Category: Social Media

What you really wait for after uploading a social media post?

Engagement, right?

A comment or any kind of engagement to your post is a sign that people are going through your social media content. And it’s important to reciprocate and respond to these interactions.

Also, you have to be clear that responding to your followers could be time-consuming And, if you’re a solo social media manager or a small business owner then you won’t have the whole day to engage with your followers.

So, how can you minimize the time it takes to engage with your followers and still be authentic at the same time?

So, in this post, I’m going to share some of the tactics we use to engage with our amazing social media followers quickly and authentically.

There may be five types of replies that you can use:

1. Questions:

If you reply a simple Thank you, the conversation will end there. But, you need to engage with the people further and continue the discussion.

For example, if someone commented on your social media post that links to a blog post, you could ask the following questions:

• What was the favorite part of the blog post?
• What’s your main takeaway from the blog post?
• Do you agree with the idea mentioned in the blog post?
• How has your experience been like?
• Have you tried any of the tips in the blog post before?

And, it’ll be best if they reply to your questions, you can continue the conversation and build a good relationship with them.

2. Emojis:

It’ll be more fun to include some emojis with your replies. As emojis have become an integral part of the social media language, most people love using emojis in their social media posts and comments.

It’s also an efficient way to convey your tone and emotions to the followers in a right way. Unlike talking face-to-face or on the phone, it’s not easy for your followers to pick up your tone and emotions in a text reply. But when you use happy emoji, your followers would know instantly that you’re smiling while replying.

Both Mac and Windows have a shortcut for adding emojis. If you’re on a Mac, an emoji app that I would recommend is Rocket. It allows you to quickly type emojis by starting with a colon (:).

3. Images:

Images are the fastest and easiest way to show or explain something on social media— especially on Twitter where you have only 140 characters.

We are very visual creatures. A large percentage of the human brain dedicates itself to visual processing. Our love of images lies in our cognition and ability to pay attention. Images are able to grab our attention easily, we are immediately drawn to them.

We found that images are generally best for answering support questions where we have to show or point to something.

Tools like CloudApp, Nimbus, and Droplr allow you to add annotations to your images, making your explanation clearer.

4. GIFs:

GIFs have become one of the most important part of social media humor today. If you’re active on Facebook or Twitter, you’ve probably seen a bunch of curious, interesting (and mostly funny) GIFs doing the rounds.

• GIFs make your social media profile look trendy, catchy and interesting.
• They help you connect with your fans and followers in a new way because they convey emotions much better than text or photos or even videos.
• GIFs add the required element of humor to your social media marketing strategy.
• GIFs make it easy to communicate with your fans – you can stop fumbling for words.

Using GIFs is our favorite way of thanking people who shared our content, gave a shout out, and more.

With the new GIF button on Twitter and Facebook, you can easily find and add a GIF to your replies.

5. Videos:

The video is likely to become even more important in the future, so if you’re not using it now, it’s time to get started. A good place to start is to observe your own social media activity.

If you have to answer the viewers on social media, videos are the best way to let them understand what you wanna confess to them.

• It’s simply popular. Video gets more shares and involvement on social media than other types of content. People love videos and engage more with them.
• Videos appeal to the most hyperactive age group of people on the internet – those in their teens, twenties, and early thirties.
• Major social media sites have native features that allow you to share video easily and there are the myriads of tools that make video production easy.
• One final reason is that your competitors are probably already using video.

These are the few ways that I have discussed to increase engage with your followers on social media to get the best response possible. They are going to love it.

Let me know if you liked the post and found it useful. Comment in the comment box below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social media, lets us dictate and determine who we want to be. We follow whom we want to follow, we share what we want to share, and we interact with others on our terms. Social media is evolving fast! Just as you have wrapped your head around the latest platform features or developed a great new marketing technique, you will realize that, the rules have been changed now. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’re going to recap the three trends that we should be most thankful to this year.

Here we go.

Increasing Popularity of Instagram Stories:

Since the launch of Instagram stories, we have seen it blows up in our feed, and truth is, we like what we see! Instagram gives liberty to brands so they can promote themselves without bombarding the feed of a user’s profile with their content.

The Instagram features that automatically effaces the post and videos shared by users in 24hours, is now used by 250 million people every day. Instagram is also changing its live video feature so users can now share live videos to their Stories. Earlier Live videos on Instagram disappeared as soon as the broadcast ends, but now the videos exist for up to 24 hours. Stories have assisted in increasing the number of hours a user spend on the particular platform.

On average, the user under the age of 25 spend more than 32 minutes a day on Instagram and users who are 25 and above spend more than 24 minutes a day, and one out of five organic stories from businesses get a direct message.

 

Continued Investment in Influencer Marketing:

Influencer marketing continues to prove itself as one of the best ways to reach the targeted audience and drive out serious business results. The power of influencer marketing is so vast that only 3% of people can generate 90% of the impact online. Influencers are unique to the contexts they operate in. When your brand is advocated by a ‘trusted channel’, consumers sit up and take notice. By choosing the right influencer and the right campaign messaging, your brand will look more authentic. That is why 73% of marketers say that they have an allocated budget for influencer marketing, according to TapInfluence.

 

Paid Media continues to grow:

With social media, we get in touch with people from various aspect of life and this couldn’t have been possible if, social media had not been introduced to people. Interaction with new people leads to new ideas. We not only learn how to relate with people but also, our perspective changes because of it.

One common misconception on social media is, the more you post, the more likely people get to see your post. This suggests that solely content  is not responsible for capturing the attention of users instead, by strategically planning your objective, identifying your audience, and creating thumb stopping content, you can create a paid social media plan that delivers the right message to the right audience at the right time. Now that is remarkably a winning combination.

 

Conclusion: Social media makes us better humans: smarter, stronger, more compassionate, more forgiving, more honest, more respectful, and wiser. With it we become more mature individuals; moreover, we mature corporately as global citizens. We can move further and faster in pace with social media as we collaborate and achieve greater possibilities than we could have ever imagined before.

So if you are reading this post, you are privileged. It means that you have access to technology. It probably means that you had enough to eat at your last meal. And it most certainly means that you have hope for tomorrow.

You should be thankful for this.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment box below.

 

when it comes to consistent growth in your social media communities, the most important ingredient is the ‘quality content’,  knowing how often and when to post what, is also important to ensure you reach your audience. You should search the web and get some idea about the best time to post on various social media like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. And, most of the times there is no perfect time to post, instead, it depends on your unique customer.

Here are some tips that you would want to provide your audience & let them know the best time to post on different social media.

Frequency to post on different Social Media:

1. Twitter-

• You should be doing 3 tweets a day on an average.
• Make conversations, not promotions.
• Treat followers like your friends on social media.
• Regularly respond to your followers’ questions, retweet on what anybody has tweeted or favorite other people’s content.

2. Facebook-

• Post up to 6-11 posts on weekly basis.
• Try to post 1-2 times each weekday and once over the weekend.
• Don’t bombard feeds, posting more often could cause you to lose page likes.

3. Instagram-

• Try to post 1 or more video each day.
• How often you post on Instagram, somewhere depends on your goals and your particular brand.
• Consider experimenting with brands on social media.

4. Pinterest-

• Try to pin about 4-10 pins in a day.
• Pinterest users love lots of content.
• Vertical photos are better received by Pinterest users.

Time to Post on different Social Media:

1. Twitter-

• Try to tweet between noon and 6 pm, would be the best time.
• The best time to retweet is at 5 pm.
• Some experts advocate tweeting from 8 pm to midnight as the best time.

2. Facebook-

• Posts of around 1 pm are shared the most.
• The best time to receive the most clicks on average is around 3 pm.

3. Instagram-

• Posts between 2 am and 5 am receive the highest engagement.

4. Pinterest-

• The best time for re-pins are 2 pm and 4 pm, and 8 pm and 1 am.

Things you should know about:

1. Twitter-

While posting on Twitter, you must be thinking about your content that what you’re writing for the social media world. The smartest line for Twitter could be ‘Think of quality over quantity’.

3 important things you should be caring for while writing on Twitter are:

a) Follow all your Industry Leaders:

Before anything else you need to follow all the pros of your industry. Doing so helps you to get your brand name out there and increases the chances of engagement with the leaders in your industry when you post on different social media.

b) Be ready to engage:

Knowing the best time to tweet is critical, but it’s as important to be ready to engage once you tweet. For Twitter, try to limit your promotional content and instead, be ready to engage with users.

c) Clicks are critical:

You always have to make sure that your content is clickable and engaging because it’s so hard to get clicks on Twitter in the first place.

2. Facebook-

Facebook is unique in the world of social media marketing because of its size, as well as how difficult it is to engage.

3 things you should know while posting on Facebook:

a) Use Videos:

Videos continue to dominate not only Facebook viewership but also the whole social media world. Video posts on Facebook have an organic reach of 8.71%. Certain studies have revealed that 85% of their video on Facebook are viewed without sound. This means you need to post engaging videos, but audios not necessarily needed there. And, always try to keep captions with your image, as the text could keep users engaged even without sound.

b) Always keep eye on what worked in the past:

Do not post random things on Facebook, try to keep an eye on what worked best for you in the past. Keep a track your reach, likes, and comments. Find the pieces of content working best and then use them to your advantage.

c) Try to keep posts short:

Facebook doesn’t restrict you from writing, if you wish you can write a novel in your post, but wait,  does your viewers really want to read that?  Social network is not a place where users spend a lot of time on each post, which means quick engagements usually work the best on social media.

3. Instagram-

It has been predicted that by the end of the year 2017, more than 70% of US brands will be on Instagram. It means more companies are expected to be on Instagram than Twitter.

Even though brands are moving fast to Instagram, it’s important to know what type of content to post first.

3 must-know tips to post on Instagram are:

a) Color schemes work:

If you see all the accounts that rule Instagram have one thing common, their consistent color scheme. Great brands will make all their images and videos seem like they are mend together seamlessly by using specific themes and colors. Try to make your brand cohesive on Instagram.

b) Use of Hashtags and Emojis:

The Instagram stats say: 7 out of 10 hashtags are branded and almost, more than half of the text contains emoji. This means branding yourself is essential to awareness, loyalty and reach. And, the number of emojis used show a type of network where you can be more personal.

c) Feature your Products Restrictedly:

Try to keep your 80% of the content to be educational and engaging, and rest 20% to be self-promotional. This will help you hold audience’s attention longer and this will eventually make you a source of information on Instagram.

4. Pinterest-

For Pinterest, you should put effort into growing your audience and getting more exposure. If your content is posted at optimal time, you have a much better chance to expand your reach.

3 things you should know before posting to Pinterest are:

a) Always focus on your Core Audience:

If you are using Pinterest, then you have a great option to get more specific with your content. Pinterest allows you to write searchable descriptions to help you narrow down users’ search intentions.

b) Put time into your Pin descriptions:

Your pin descriptions shouldn’t be just containing keywords. Instead, use this space to get specific, detail your visuals and made the object. This will help Pinterest users engage with your content more freely.

c) Room for engagement:

Just like any other network, Pinterest is great for engaging with other users. Create user-generated content boards for your loyal followers to build rapport. When users engage, they come back and share your content.

Knowing the best time to post on social media can make the difference between one click or 10. It’s easy to guess or choose a specific time; it’s more effective to discover time frames rather than exact moments. Banking on an exact time can be a waste of time as every business’s audience varies. But knowing all the possible times of the day can make publishing simpler.

Am I missing here something? Let me know and I’ll add in it. Comment in the comment box below about your opinion for the post.

 

Social Media Marketing World is the world’s largest conference about digital marketing, social media and entrepreneurship. Today, it’s very important for entrepreneurs to understand how social media is evolving and changing.  In terms of advertising new products and services, there are few things that have more influence than social media.

2017 has been a substantial year for social media and, live streams are now one of the most engaging forms of content. Now is the time to build your own strategy for this year.

Let’s take a closer look at the things that are impacting the future of social media.

Hyper-personalization:

Social media firms, like Facebook, have created products that deliver information in a way that’s hyper-personalized. Every morning, I pick-up my phone and scroll through my news feed, and in fraction of seconds I unfollow people and organization, that share information not useful for me.

And, as a result of it, the information I see in my news feed is more and more personalized to me. For entrepreneurs, tools like Facebook’s targeted advertisements are going to become smarter and more powerful in upcoming years. And, now I can conveniently target people who see my products, and more intuitively develop products for specific segments of society.

Less Censorship and more Freedom:

Social media has empowered individuals to share their thoughts and ideas with the tap of a screen. If you want to share your thoughts with your family members or with your friends, all you need to do is hit ‘share’.

But, the freedom is curtailed by government of many countries. For instance Bangladesh, China, Egypt and many other, don’t give the right to freely share and consume information through social media channels.

Unleash the Secret to Social Media:

There is a fact that social media giants make billions of dollars by selling ads that rely on the content we freely give them.

There is a new concept in social media- the idea of taking it to the blockchain. The same technology that’s used to power bitcoin and other crypto currencies could be coming to a social media app near you.

“The key is to be on the social media platforms that your customers are using, to post good quality content frequently and to timely respond to your audience.”

A blockchain social media platform:

Social media is always inclined towards the businesses that produce amazing content. And, it is by utilizing blockchain technology to make a platform that is more resilient and accessible.

Platform’s mirroring feature should be used to maximize the social influence to broadcast information across different platforms. From my point of view, users who create amazing content would be awarded for their contribution to the community.

It would be the new opportunity for the entrepreneurs to serve consumers who are located in countries that censor internet traffic. And, there will be some cool revenue opportunities with the cost-sharing initiatives being proposed.

Video becoming more and more important:

Massive improvements to global bandwidth and data speeds, along with increasingly efficient data compression, has allowed video streaming to become one of the fastest growing aspects of social media.

The gap between YouTube and Facebook is about to fill, as the engagement rate with videos is becoming higher and higher every day. Social media makes it so easy to scroll through posts and find videos we love — and savvy marketers are jumping on the bandwagon.

I’m very sure in 2018 we’ll continue to see even more news feed personalization and audience targeting capabilities. It may be that there are some changes in platforms we use, especially for users living in countries that could benefit from the censorship blasting potential of blockchain technology, and videos will dominate even the social medium of communication in the future.

I hope you’d like the post, let me know your opinions in the comment section below.

 

What’s the impact of social media on your business?

If you own a business, a website or a blog, you need to know that how much impact social media can have on the success of your business.

Social media is like a rock concert, with 1.71 billion active users on Facebook, 313M active monthly users on Twitter and around 450 million registered users on LinkedIn- all with different preferences.

So, you need to become a rock star to engage and delight your different target audiences.

We’ve compiled a list of 5 strategies you can use to make your social media marketing shine.

1. Develop Audience Personas:

First, you need to understand your audience, like what they want to see. And once you get the idea about it, you will get to know, what you exactly need to do. The attendees of the rock concert are all from different demographics and personalities. One thing is common that they are there to watch the performance of rockstar. Then Rockstar needs to know how to treat them all equally.

The same thing applies to social media. Here users belong to different social media but they’re all there to interact and engage with their network and brands.  And, being a social media marketer, it’s your job to find a harmony that draws in the users, and this lets your targeting customers keep coming back for more.

There’re some key points to understand your customers more. These are:

1. What are their goals and how you can fulfill them?
2. Where are they consuming content?
3. What kind of content do they interact with?

Build audience personas, engage buyers, convert them and then develop them into brand advocates.

2. Engage your Audience through different Social Media:

Once you’ve got a thorough understanding of your customers, you can start mapping out your social media marketing strategy by determining how you’ll engage your audience across different social platforms.

1. Your content needs to be tailored out according to your target audience’s preference.
2. Search for the topics in which your readers are taking the utmost interest.
3. You need to understand how to reach your target audience.

3. Give Value to your Followers:

Building a relationship with your audience is really what social media is all about. Think about what are the types of messages that you can deliver over social media? Do not only think about writing content, instead write what your customers want you to write.

You need to engage with your audience to build awareness, credibility, and trust. Try to keep your content relevant to build trust and give your followers value, so they are more prepared for later stage where you feed in the details of your products and services.

4. Develop your Unique Brand Style:

Just like every rock star is having a different quality, your brand also should have a unique quality that embodies its value. Your overall motive is to develop your brand and audience engagement. Creatively market your products and services. Apart from that reinforcing your brand voice would be the best way to stand out and maintain uniqueness.

Here are few ways that are helpful in developing unique brand style:

1. Think about what your company is and then incorporate your culture into your own tone.
2. Set yourself apart from other brands, and be real.
3. Listen to your audience carefully so you can understand what exactly they are looking for.

5. Be a Good Listener:

If you’re paying attention to notifications only, you’re missing a huge group of people that are talking about you, your brand and your product. It’s important not to make assumptions instead looks up where you’ll find critical conversation taking place. There’s often some confusion around what social media listening is, and it often gets mixed up with social media monitoring. While they are somewhat similar and work best together, the two shouldn’t be used interchangeably.

Some ways can help you:

1. Use social media as a customer service and provide real-time responses to your customers.
2. Try to address your customers through your posts.
3. Show your affection to the customers after they’ve purchased from you.
4. Incorporate feedback into your products and services.

Sometimes, social media feel like a rock concert, with all the different noises and personalities chasing together. But, no need to get worried about it, because these 5 strategies are really going to help you, and would help you in figuring out, who your audience is and how you can appeal to them to create an epic experience.

So, get ready to boost your campaigns. Creating the strategy is just a start; you need to follow all these to get the best results.

If you enjoyed this post, share it with your folks and spread it on other social media too. Thank you!