Hi y'all. Chances are if you're serious about social media marketing you are likely to be active on more than one social platform. You know you don't want to publish the exact same content on each network. While that might be an easy way to go about it, the easy way is seldom the best way, right? Each network is different and your audience is different. Smart social media marketing means your posts are tailored to your audience. Yes it's a little more work but it's well worth the extra time. We know that the more personalized your content the more relevant it will be to the reader and the more relevant, the more effective.
Whatever your goal, you're much more likely to reach it by serving content that is appropriate, targeted, and useful. Today we'll explore some of the differences and nuances of the major social platforms and what you need to know to reach your audience. On Facebook you can upload photos, videos, gifs, links to content from a website or you can simply add a text post. Unfortunately, most of us know that organic or unpaid reach on Facebook is extremely difficult. Still if you can post content that generates engagement you can have some organic success on Facebook. Depending on your audience, you should post once or twice a day, tops. Here are the pros and cons. The pros: Facebook's widespread use makes it almost essential for most businesses. Chances are your target audience is on Facebook. Cons: years ago you could create a Facebook page for your business and the people who followed your page would see your content. Hootsuite's Ad Espresso cites the average organic reach for a Facebook post at 6.4 percent of your total likes.
Not too good, is it? So what do you do about it — how do you win on Facebook? Basically, pay. When you write good copy and use good images, Facebook advertising can be very effective and it's some of the cheapest around. Let's talk about Instagram, owned by Facebook. Instagram is popular with a younger demographic. It's primarily a mobile app and it's primarily visual since it's powered by images, you want to find images that show who you are and what you do and how you serve.
For too many years I thought my business as a marketer wasn't suitable for Instagram. Boy I was wrong. You can do very well on Instagram by being creative with your use of images. Post probably no more than one to three times a day and this does not include stories. Instagram has more than a billion users and it's much easier to get organic reach on Instagram than it is on Facebook. If you have difficulty if you have difficulty translating your content into images, you may struggle a little bit with Instagram. Post motivational quotes, photos of your office, your staff, or just create a mood with a warm cup of coffee and some cozy socks. Twitter. I have to admit Twitter's my favorite platform. It's how I started my business and made contacts back in 2008 that I still am in touch with today. It's probably the most misunderstood social platform. Out of all of them, Twitter is the one I most often have clients, friends, and family say "I don't get it, I don't understand it." You have 280 characters for a tweet which is up from the 140 that Twitter started with.
You can share photos, up to four at a time, videos, gifs, text or retweet another account's tweet. How often to post on Twitter? Some of y'all are not gonna believe me, but it needs to be at least five times a day and you can go as high as 20 posts a day. Here's why. Twitter moves extremely fast and it's highly unlikely that your audience is all going to see your post at the same time, so it's okay to post repeatedly and regularly. The cons: it's easy to be more anonymous on Twitter. That means that you'll see probably a lot more hateful and nasty posts on Twitter. Work hard on Twitter to build relationships and actually have conversations with others. LinkedIn is unique isn't that it is exclusively a professional platform. Your pictures of your dog or your family are not welcome. You can post once maybe twice a day on LinkedIn. If you're looking for a job, LinkedIn is where you want to be, and because it's clearly business focused it's hard to forget your audience. Cons: it's not a platform where most most people spend a lot of time, so sometimes it may be difficult to really get seen.
How do you win on LinkedIn? Connect with others, make meaningful connections and add value with the content you post. You can post articles you've written or republished content from your blog. Create a business or showcase page for the services you provide to maximize your online presence. The last one i'm going to talk about is Pinterest, which I'm relatively new to. I've been a Pinterest denier and avoider for many years but recently I've doubled down on it and found it to be a pretty good source of traffic.
Pinterest is unique in that it's actually more of a search engine, a visual search engine, than a social media platform. When you think about how to post on Pinterest, it's like Instagram — it's very strongly image based. You can share helpful tips and links to articles, just be sure that you've got a great image to get attention. How often to post? If you're serious about Pinterest — don't shoot the messenger here — but 30 times per day is the goal and I know that's a lot.
I don't get anywhere near that most days. It's a visual search engine for anything you're looking for, even a service business can build a good presence on Pinterest as long as you can create visual content. I think it can be a little confusing; for me it took me a while to figure it out. I just had to spend quite a bit of time to understand it better. How to win on Pinterest? If you think of it as a search engine and optimize accordingly, use keywords in your title, in your pin description, and use relevant hashtags. Have boards for all the different topics that you discuss or that your you provide services in. I have boards for social media, email marketing, content marketing, and one for WordPress. I've given you a lot of information and congratulations for making it to the end. Like any kind of marketing, social media marketing works best when it's when it's the most personalized and well targeted to your followers. Be sure you customize your content for each each unique platform and you'll see your best results.
Thanks! Bye now..