The increased importance of social media for businesses has been driven by the two most important players in the world of the internet: Google and web users! For many businesses either running their own SEO or even working alongside a social marketing agency – it has created an ongoing requirement to develop content for the social media platforms typically Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and blogs.
Here are some tips to help the time-strapped business owners post effective content:
1 – Sourcing content
Many businesses will already have a good source of possible content. Firstly, their own website sharing pages is good for SEO and a way of highlighting products and services across social media platforms. Dont forget to include pages with testimonials, FAQs etc. Trade association and related websites can also provide a good source. Dont forget to extend your posts to appeal to your target market. A wedding ring company, for example, should include other wedding related content dresses, honeymoons, celebrity couples, etc. Google searches, setting up Google alerts or subscribing to RSS feeds will deliver these stories directly to you. Think about news and stories about your local area if your business is specific to a community. Check out YouTube and Vimeo they may have useful, generic videos related to your products and services. Web users LOVE video so they make interesting posts but do watch them carefully, beware of any mention of competitors and check the comments for bad language and worse. A social media agency can help with sector-specific content generation ideas.
2 – Develop a tone of voice
Even if your content is not unique, your tone of voice can be and it should make your target audience want to read more. Dont just post or retweet a link without comment that wont make your posts interesting or worthwhile. Adding just a short comment or even just a sentence will help you develop a tone of voice across all your social media marketing. Only you can determine the right tone. It may be authoritative, humorous, high brow or young sounding. It will be determined by the audience you are addressing, not your personal preference. It needs to be consistent, too there is no point having a warm and friendly social media voice only for your website or blogs to be matter of fact and authoritative.
3 – Engage
Again, it doesnt matter that you are posting something from a 3rd party but it does matter that you try to engage with every post. Its easy to ask your fans and followers what they think or for any alternative suggestions you just need to do it with your posts. Sometimes you can incentivise this a free product for the best suggestion or funniest comment, but in time it will become something that your fans and followers will want to take part. The second part of any engagement is to respond to the comments in a timely way but you will need to decide when and how often. Praise the comments received, ask for more, and respond to individual posts. All of this engagement has SEO value but it will also help you develop loyal customers happy to share with their friends. Just three easy-to-follow tips to help you maximise your social media marketing activity but if you need more in depth strategy, contact a social media agency. Remember to watch this space as we will be releasing a range of SEO blogs over the coming months. Our readers can also find our Opace Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/OpaceWebDesign. For all the latest goings on, you can keep up-to-date with Opace on Twitter https://twitter.com/OpaceWeb. And we also now have an Opace YouTube page live at http://www.youtube.com/user/opacewebdesign.
Image credit – Anderson Brian
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