Happy #SocialMediaSunday, everyone!
With today being the first day of 2017, I wanted to start on a high note. In this post, I’ll offer several digitally-minded resolutions for you to add to your goals for the upcoming year. Feel free to consider one, a few, all, or none–your choice! I hope you take some of these into consideration, especially if you decide to hire me as your media strategist. Happy Reading!
Establish your voice before someone defines (or defames) you
First and foremost, finding your voice on social media is crucial to succeeding online. If you fail to define yourself online, someone else—a competitor or detractor–will attempt to define (or defame) you.
You can be effective without being stuffy or inauthentic? YES! Hootsuite describes an authentic voice as one which aligns with your brand’s style, tone, and key messaging. Offer a unique perspective and supplement it with digital tools. Moreover, they suggest to offer customers a behind-the-scenes look to provide transparency:
You can use social media to practice transparency in many areas of your business, from your employee’s work culture to your company’s environmental impact, all of which will contribute to the brand voice you are putting forward. Many consumers are no longer satisfied just seeing what companies are presenting with their best face forward–they want to go behind the scenes and see how things are really being done.
If you firmly establish your voice and content strategy the sky’s the limit for your brand, campaign, or company. This is usually the hardest part, but once it’s established digital tools will allow you to connect with your intended audience, foster engagement, and see inbound marketing go full-circle.
Tell more visually captivating stories
In the age of social media, its important to make a lasting good impression. With visual cues and tools, you can accomplish that. Haphazard images, poor grammar, or unpolished posts will not help you, your cause, or your brand gain more followers. In fact, you’ll turn off A LOT of people. That’s why it’s important to take good pictures, film well, and be strategic with the content you put out there.
I’ll discuss why the YETI video, below, is a perfectly example of visually captivating video storytelling.
YETI is an Austin, TX-based company that specializes in coolers and hunting/fishing gear. They teamed up with HISTORY Channel to showcase the rise of female anglers. Check out the video below:
What makes this so captivating? First, the story of the fly fishing guide is intriguing. Second, it’s visually captivating. Third, it’s well-produced. Although a lot of money probably went into filming this, you can produce high-quality content to help tell your company or brand’s story on a limited budget.
Whether through video or photographs, putting out visually appealing content will help your message resonate with your intended audience and drive more followers to your accounts.
Follow digital trends
Keep in the loop with social media trends as they come or get left out. Last year, I recommended five websites to follow in order to keep up with the ever-changing social media landscape. Where to start? See where people are logging onto the most and start from there.
Pew Research Center concluded that Facebook is the most popular social media platform used among Americans:
Today, about eight-in-ten online Americans (79%) use Facebook, more than double the share that uses Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or LinkedIn. About three-quarters (76%) of Americans who use Facebook now report that they visit the site on a daily basis – up from 70% in 2015.
That means that 68% of all U.S. adults are Facebook users, while 28% use Instagram, 26% use Pinterest, 25% use LinkedIn and 21% use Twitter.
While Facebook is still popular, it’s also worthwhile to be on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for news, photos, and networking, respectively.
Make use of videos
You all have heard that many social media platforms are adopting video features native and Live broadcasting options to incentivize their users more. Live Video is something you should invest time in to foster engagement and offer transparency especially if you are an elected official or public figure. Whatever your preference native or Live video its worthwhile to regularly produce video to overcome algorithm changes and see more growth with respect to branding. Heres more from Social Times:
Creating an effective Facebook strategy needs to be an essential focus, and with influencer marketing now becoming a staple, huge opportunities exist for brands that invest at the intersection of these two complementary approaches.
Facebook video and Facebook Live are the two main products that will attract the most attention from marketers, but not before they identify a person (or animal, for that matter) with a robust following to participate in an engaging campaign across either platform.
Be positive on social media
The key to success on social media is positive engagement. If you are caustic, hostile, gross, or unprofessional, you will fail miserably. Be positive yet substantive.
Moreover, the key to growing your following is to have exceptional social media customer service. Be responsive, add value, and respond in a timely manner especially if you run a business or offer a product. Customers and fans appreciate responsiveness, help, and sincerity online.
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What do you think? Agree? Disagree?
As always, I recommend you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to stay in the loop with my musings. Subscribe to my newsletter–now LIVE. Let me know if you found this post to be helpful or not in the comments section below!