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Social Media: Are You Doing It Right?

Social Media: Are You Doing It Right?

Posted on: 24th May 2018

Tips to improve your social media:

Social media is very much the new frontier when it comes to marketing. With the average person in the UK having five social media accounts and spending an average of 1 hour and 40 minutes browsing them a day.

Most companies nowadays are aware of the fact that they should be using social media to get their image out there. However, these companies also don’t know where to start when it comes to social media, this leads to company pages that have very little content on them and can actually be harmful for the company.

Platforms to reach:

As of May 2018, the most popular social media platforms are:

  • Facebook: 2,200,000,000 monthly active users
  • Youtube: 1,500,000,000 monthly active users
  • Instagram: 800,000,000 monthly active users
  • Twitter: 330,000,000 monthly active users

That's 4,830,000,000 active users per month!

Now admittedly, you aren’t going to reach all of those users, you may only reach a small amount of them to begin with. However, the more social media posts you make, and the better you get at making them, the more people you will reach with your posts, and then the cycle will continue.

Every company should have at least a Facebook page at the bare minimum, as well as populate it with articles, news and images relevant to your company, even if it’s as simple as sharing an article that is relevant… Every little helps.

How to reach the platforms

In order to reach the platforms, you need to write content that is good for each platform. Twitter has a character limit, so keep it short and snappy. Facebook can have anything from a single line to a whole novella. Instagram relies on images to catch the attention of people so use colors and contrast, add some text that stands out and is relevant to the post.

Besides using eye catching content that draws in, use tags. Tags are what are used to associate a post to a particular topic or topics. If you have a photo of a cat by a pool in the summer, use the tags (#cat #kitty #sun #summer #sunny #pool #paddle #swim) as well as other relevant tags. The more tags you use, the more people you are likely to reach with a post.

Let's show you how it's done

Let’s show you how you can go about making your posts more popular and getting them out into the public eye more.

Here’s the scenario, we’re a car sales company, and we want to make a post about a new car that we have available to us. We want to make sure that people see it and get people interested in it. We’ve got a good price for it and it’s brand new.

Facebook

Facebook is nice and easy when it comes to making a post. However, despite it’s largest monthly users, there isn’t really an easy way to reach out to people without specifically targeting them, however it still has a discover system so that you can find things related to tags that you search for.

So get a photo of a car.

Social media post example image

Now that you have the car, simply write your post, for this I would have something along the lines of: “Look at this stylish new Ford Mustang 2018 that we have in stock. It’s nice to see it blending in so well with all of our other high class cars that we have for sale. Check it out here: ‘www.somewhere.some.thing’ ” it’s good to keep the content of the post short but leave a link to your site where they can find out more about what you’re trying to show off without filling their feed with all of the information.

Now that you’ve written the post, you need to add tags to it, these can be general tags and tags that are specific to the post so maybe add “#car # sales #salesman # dealership #dealer” .etc .

The more tags you can add that are relevant to the post that you are making and the audience that you are trying to reach, the more likely it is to be successful. Make sure that you keep the tags relevant to you, your company, or the subject of the post, this way people do not associate your posts with fake or “clickbait” content.

When it comes to Facebook, ensure that if there are other companies that you work with, say you work with Ford directly in this case, then make sure you tag them in the post as well, if they end up sharing your post, it will instantly reach more people through their network of people.

Instagram

When it comes to Instagram, there are multiple ways of getting your company out there and getting attention from other companies and people.

Method 1:
Make sure that you have posts that are interesting. Make sure you are following all of the big companies in your sector, in this case it would be companies like: Ford, Audi, Ferrari .etc Once you are doing this, engage on their posts and make sure you contribute something good to the post. If someone replies to you on a post or mentions you, make sure you reply to them in a nice and positive way, this helps people to build a trust of your company without them actually seeing your company, but, being nice and active will almost always lead to more followers on your account.

Method 2:
Make lots and lots of posts, using bright and vibrant images, lots of tags, and short snappy captions to catch the eye of the audience. Also, if it suits your business (Which it should) engage with your audience, make sure to post things on your story and ask them what they think of a new car that you have for sale, ask for their thoughts and opinions on it.

Firstly, get a good picture of the car, seeing as this is an example we’ll use the one from above.

Now that we have our vehicle image ready to post, we’ll get to the posting part. This is the Instagram home page:

Social media instagram home screen

Go ahead and tap on the square with a plus symbol in it to create a post. This will be where you will start to make all posts on Instagram, so make yourself familiar with the process that follows.

instagram select image page

Select the image from the gallery that will show up.

instagram edit image page

If there are any edits that you want to make to the photo before you post it, make sure that you do them here.

instagram post no caption written on page

This is the page where you get to write all of your content for the post. Make sure that you remember to add all of the tags in the end of this, but make the main content of the post short and snappy, this will make the audience more likely to read the entire thing and then pique their own interest and go to the deal. It should look something like this:

Instagram post caption writting

Twitter

Twitter is nice and easy when it comes to writing posts, it follows the same rules as Instagram and Facebook, but this time you are limited to the amount of characters you can use. When it comes to this, think of it as a fun game, you have to break down what it is that you are trying to convey and choose all of the good bits about it. With the example of the car again, we’ll go through the same task of trying to advertise it but within Twitters 280 character limit.

Social media post example refresher image

My post would be something like this:

“BRAND NEW! @ford Mustang 2018. Available at location, location street, NG10 4QD. Find this car as well as others among all our other great deal at web.site.com #ford #mustang #fordmustang #orange #car #fast #deal #bargain #sale #sales #speed #luxury #muscle”

The post above includes: lots of relevant tags, it mentions the company who made it, it has an image attached to it.

All of these are really useful when it comes to Twitter posts, as people on Twitter are usually there to pick up quick tidbits of news, updates about Twitter, or to find something funny or interesting.

To conclude, writing a post for Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, can be really easy, provided you know what it is that you are trying to sell, who you are trying to sell it to, and you can break down the best bits about it or just the main details with a link to the site where they can find out more.

Just remember

  • Tag your posts.
  • Keep it short and concise
  • Make it eye catching.
  • Include an image.
  • Engage the user.
  • Make sure they can easily find out more.

If you’re looking for help or advice when it comes to making social media posts or digital marketing in general. Feel free to get in touch, we love to help others and chat about things that we’re passionate about here at Jacit.

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