1. Set goals
Goals are a great way of focusing on what you want to achieve on social media in the next 12 months. Set just a few, maybe three or four reachable targets across the social channels you are active on. It could be ‘increase the social reach of my Facebook posts by 100 views per post’ or ‘increase my Twitter following each month by 150′ for example. You can break these goals down into manageable chunks and into aims for each platform.
2. Engage, engage, engage!
In order to have a successful social media presence, you can’t just post great content and be done with it, you need to engage with your audience too. Take ten minutes a day to reply to posts, retweet tweets and get pinning on Pinterest (we find a time limit helps especially with Pinterest – so addictive!). This daily activity will not only make your audience feel valued but will help to increase your reach online.
3. Plan your content carefully
If we’ve learnt anything from our years of managing the social media presences for large consumer brands it’s how important planning content is. Create a weekly schedule where you can plot potential content topics for all social media posts for that week. This puts your mind at rest knowing you’ve got lots of great content to talk about leaving room for spur-of-the-moment posts too. Collect content from awareness day calendars, your website or even think about creating a blog this year.
4. Monitor trends
Delivering insights into you, your company and your industry is one of the best ways to create an engaged social media presence; people want to learn things. Staying on top of the trends is a great way to keep up-to-date, enabling you to share valuable information with fans. Monitor your industry and competitors but also regularly read social media and technology news to discover what’s happening with your favourite platforms.
5. It’s all about the images
We know that posts on social media with images increase engagement and positivity enormously so make sure all your posts have a great image attached. Try to use your own images (think about copyrighting rules) and also use apps to create your own images with text if you are stuck for visuals. The winning social media platforms for 2014 will be Instagram and Pinterest showing the popularity of image-focused channels and the interest consumers have for images.
6. Evaluating is not a waste of time!
Many brands we’ve worked with (and individuals in fact!) don’t evaluate their social media presence and, although this isn’t the most interesting part of being active on social media, it’s very important. Back to point one; setting goals – if we don’t evaluate our presence how are we going to know when we have reached our goals? How will we know what is working and should do more of or what activity to give up? Simple evaluation techniques include keeping a note of the size of audience, engagement levels and content types on a weekly basis for comparison. We cover this and more in our SkillShare eCourse.
7. Explore other networks
Maybe you love Twitter and are finding it really works for you so you spend much of your time tweeting away but what happens if you put more effort into Pinterest for example and actually you get even better feedback?! Although it’s simple to stay on platforms that you can use easily, it’s a good idea to spend some time on other networks, increasing your knowledge-base and enabling you to reach more people online. In 2014 set a goal to try some of the emerging platforms; Google+, Vine and Snapchat are just a few!
We know that posts on social media with images increase engagement and positivity enormously so make sure all your posts have a great image attached. Try to use your own images (think about copyrighting rules) and also use apps to create your own images with text if you are stuck for visuals. The winning social media platforms for 2014 will be Instagram and Pinterest showing the popularity of image-focused channels and the interest consumers have for images.
Many brands we’ve worked with (and individuals in fact!) don’t evaluate their social media presence and, although this isn’t the most interesting part of being active on social media, it’s very important. Back to point one; setting goals – if we don’t evaluate our presence how are we going to know when we have reached our goals? How will we know what is working and should do more of or what activity to give up? Simple evaluation techniques include keeping a note of the size of audience, engagement levels and content types on a weekly basis for comparison. We cover this and more in our SkillShare eCourse.
7. Explore other networks
Maybe you love Twitter and are finding it really works for you so you spend much of your time tweeting away but what happens if you put more effort into Pinterest for example and actually you get even better feedback?! Although it’s simple to stay on platforms that you can use easily, it’s a good idea to spend some time on other networks, increasing your knowledge-base and enabling you to reach more people online. In 2014 set a goal to try some of the emerging platforms; Google+, Vine and Snapchat are just a few!
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