As you start to make plans for your social media campaigns for 2016, you need to stay updated on the latest dimensions and formats of images that you should use and post on the different social media platforms. An image of the wrong dimension will affect the effectiveness of your posts.
Jamie Spencer of MakeAWebsiteHub.com shared a very useful cheat sheet on this earlier this month!
Take a look at this infographic from Social Research Strategies which provides you with ideas for things you should and shouldn’t be tweeting.
It is easy to just post something and reach out to your fans and following, but what types of content engages them? What types of content are worth liking and sharing?
Below are 10 content types that are “likeable” and “re-tweetable”.
1. The Mega-List Post
This is a list that collects a wide variety of useful information and compiles it into one post. People love list posts because you save them the trouble of scouring across the web hunting for information (you save them time); they love to share this type of content on social media because of its value that nearly always continues to be passed around.
Examples:
– Top 100 Buzzfeed Recipes I Want to Try
– Top 10 Movies of 2013
2. Tutorials
Listen and identify problems that your customers and community are facing and provide them with the answers. You need to post it on a timely manner; a topic you cover may not be “in” at the moment and will result in a smaller impact to your niche.
Examples:
– How to Fix Common iPhone Problems
– Beginner’s Guide to Skype
3. Reviews
Everyone refers to reviews at one point or another. Be it reviews of a hotel, book, restaurant, etc. It saves people time and help them make a decision faster. Not only that, if you are writing a review, remember to tag the company/brand of the item/service you are reviewing. In this case, they may share your content on their networks, thus increasing it’s reach and virality.
4. Statistics
Such content are short, quantifiable, and memorable. Stats are ready-made “sound bites” that get information across quickly and assertively. Again, it saves one a whole lot of time instead of having to read through paragraphs and paragraphs of text. If you are able to provide the latest statistics regularly, you will be able to position your company and channel as a knowledge hub, in the forefront of the industry and the to-go-to channel.
Example:
– 50 Fascinating Facebook Facts and Figures
5. Humour
Have no inspiration on what to post today, or you are strapped for time? One easy way is to just post something funny. It can be an image, a joke, etc. People use social media and networking sites, not only for connecting and networking, but also for relaxation and entertainment. Your fans and followers will want to share the humor with their social networks. As long as the humor is inoffensive and relevant to your followers, it can still have a place in professional social-media content.
Example:
– After Germany’s rout of brazil, jokes fly on Facebook, Twitter
6. Infographics
Providing infographics that simplifies the presentation of complex data and facts and figures are proving to be extremely popular. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.
Example:
– Infographics: Why You Need Them
7. Quotes
Similar to humour, quotes are lifesaving posts when you run out of ideas. Quotes that are inspirational or motivational make people feel good and more connected with the content – and in turn, with your brand. Don’t feel that your quotes must directly relate to your brand; consider what your followers expect to gain from your brand – creativity, inspiration, productivity, etc. Tip: design a nice image of the quote and place your company logo on it. When it gets shared, people will see your company logo and try to find out more.
8. Interviews with the Who’s Who
People love to follow a-listers in any niche because of their authority, expertise and value-driven content they push to the web. You could tap into each of the a-listers community by reaching out to them for interviews. Every time you conduct an interview you’re not only creating great content for your own community but you’re giving their community something as well! Additionally, once your post goes live you and your interviewee will be able to share the content, on social media, that will make an enormous impact because each person that follows you and your subject will also be willing to share the content, spreading it virally across the web!
Example:
– An interview with Mark Zuckerberg
Frequency and scheduling of posts goes hand-in-hand in many ways. Both are crucial factors of your social media marketing strategy. After sharing about how frequent you should post on social media, in this article, I share on how you find out what is the most optimal time to posts. Here are some free tools that can be used to make life easier for you.
Facebook Page Insights
Insights will be the key tool for you to track when to post. Under Insights > Post > When your fans are online, you can find out which days of the week most of your followers are online as well as down to the specific peak hour you should schedule that post.
Twittonomy for Twitter
On the Twittonomy platform, you are able to see a summary of which days you post most often and what time. From there, you can gauge the success of your tweets from the number of times it was favourited or retweeted. Thus, you will find out which are the optimal times to schedule your twitter posts. There is no straight answer. As like most things on social media, we need to do a lot of guess work, but we have to guess smart!
Extra tip: You are also able to see who are the most influential of your followers, as well as those who are most active. You may want do some work to understand them better, on what topics interest them, so that you can further engage them so as to make them become your word-of-mouth channels, by retweeting and liking more of your tweets.
Iconosquare (formerly Statigram) for Instagram
Iconosquare is a great free tool for serious users of Instagram. In the above diagram, the black dots indicate when we post most often. While the grey dots indicate when your followers have been interacting. Thus, the largest grey dots are the best time for you to post!
The Late-Night Infomercial Effect
When there’s nothing interesting to watch on TV, you are most likely to watch an infomercial. Thus, when there are lesser people posting updates, tweets, photos, etc, your posts are more likely to stand out. This was mentioned by Peter Bray from Moz.
Some email marketing specialists follow a similar line of thinking. You could see greater open rates and higher clickthroughs when your email is one of the only few in the inbox. Being one of the lone voices in the inbox could prove beneficial. The same could be said for social media. Maybe you can try posting during the ungodly hours and monitor how are the results.
Remember, social media is always about testing, experimenting, iterating, and improving.
How often is too often to post on your social media channels? Many of us marketers face this problem. We want to connect with our fans, let them be constantly reminded of our company, brand, products and services. Yet, we are afraid of over-posting and getting on their nerves.
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