5 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Content

It is not enough to simply "be" on social media. Promoting your company or practice on social networks are all well and good, but are you engaging your audience?

If your posts don't stand out, your audience is likely to just scroll past. So how do you grab their attention? These tips are designed to help you make the most of your content, and get more people looking at what you have to say:

1.  Hashtags: A hashtag is a type of label used on specific social media sites which makes it easier for users to find social media updates (or messages) with a specific theme or specific content. In basic terms, a hashtag indexes a post to be about a certain topic, rather than just mentioning it in the conversation so that it can easily be found and referenced.  By hash tagging your #KEYWORDS within your social media content, you will enhance your “find-ability” on the social web exponentially, thus optimizing it.

2.  Tagging: Tagging on social media is a way of connecting YOUR social media content with another person, company, topic, or event.  So whereas hashtags connect general KEYWORDS together (such as #socialmedia, #onlinemarketing, #contentstrategy), tags connect social media content to specific social media accounts. This is a great way to increase your visibility with not only potential customers, but also referral sources and influencers. These are essential in helping your content gain more visibility and engagement through association.

3.  Photos/Images: While many people are getting wrapped up in the semantics of writing the “perfect social media post”, they are forgetting one of the most straightforward engagement enhancer: visuals.  While you can have a perfectly optimized post, it is not truly optimized unless you add a visual.  By adding a complimentary picture, a custom designed graphic, infographic, or even a candid shot that you took with your phone, you engage your audience in a more instantaneous way.  For example, think about when you scroll through the newsfeed, are you reading the content or looking at the pictures? You’ll find yourself engaged with visuals more quickly than the actual written words.

4.  Videos: Videos have long been heralded as the “be all and end all” of online marketing optimization.  So why aren’t more people doing them?  Time, money and lack of know-how.  Well, you are not alone if this sounds like you!  Videos done professionally or casually with your mobile device, can bring your content to life and create engagement.  You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to create an engaging social media video.  As is true in the previous point (visuals are crucial to enhancing engagement), videos really promote enhanced engagement.  For example again, think about how many times you stop at those auto-play videos on Facebook.  You probably remember the video as opposed to the content.  Or the video led you to actually reading the social media posting associated with it, which you would have normally overlooked.

5.  Don’t Always Rely on Third-Party Scheduling Tools: Especially when it comes to Facebook and LinkedIn.  While third-party tools won’t affect your Twitter posts, they really do reduce your optimization opportunities on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn: your hashtags won’t work, your tagging won’t show up, and your previews are tough to edit.  Not to mention the fact that many sites don’t add posts scheduled through third-party tools to the insights that help you understand what posts are successful and which ones aren’t.  By adding your content directly to Facebook and LinkedIn you will escape this risk.  This way you will have full control over how effective your content is.  It will take extra time, but will increase your overall effectiveness!

Take a look at our latest blog to find out more ways to optimize your content: http://ow.ly/OM5Kq