the first place.
Things That Matter for Social Content Optimization
Recently I happened upon an article from B2B Marketing Mentor about a study that discussed results from a Social Media Content Optimization Survey. The survey was put together by Software Advice, a source for reviews on social CRM tools, and Adobe.. (Read the original article here).
I think the article really shared some useful hints and best practices for how some marketers successfully optimize social media content. I gathered some ideas on what areas to experiment with to get results.
The four key takeaways for me were as follows:
1. Diversity Matters
The article stated that most marketers use 3 or more social networks – at least 84% of the survey group don’t just post on a single network. They diversify where they spend time.
61% posted on 4 or more social networks. Wow. So that means if you’re only on a single network, you may be missing out on potential traffic your competitors are engaged with on other networks.
On this one, I have to add a caveat though. While the article shares it may be a disadvantage for those active on fewer than 3 sites, I could also see how targeting 1-2 prime networks might be a potential advantage…if you put the strategy and thought behind it.
For instance, if you know your market is on those critical 1-2 networks, you’re highly engaged, and you meet the other requirements we’ll talk about next you may get dramatically better results than someone who spreads their posts out and has a lot less engagement across 10 channels.
Keep in mind that just participating on a social network is not the end solution —
What you post, how often, and when are all directly related to your social media results.
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2. Frequency Matters
Another key takeaway that could impact how you optimize your social content, according to the article, is that 70% of the survey respondents post at least once a day.
Businesses that do not post consistently may not be as competitive at building brand recognition, because you’re not as visible.
This is especially a challenge if you don’t have a social content strategy that offers you the flexibility to be visible online while you’re doing other things – like meeting clients, speaking, writing (or if you’re me — cheering on the sidelines of a soccer field).
Who wants to be on social media 24/7? Not me! But you can stay visible and you can keep the attention of people within different time zones, when you have the right strategy and the right resources.
3. Tools Matter
Speaking of resources, online automation tools can help you optimize sharing your content on social media.
This is probably one of my favorite areas to talk about. I think the numbers from the survey actually show that more people are catching on as well.
57% (that’s more than half) of those surveyed use a software product or service to automate the posting of social media content across their networks.
The key is to remember not to simply post and forget about it. That just takes the social out of social media and it doesn’t work.
You still need to engage and interact with people. Keep in mind, if your strategy is working, these followers might actually be your next client. They want to talk to a human being, not a robot.
4. Tactics Matter
Do you have a consistent approach to what you will create and post on social media? Well I did find it interesting that two tactics were reported to get the best results when optimizing content – using images and hashtags.
I can see how images are highly rated because visual content can make a huge impact in a matter of seconds. Photos can tell a whole story in a short amount of time.
The chart is a bit surprising to me, however, in that video is not higher up on the report. I think the best mix would be a combination of all of these tactics. It’s important to note that none of these work well solo – a photo without some kind of call to action may generate a laugh, but is that turning into cash flow? Maybe not.
Conclusion
Overall, I found this article and the survey findings to be interesting and they support my theory that strategy can help you win it comes to social media.
Again you can find the original article here on the B2B Marketing Mentor site.
I lean toward the point that Liz Strauss, founder and CEO of SOBCon, mentions in the article. To paraphrase, these stats mean nothing on their own. It’s what you do with the information to tweak and meet your goals that counts the most.
Maybe I’m optimistic but I believe social media can work as part of a larger plan for your business. It couldn’t hurt to make a few adjustments using the numbers as a guide for best practices. You might find that posting more often on more sites more consistently helps you meet your business goals — If it does, I’d love to hear about it.