Social media can be an excellent way to promote your organisation’s outputs and increase your outreach. When you first get going on social media, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram, it can be quite a daunting space to try and set-up shop. You have so many options at your fingertips, but there are also plenty of opportunities for you to get knocked down.
Building online interest in your brand can be challenging and, once you’ve managed to gain some engagement, clinging on to your audience can be even trickier. Getting it right on social media can often feel like a puzzle or even a game. So, for the purposes of this blog, let’s think of social media as a game of rugby. Here are my tips to help you sidestep a few tackles and to avoid getting lost in the social media scrum.
1. Engage
It is just as important to interact with other users on social media as it is to write posts yourself. You can’t expect people to notice you and follow your page if you never engage with any of their content. Liking, retweeting and sharing content from other users will help you to increase your number of followers and to spark conversations with other users. Soon enough, you will build up a list of online allies. Hang on to these new friends, they will become even more helpful later on...
2. Put your back into it
You can’t be lazy on the rugby field and you shouldn’t be lazy on social media. Simply throwing something online at the end of the day is not going to get you the returns that you’re after. Put some effort into your posts. Find some facts to support your statements and pre-plan what you’re going to post about a few days in advance.
3. Make a call
You need to add a call to action to the end of your posts. Ultimately, what do you want your audience on social media to do? “Like this post”, “follow our page” or “click on the link” are some of the most popular calls to action. Don’t be afraid to drive people in the right direction.
4. Beautiful play
You want to make your posts as attractive as possible. The simplest way to do this is to find a striking image or video to accompany your text. Pretty posts will pick up more engagement and eye-catching multimedia, that supports your point, will encourage users to stop and read what you have to say.
5. Teamwork
Now that you’ve planned ahead and crafted some posts, it’s time to call on those new friends and followers that I mentioned earlier. Tag them in your posts to alert them to your latest updates. You’ve engaged with their posts and, if they are real team players, they will engage with your content too.
These top tips will help you to improve your organisation’s standing on social media. Simply kicking content up field is no use, you have to pick up the ball and run with it. Plan on the training field by pre-preparing your content, build up a team of friends around you and make some calls to action to get the most out of your time on social media.
Alex Miller
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