Social media is a game changer. It is arguably one of the most important innovations of the 21st century. From a venue of creating relations, social networks has become a powerful marketplace of products, services, and ideas. According to The Wall Street Journal, more and more small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are using technology, including social media, as a leverage to boost profits. “By allowing customers to better engage and personalize their experience, SMBs are able to transform their businesses, gain greater access to markets and compete more confidently against larger corporations,” Clive Couldwell wrote on WSJ’s Executive Digest.
As of January 2017, there are roughly 2.8 billion active social media users across the globe or equivalent to a third of the world population. Facebook dominates the social media landscape with a 63 percent penetration rate followed by its standalone messenger app (47 percent penetration rate), Instagram (27 percent), Twitter (22 percent), and Google Plus (17 percent). These overwhelming figures make social media marketing essential in creating business strategies.
Here are social media tips you shouldn’t ignore for your business.
Content 101 that will increase your visibility
Google uses signals or clues in ranking webpages. For local SEO, the search engine uses relevance, distance, and prominence in returning the best results for users. Local SEO (search engine optimization) is a set of processes that allows businesses to target real customers at the right time the latter are looking for a certain product or service. Relevance and distance are attained in keeping your citations (name, address and phone numbers) updated and consistent across the web. This also includes your information on interactive maps.
Prominence, or how well known your business is, is influenced by your content, customer reviews and ratings, and position in web results. What are the social media strategies for boosting your online prominence? The key is in the content.
Videos: the “mega trend”
Video is huge in social media. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg foresees video as a “mega trend” that will comprise 80 percent of content on the world’s largest social network by 2019. “Consumer video is exploding on our platform as Mark was talking about, and that really creates ad opportunities,” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said.
People are bombarded with large amounts of information via electronic gadgets. Videos are tools that can capture attention and deliver messages effectively in less than a minute. Facebook’s 30-second autoplay videos are one of the most consumed content on the platform. These are widely used by consumer brands from apparel to food and beverage.
Powerful images for your content
Humans are visual species. Studies show that a person can better remember a concept when accompanied by images than when it’s presented in plain texts. You should keep this fact in mind when developing a social media strategy. Add appealing and meaningful photos in your content. The purpose of an image is more than grabbing users’ attention. It must be able to convey your message and improve engagement.
Quality photos are also key to your local SEO. To boost your local ranking, Google advises using accurate and appealing pictures that show your list of offerings and help tell the story of your business.
Master micro content
Today’s problems with fake news can be traced to people’s unwillingness to consume content in its entirety. Who has time and patience for a 20-minute video or a 5,000-word article? One of the social media tips you should master is how to create compelling micro content. You can create short videos for Facebook, Geofilters for Snapchat, and GIFs for Twitter. These are among the widely-shared content on social media platforms.
However, you should take note that content length is crucial in Google’s page ranking. Longer articles are preferred than shorter ones. Write an insightful blog post with at least 1,000 words about your business and link it to your social media account.
