If you run a company, or even a marketing department within a company, then social media is probably a big part of your strategy—or at least is should be. These days social networks are the go-to sites for companies to increase their brand’s visibility and get the word out there about their product or service.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Google+, etc., are home to hundreds of millions of potential customers, and the majority of successful companies have active pages on all of these major social networks.
So how do you compete with all the other companies out there on social media? Well, you have to set your posts apart from the rest, and we’re here to teach you how to do just that. Check out the list below for five ways to supercharge your social media posts!
1. Think Outside The Box
A lot of companies out there make the mistake of posting boring, dry content over and over again. Either that, or they run out of content and just stop posting altogether, which is also a big no-no.
If you’re running a company page on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc., you need to update every day, and that takes some creativity.
Instead of posting boring information about criminal background checks every day, they find ways to tie in other, more sensational topics that relate to their product. A look at their posts will show lots of different information on crime, online dating, sex offenders, burglary statistics, safety and security tips, and much more.
2. Don’t Be Afraid Of A Little Humor
A little bit of humor can go a long way, especially when it comes to social media. If you infuse some personality into your posts, you’re guaranteed to get more likes, shares, retweets, repins, etc.
This is because humor is contagious, and if you make people laugh, then they’re more likely to engage with the content and share it with their own social media following.
Adding humor to your posts is very simple, regardless of what kind of company you have. The key is to make your posts sound like a real person wrote them. Make them conversational, as if you were writing to a friend.
Avoid rigid information that makes you sound like a robot because no one ever enjoys reading those type of posts, even if they do love the company.
3. Include A Call To Action
The goal of every social media post is to reach the largest number of users possible, right? Right! Well, in order to do that, obviously you have to share high quality content that is relevant to you brand, but there’s one other secret weapon that all your posts should have—a call to action.
A call to action can appear in many forms, but they’re all fundamentally similar in that you’re asking your followers to do something, such as “click here to find out,” or “Like and Share if you agree,” or “Retweet to spread the word.”
In fact, studies have shown that on Twitter, simply adding the words “Please retweet,” or “Please RT,” generates 4x more retweets! That’s a heck of a lot more reach, and it’s all because people are more likely to share information if they’re actually asked to do so.
4. Interact With Your Followers
It’s always refreshing to see companies who actually interact with their followers on their social media profiles. It shows that they have real people managing the accounts, and that they are there for their customers.
Whether it’s a funny chain of back and forth comments, or a public reply to a customer complaint, visible user interaction can speak volumes about a company.
Take Taco Bell for example; their marketing team is always on point and they reply to customers right away. A lot of the time, the correspondence is witty and sarcastic, which is an attribute that has contributed a great deal to the fast food company’s social media success.
5. Use Shortened URLs
Using shortened URLs is a great way to track the activity on your links. Sites like bit.ly and goo.gl allow you to paste a full URL, and then they provide you with a shortened version, which is the one you would add to your post.
The correlation between the two links goes into the system, and you can come back and check how many people have clicked on any given link.
Bit.ly also provides several other features that are really useful for link tracking. On the site you can view the number of clicks, the time of day when it was clicked, location of people who are clicking it, and much more.
You can also view stats and comparative graphs for the entire week or month, so that you can analyze the data and see which of your links are seeing the most activity and then you can alter your marketing strategy based on your findings.
Do YOU have any additional tips for companies who want to supercharge their posts? Let us know in the comments!