Social Media,
The Top 3 Social Media Best Practices
January 15, 2013
Tarun Pahwa
Building Ecosystems
With the proliferation of sharing platforms across the web, it’s easy to believe that you need a presence on every service you can register on. Very tempting but it’s not true. As marketers, we need to remain cognizant of our goals and purpose before we begin to define our target audiences. And once we do, we’ve got to figure out where they’re spending most of their time.
Because Social Media platforms are constantly evolving, their best practices are evolving as well; one year we’re monitoring Likes and the next year we’re disregarding them. Consequently, rolling with the punches has never been quite so relevant.
In a nutshell, we’re looking at high-quality, meaningful content and we’re looking at targeted buys and discerning spends for 2013. We don’t have to be everywhere, all the time. We’re also looking at becoming as human and transparent as is pragmatically possible.
At our end, we’ll be focusing on the best practices listed below.
Stunning Visuals: Did you know that engagement rates for posts with pictures are 120 ‘ 180% higher than they are for text-only posts? Between Instagram filters, Pinterest and infographics, the market is flooded with consumers and businesses sharing their lives in snapshots.
250 million pictures are uploaded to Facebook every single day. If we’re not a part of this movement, we’ve got a lot of introspection and re-strategizing to catch up with.
Conversations with the Base: The mantra, moving forward, is engage, engage, and engage some more. Wanting virality from content can quickly become a myopic goal that takes the focus away from the ‘social’ component of Social Media. We need to be out there talking to our audience, answering their queries and constantly looking for a way to connect with them. Social needs to move far beyond general Likes to avoid an aggressive ‘Unlike’ ethos.
Paid Activity: Content that can go viral organically is a great idea, but with the levels of competition and divergent spans of attention, the odds are stacked against marketers, and it’s a trend we’ve seen over and over again.
Take a look at the graph below, for instance. We found significantly increased activity on our clients’ Facebook page when it was coupled with a PPC Campaign.
120 ‘ 180% higher engagement; 250 million pictures uploaded, every day; a 300% increase in the number of Likes with a PPC Campaign ‘ these numbers are very difficult to argue with. How are you gearing up for the changes coming ahead?
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