Get Most Out Of Social Media

How to get the most

out of social media

In the second of his two-part series, Andrew Langridge

looks at what content you should be posting on social

media. and when, for maximum customer engagement

and new business wins

Types Of content to consider

Content wise. it is acceptable to post the same content across

several platforms, but for the best results, mix it up — you don't

want to bore your audience. Creating content specifically for

each platform adds real value to your business's social media

and will generate better results.

In the garment decoration industry, the social media trend at

the moment is showcasing, from the latest products to newly

purchased equipment.

Other types ot content that have been popping up on my feeds

include infographics. articles. latest news and reviews. all of

which help give a business some online gravitas„ These are es-

pecially popular on Facebook and LinkedIn where you can have

larger posts and provide more details and information, It pro-

motes your business as a market leader and industry authority

why would a customer go elsewhere when you're the expert?

Planning content

Create a social media calendar and work out what upcoming

events you need to cover and build content around this, In my

opinion, the best tool to schedule your content is Hootsuite: you

can post content for any of your social media channels using this.

Remember though, social media is all about building your

business a personality. People want to know what's going on,

what's the latest job being dispatched, who are your interesting

customers and so on. none of which can be planned very far in

advance.

That's not to say, however, they don't want to hear about the

latest offers: your customers both existing and new want to

make savings. but just be cute and make sure it isn't thrown in

their face.

When is the best time to post content?

There are thousands of articles explaining the best times to en-

gage with customers on each individual platform, but in reality,

it is not an exact science and it depends on the quality of the

content,

Commonly 12-2pm and 6-8pm are good times to post. but

you should trial posting at several different times and see which

times reach the best audience and have the highest engage-

ment rate.

How often should you post?

There's no right or wrong answer to this either. although I would

always advise quality over quantity — you don •t want to overdo it

and bore your customers. In an ideal world, an average three to

four quality posts per week on Facebook. Instagram and Linke-

din should do the trick. and four to five Tweets each day.

But some weeks there may be more, some less. The best ad-

vice is to just engage naturally with customers. post your latest

work and articles and see what works and what doesn't.

What toots help monitor engagement?

Monitoring your social media posts will give you a good un-

derstanding of what is and what isn't working Packages such

as Keyhole. Hootsuite and Buffer are low cost ways to moni-

tor reach and engagement while Klout measures your social

influence.

If you want to keep it simple though. Twitter Analytics and

patterns which you can then use to build your content around.

Google Analytics will identify how much traffic social media is

being driven to your website.