INSIGHT
have planned to see when you’ll feature
these too.
Figure 2: How often to post by channel:
6. Ruthlessly respect the 80/20
rule
Fill your feed with promotion, after
promotion, after sales message, and it’s
social media suicide - every follower you’ve
earned will disappear or ignore you. It’s all
about striking a balance. You earn the right
to share something about your brand such
as a promotion or competition, by sharing
and posting things that add value to your
audience over 80% of the time.
The cheat here is all about sharing
content - find a few trusted sources of
content that your audience will like and
build your posting plan around these. This
can be a mix of your own helpful blogs (if
available) and useful or interesting third
party content. Just seek out ways to link
the third party content you share to your
offering. You can even set up automatic
posts from RSS feeds with tools like
Hootsuite too.
7.Scheduling is your new best
friend
It is entirely achievable to keep your
ongoing social media management down
to an hour of set up per week, plus a few
real-time interactions via your phone. All
you need is a scheduling tool like Hootsuite
or TweetDeck. Using these tools you can
schedule all your planned posts for the
week in one easy sitting. Plus you can
set up streams to keep track of activity
too - such as competitors, notifications, or
particular search terms - making interaction
even easier.
8. Be visual
On Facebook, photos get 53% more likes,
104% more comments and 84% more
clicks. On Twitter, photos or content shared
with images, generate an average 35% boost
in retweets. It goes without saying that your
conversational posts don’t need to include
images, but when you’re sharing content
incorporate a relevant image where you can
to increase standout on your feed.
9. Increase reach with #Hashtags
Put simply, your posts reach your followers
but posts including a #hashtag reach
anyone who is searching for posts with that
hashtag too, so it significantly increases
your reach. Watch out though, recent
research shows that you shouldn’t include
too many: on Twitter, two hashtags per
tweet result in 2x more engagement, but 3+
per tweet result in 17% less!
To find the best hashtags for you, do a bit
of research. Seek out ones linked to your
industry that are active; as well as ones that
your target audience is using. You can also
look for trending hashtags, but never hijack
ones that aren’t relevant to you.
10. Plan ahead for real-time events
Following on from the free reach you can
get with well-used #hashtags, it’s worth
seeking out events that have hashtags you
can get involved with too. This happens a
lot with sports and games, as viewers are
really engaged in the moment and you can
utilise this momentum to engage and get
involved too.
11. Invest in highly targeted paid
ads
So you’ve got a professional looking
profile, with an organically grown audience
and a social schedule that is perfectly
manageable, with the right balance of
content and promotional posts. Now is the
time to promote the actions you want with
social paid advertising.
It could be a featured tweet on Twitter,
or a promoted post on Facebook - but
all the social media paid options are
fantastically targeted, letting you choose
exactly who you want to reach and when,
with small and fixed budgets too. To
start, try using posts with a contest or
competition that has received some good
organic interaction as this tells you it’s
attractive to your audience.
12. Track results then scale
You know all about tracking results - so just
take the same analytical approach to your
paid social ads. Set benchmarks, run a small
test, check the stats, improve and repeat.
Try different messaging for each post, try
different offers, and target audiences, then
build a picture of what works with your
audience. From this solid base of learning,
you’ll know what drives the action you want.
With a consistently filled newsfeed and
credible profile you have created yourself
a whole new marketing channel to amplify
your wider marketing campaigns, and given
it’s highly targeted and affordable nature,
it’s one you want in your marketing mix so
it’s worth putting in the initial set up time to
earn it. Good luck!
on
tina Richards
Name: Chris
5
:4
15
ry,
brua
When: 5 Fe
1
Where: Room
CHRISTINA
RICHARDSON is cofounder and CMO at
Openr, the tool for driving
action from content shared
on social. Christina spent much
of her career managing FMCG brands
worth £100m+, then turned her hand
to young start-up brands and has never
looked back since. As well as this she
teaches Entrepreneurial Marketing for
UCL, is a start-up mentor and a regular
speaker and writer for industry events
and publications.
iGB Affiliate Issue 55 FEB/MAR 2016
69