A Step by Step Guide to Social Media Optimization. Part 1

Part I: Let’s Conduct Some Research

Social media has taken our lives. A large number of Internet users nowadays can’t imagine living without chilling out on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Statistics says that:

• almost 42% of the worldwide population use social media;
• the average time for chilling out on social media is about 2:22 hours per day;
• 71% of customers are satisfied with purchasing goods via social media and would recommend a company or a brand to their closest people.

These are the aspects that make social media platforms an extremely profitable field for promoting products, brands, or services.

Using Social media for business these days is indispensable. Even if you already run a successful website on the Internet, you should still spread the news about your existence on social media platforms. Your activity there now greatly effects your site rankings and can often deliver 25% of your overall traffic.

The problem is how do you do this properly. How do you optimize your social media and get more revenue?

Social media isn’t about a single funny post on your profile which, you may suppose, will instantly attract an enormous and interested audience for your content. Definitely, no. Let’s be honest, there have been such cases, but those are more the exception than the rule. Social media business posts will need to be in the hundreds, if not thousands, and the process consists of: work, strategy, and proper organization.

Social media users have become more capricious and used to various types of content presentation. You will have to devote a lot of effort and spend a lot of time to bring something new and amusing to the public, keep your current and future audiences on your side, and leave your competitors far behind.

We can’t discuss post optimization without mentioning social media optimization in general. Your posts will shine bright only if you prepare a field for them, a place for growing and living. Don’t wait for fruit to sprout without any effort.

There are several steps you will have to take to make your social media accounts relevant, profitable, and popular.

LET’S CONDUCT SOME RESEARCH

Step #1: What Is Important to Know About Working on Social Media

[ Prepare your team for a hard work ]

77.6% of small businesses use social media to promote their business

Social media platforms need the kind of attention you will pay to your own website. Experienced social media marketers can enumerate hundreds of reasons why people should use social media for promoting their goods. We are going to save you time and present only the most essential reasons:

1. Nothing will give your brand a more powerful advertisement and a greater boost than social media. Your brand’s popularity may rise dramatically in a matter of seconds with a proper marketing campaign. It’s a fact that social networks help attract new consumers, increase authority, and bring trust to your goods, brand and company.

2. You will get the opportunity to widen the circle of your customers. Social media is undergoing constant development. Developers try to make these platforms the most convenient places not only for leisure, but also for business. By drawing people in day and night, many of your targeted followers will be around at any time to see something you post. Your products will be seen directly to this targeted segment of purchasers.

3. Your brand/company will become recognizable due to permanent online visibility. Social media platforms are awesome venues on which to conduct marketing campaigns, because they have history. Posts, shares, reposts – everything stays visible on profiles until a user deletes something. This history allows people to take a close look at what your company was in the past and is now. Help potential customers learn about you and get a lot of benefit.

4. Managing social media, you will open a communication channel with your audience. A modern and mobile-friendly website does not always equal a comfortable place for users to be active in the comments section. On the other hand, social media is designed perfectly for this, and that is why people do not hesitate to readily leave their feedback, like your posts and share them. The greatest thing is that you will be alarmed instantly if there are any actions to take and you can reply to them at any moment, even start a conversation in private messages. Followers appreciate it when their opinion is noticed and considered important.

After analyzing the benefits of social media marketing and how crucial it is, IT’S HIGH TIME TO START WORKING. Everyone should understand that maintaining social media accounts is not an easy task!

1. Be ready to work hard and spend a lot of time on brainstorming. Your team should always be aware of the latest trends, people’s interests, and know how to present content depending on any given platform.

2. Before starting the process of optimization, set specific goals to be achieved. This brings extra motivation and lights the path for you to follow and complete the task.

3. Develop a successful social media strategy. At this stage you should analyze and use your competitors! Unfortunately, you cannot move forward without this because social media marketing is like a contest. Identify your rivals with WebCEO’s Rank Tracking Tool: click on the “Dangerous Competitors” tab and enjoy the detailed report. Learn who you are going to compete with, who the most alarming ones are, and eventually get the better of them with the next step.

4. Track your competitors’ social media accounts. Here your real journey starts. Study the history of their posts from top to bottom, the level of engagement and what were and are the reasons of their success. An important task in this phase is to go through their feedback and – especially – complaints. Take this into account while developing your own strategy to avoid any mistakes and stand out decently.

5. BEFORE starting your social media campaign, work on your website optimization. Needless to say that SMO (Social Media Optimization) is a great way to promote your business, however, the SMO and SEO cooperation will bring you more value. Via social media people get acquainted with your products and even purchase them, but your website is the place where they really start trusting you. Architecture, appearance, content, and other components of on and off page SEO matter a lot because people in general like with their eyes. Make your website as attractive as your social media accounts. 

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Step #2: Where to Run Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

[ Identify your target audience and decide on a few social media platforms ]

Before making any attempt to promote a website on social media, you will have to identify your target audience. A target audience comprises the type of people you produce your product for. They are of a specific age, nationality, location, interest, and lifestyle. Your goal is to identify all those points and use them in your campaign.

“My product is for everybody” – you can’t really work with this. Genuinely all-purpose and everyday goods and services are rare. Coca Cola used to imply this was the case for them, but there are identifiable demographics who drink soda a lot more or a lot less than others. Your product is made for a certain group of people, so your marketing campaign primarily should be based on the needs of this very group.

There are a lot of ways of identifying your target audience; here we outline some of them:

• Analyze your current audience. Gather data regarding you current followers and website subscribers. Knowing who is interested in your products at the moment, you can see right from the beginning who are among those you are going to work for in the future. Their interests and hobbies will help you decide on the direction and theme of your campaign. Google Analytics will help a lot with this:  

• Analyze your competitors’ current audiences. Your competitors promote goods that are at some point similar to yours, so you will have approximately the same circle of customers. Your task is to learn who is interested in their goods and, accordingly, yours besides the group of people you outlined from your current audience.
• Online Polls and Surveys are easy and fast ways to determine who would buy your goods. You can conduct them on your website, some other websites for a fee, and of course on social media platforms with appropriate hashtags.
• Analyze your own product. You should have determined your target audience at the stage of creating your product. Now think about people who may be interested in this besides those you originally considered. Learn who else may get any benefit from your product.
• Create a persona for your target audience: a general portrait of your target audience presented schematically as a person with a set of characteristics. It will be easier to work on your strategy when you have such a useful picture of potential clients. Here is an example:

After identifying your target audience, it’s high time to choose a platform that fits your campaign the most. However, our advice is to USE ALL AVAILABLE PLATFORMS. Your customers haven’t focused on just a single platform to spend their precious time on, and you shouldn’t do this as well. Now it is better to say: how will we perform differently on different social media platforms, rather than choose one or several of them. Don’t go for a little, when you can get a lot. Your potential customers can be anywhere and so you are better to make a loud statement everywhere.

Let’s go further and make sure your field is ready for harvesting.

Step #3: How to Optimize Your Social Media Profiles?

[ Make sure your social media account is ready to be popular ]

Most businesses maintain between four and 10 social profiles

Social media profile creation is not a big deal: the two main components you have to work on are appearance (well-prepared posts) and optimized profiles. You can’t start your marketing campaign until you have covered the following checklist:

1. Logo and cover image. People learn something new with their eyes. The first thing we do as soon as we enter any website is to look at its architecture and appearance. We look for colors and build up a certain picture in our minds. Learning the content comes only after. Optimize your social media profiles so as to please people’s eyes: make them bright, modern, and your very OWN! Never use stock photos in your profile nor any of your posts! Spend some time to take your own pictures or design your own cartoons, so people will recognize your style everywhere.
2. Business name. People should know who owns an account, so place your company’s official name prominently for people to know whom they are going to get acquainted with.
3. Bio or “About” information. Present information about your company in a short, yet bright and full way. People don’t want to read a lot, so disclose the essentials with your most important keywords and go to the next step.
4. Niche. On some social media you can mention the category (niche) your company performs in. If your company is not popular enough yet, don’t miss this part! Even world-renowned companies like Coca-Cola or Starbucks specify their sphere of activity, so why shouldn’t you? Of course, on some platforms, selecting a category is compulsory.
5. Links to a website and other social media platforms. Always place a link to your website on your social media accounts! You use social media only to achieve marketing goals almost all of which will involve people visiting your website (some businesses only need to have people call their phone number). Essential information about your company and a full list of your products are still on your website pages. Some platforms allow you to insert such links and even have special boxes for them. Use this chance for sure! Everything is for your followers’ convenience.
6. Make it easy to reach you. Followers and potential customers will appreciate the option to ask a direct question or write some feedback privately. Make it possible; you can block spammers if there is a necessity. Moreover, via non-public messages, you can receive a profitable offer from another company, or a good idea from an interested follower. LinkedIn messaging can produce more business for a company than email itself. Always check your social media inboxes.
7. History. If you are planning to seriously start a social media marketing campaign in the future, start the process of optimization at least a few months beforehand. Start making posts, uploading videos and images in order to gather relevant followers and test the waters of audience reaction to your product. For instance, on Twitter you should have spent a few months following relevant people, unfollowing those who did not follow back and following more relevant people. Be sure to follow/invite those in your database if you have one.

Look attentively at the screenshots below to learn what social media profile optimization entails:

Facebook:

Twitter:

Instagram:

YouTube:

LinkedIn:

Pinterest:

If you want to join social media and start promoting your business, having just a desire is not enough. Social media optimization requires YOU: your time, your creativity, your contribution. Live with it.

You should begin with research and planning. If you want to create a powerful and pleasing place for visitors, you will have to put yourself into data searching and processing. An accurate examination of your business possibilities on social media platforms and your competitors will clear the road to success.  

Proceed with identifying and analyzing your audience. The right people attracted to the right places in the best case scenario will bring you traffic, recognition and customers. When we are talking about Internet use, there are two places where we all party hard most of the time: on websites we like and on social media. Use these two. Become that very liked website lots of traffic after getting loved on social media. These are two components of your strategy.

And finally: Optimize your profiles and then go right to the next step: writing a post on social media.

Start your research with the WebCEO Rank Tracking Tool by identifying and analyzing your competitors!

TO BE CONTINUED…