How To Optimise Your Social Media

Social media is a vital part of any business marketing strategy. Its various platforms allow you to connect with customers, raise brand awareness and boost leads and sales.

Billions use social media each month, so it’s here to stay. You need to use it to enhance brand loyalty, and interact with those buying your products and services. Social media also really matters when it comes to increasing traffic, click-through rates to your website, and, increasingly, for higher search engine rankings.

With that in mind, social media optimisation (SMO) uses the platforms to grow your business’s presence online. Rather than just establishing an Instagram, Twitter or Facebook profile, SMO helps you develop a strategic social media plan.

Many companies which don’t succeed with their SEO aren’t integrating SMO effectively. So both need to work in tandem, while the lines dividing the two are more blurred than you may realise.

You’ll need a strategy with clearly thought out aims and objectives. Here are our top tips for social media optimisation:

Keyword research

Know the keywords, subject areas and hashtags your target audience is using. That makes it easier to share relevant content, and will lead to more meaningful social media posts with the best phrases and hashtags for being found easily. There’s a Twitter Keyword tool to help with this.

Use images well

Have top-quality photos in all your social media posts where possible, and ideally a featured image for every blog post.

Hashtags

These make it easy to track topics and categorise posts, and for you to be found. Look for hashtags which influencers in your industry use, and relevant trending hashtags.

Optimise your profile

Make good use of your brand name, state clearly what you do, and include your logo.

Optimise your content

Use a mix of original (i.e. your own) and curated (shared) contact, and research which stimulates the most engagement.

Optimise headlines

Play around with different headlines and see which have the most impact – your followers won’t want to see the same headline from you each time.

Timing is everything

Work out what time of day your followers are most likely to be receptive to your posts – and post then. You also need to get frequency of posting right.

As a general rule of thumb and a very rough guide, post broadly as follows:

Twitter: Around five times daily

Facebook: At least three but no more than 10 times weekly

LinkedIn: Two to five times a week

Make a calendar for your posts, and plan in advance.

Sometimes less is more

The maximum Twitter length is 280 characters, but you don’t necessarily always have to use them all. If you can get your message across in fewer characters, consider doing so.

Use social media analytics

Just as you do with SEO, consider using social media analytics to see if people are enjoying what you’re sharing. Some of this can be done via Google Analytics. Look at things like average numbers of comments and replies to posts, shares and retweets and so on. Think about the return to investment you’re getting on your social media efforts.

Here to help

At Front Page, we’re experienced in SMO and know what works for different brands to help them be found online. Now, more than ever, that really matters. Talk to us today to learn more.