So, finally you have decided on incorporating social media marketing into your strategy. But this is just the beginning because you need to have a definite plan of action. Although, there are lot of things you need to do to make it successful, some of them are listed here for your benefit.
Select your posting strategy on social channels
You need to consider:
What’s the appropriate number of posts per day?
How often should you post?
When should you post?
Most importantly, what should you post?
Actually, the social media experience is more about your individual audience and niche, because what works for you might not work for me, and you never know unless you try. That being said, here are some pretty good tips and insight about where to start.
What should you post? Videos are one of the most effective ways for engagement.
Buffer is the all-you-need social media toolkit that lets you focus on doing what you love for your business.
The focus on video content has plenty of anecdotal evidence—as you go through Indian social media and global social media like Facebook feed, Twitter timeline, and Connected India latest trend, you’re likely to see videos all over. Usually, Video posts get more views, shares, and Likes than any ordinary post. And it’s not even close.
According to BuzzSumo, video posts get higher average engagement on the Facebook than link posts or image posts. Even on Twitter, video tweets are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos and three times more likely to be retweeted than GIFs.
How often should you post?
It depends on factors that impact your specific sharing frequency. It is directly related to the type of your industry, your reach, available resources, and the quality of your updates. The fact remains that if people love your updates, you can always get away with posting more. Although, here’re some guidelines I have put together based on some useful research into how often to post to social media.
Facebook – One or two posts per day
Instagram – One or maximum two posts per day
Instagram Stories – Ten to sixteen Stories per week
Twitter – Three to ten tweets per day
LinkedIn – One or two posts per day
Pinterest – From Five to ten times per day
Snapchat – From Five to 20 times per week
Connectd India — From 5 to 10 times per day
What is the best time to post?
You can use tools from sites like Visual.ly, Search Engine Watch, and Social Media Today for compiled timing research. Here’s an overview of what I found.
Twitter – Between 1.00 to 3.00 pm weekdays
Facebook – Between 1.00 to 4.00 pm weekdays
LinkedIn – Between 7.00 to 8:30 am and 5.00 to 6.00 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
Tumblr – Between 7.00 to 10.00 pm weekdays and at 4.00 pm on Fridays
Instagram – 5.00 to 6.00 pm weekdays and at 8.00 pm on Mondays with a sweet spot at 6.00 pm
Pinterest – Between 2.00 to 4.00 pm and 8.00 to 11.00 pm weekdays with weekends being the best
Google+ –Between 9.00 to 11.00 am weekdays
Analyze, test, and perform
Social media sharing is essentially a very individual, specific endeavor, and the more you post, the more you’ll discover which content, timing, and frequency is right for you. However, you can get help from a social media analytics tool. Although, all major social channels will have basic analytics built into the site itself; it’s easier to find this information from an all-encompassing dashboard. Such tools, for example Buffer’s analytics can show you a breakdown of how each post performed on the important parameters of views, clicks, shares, Likes, and comments.
One very effective way to analyze your performance is by setting a benchmark. After having shared for two weeks or a month, you can go through your stats and find the average number of shares, likes, clicks, and comments per post. Now, this’ll act as your benchmark for going forward. You can update this number any time as your following and influence grow with time.
Test something new. You can test just about anything on Buffer. You can try for instance Facebook Live videos and manage more views than non-live videos? Find out if the video length matter too. If you are satisfied with the test, you can implement the changes into your strategy, and once your test is over, test something new.
Engage, listen, and automate
The final step of your social media marketing plan should involve a system you can follow to help you stay updated and continuously engaged with your audience.
The first step ideally would be to automate posting of your social media content. Again tools like Buffer help you to create different content that you want to, all at once, and then schedule everything into a queue to be sent out as per your priority. Automation is your secret weapon that you must use judiciously. But only automation isn’t enough though. Social media needs engagement, too. So, when people talk to you, reply back. Fix time during your day to follow up with conversations that is taking place on social media.
The people with whom you are engaging are your potential customers, references, friends, and colleagues. You can’t afford to ignore them. The best way to be in control with all the conversations that are happening around you and your business is to create a system for listening and engaging. Take help from tools like Buffer Reply and Mention that will collect all your social media mentions and comments on your posts at one place, where you can quickly reply your followers.
Social media marketing plan is the most appropriate step toward diving in to the sea of social. But to make a full use of it, you need a good plan, and once you have that in place, your job is more than half done.
To conclude it, I must say that to have the best of social media marketing strategy, you should do the following:
# Find the right social networks, mention your complete profile
# Get your voice and tone
# Fine tune your strategy
# Test and Analyze
# Engage and Automate
And that’s it.
