5 Tips to Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Despite the boom in social media marketing, we still don’t hear as much about social media optimization as we do with regards to search engines (SEO) or websites.  However, even if you’re not familiar with the term, social media optimization (SMO), there’s a good chance you’re already performing it on some level.

Some examples would be: 

• Analyzing what types of content formats your followers prefer (ex. text vs images).
• Keeping an eye on analytics to know when followers are more likely to engage with your content.
• Providing social sharing buttons with every post to make it easy for your audience to share your content.

A major point of SMO is to use social media to promote your content or business in order to build a bigger audience.  So you want to make it as easy as possible for your viewers to not only be made aware of your content but to be able to access it and share it as well – and this is where SMO comes in.

Of course, one obvious and the major aspect that goes into great SMO is simply providing outstanding content on your site.  The better the content, the happy your audience will be, the more likely they’ll share it through the social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.  From there it’s just a matter of more and more people viewing and sharing your work, which consequently drives traffic to your site.

But what are the other key aspects of SMO?

Good question.  Here are 5 tips to help you on your way. 

1)  Optimize Your Profiles

While your images, posts, and tweets will be dynamic and varied daily, your social media profile is static and relatively permanent.  And when potential customers first discover you, your profile will be one of the first things they check out.

Here are some ways for optimizing your profile on the social media platforms you’re using:

• Keep your format, imagery and voice consistent throughout the various platforms you use.
• You want your website’s URL to be easy-to-find and click on.
• Fill out the entire profile; the social media platforms like this and will give you preference.
• Create a specific page on your site to link to from each social media platform.  So for example, a specific landing page for Facebook fans, Twitter followers…etc.

2)  Powerful Calls To Action Are A Must

As with how many people know about SEO but not SMO, it’s far more common to talk about calls to action (CTAs) regarding website and blog content than it is for posting on social media.

But just like with your website posts, it’s crucial to include strong CTAs for your social media content.  After all, the endgame of the social media post is to motivate the reader to perform a certain action, and you need to approach these posts with the same mindset as you do on your site.  Dan Zarrella, a prominent social media expert, notes that the CTAs that provide the best results on Twitter are ‘Please Help’ and ‘Please ReTweet’, while for Facebook, employing words such as ‘comment, ‘like’ or ‘share’ lead to greater engagement than content that doesn’t include these words.

If getting people to your website is your CTA goal, using phrases such as ‘click to see more’ or ‘click her to receive you…’ are proven ways to go.  In fact, ending a post with basic questions like ‘What’s your opinion?’ or “What’s next?’ can serve as effective CTAs.

3)   Headlines Are Key

Great headlines don’t just give someone an idea of what an article is about, they pop out and suck a reader in.  But to create killer headlines, you need to know the effective techniques for creating them.

First off, it’s important to differentiate between the different types of headlines.  With Twitter, a headline could mean an entire 140 character tweet.  For Facebook, you could be talking about the titles of blog posts posted on your website and/or the headlines you use to promote those posts on the networking site.

But regardless of platform, the purpose of the headline is to capture the reader’s attention.

Here are a few rules to create magnetic headlines:

• Offer an easy-to-understand, concrete benefit.  For example, 5 Tips On How To Live Longer.
• Go with numerical headlines.  These still make up a large majority of the most successful social media and blog posts.  So something like, 10 Ways To Make Yourself Mentally Stronger, or, The #1 City to Live In.
• Go for a unique, powerful hook that will create a vivid picture in your audience’s head.  Something in the vein of, Why Mustang Drivers Attract the Most Beautiful Women.

4)  Hashtags Are Powerful

The mysterious hashtag.  You’d be surprised how many marketers toss a hashtag into their social media content without knowing why they’re putting it in there.  But the purpose of hashtags is simple – make your tweets and content as easy to find as possible.

When people are looking up a particular topic, using a hashtag that includes relevant keywords makes it simple for them to find you.  This lets you reach out beyond your current audience and draw in new fans and followers.

Some effective ways to implement hashtags are:

• If you use Instagram, load up your posts with hashtags.  Hashtags are wildly successful on the platform with posts including as many as 11 hashtags receiving the most attention.
• As mentioned in Buffer App, you’ll receive 21% more interactions if you insert 1-2 hashtags than if you included three or more.
• On the other hand, according to Edgerank Checker, Facebook posts that don’t have any hashtags are more successful than ones that do.

5)   Use Images

A survey conducted by Software Advice and Adobe said that 82% of content marketers state that including images in their posts is important to their success.

Here’are a few ways to implement images into your marketing strategy:

• For Twitter: Compared to posts without photos, tweets that include images are retweeted 35% more.  Check out Twitter Cards to see how they let you incorporate imagery into your tweets that will lead to increased engagement.
• For Facebook: By sharing posts of motivational or entertaining photos on Facebook, you receive more engagement which leads to your posts getting greater visibility in the newsfeeds of your fans.  Once Facebook notices that the content you’re posting if consistent and popular, it will reward you by improving the overall reach of your posts.
• Across All Platforms:  You can include imagery into your posts in a bunch of different ways: create image-based coupon codes; for upcoming sales or events, design images promoting them; post a relevant infographic.

Summary

While the tips listed here are a solid jumping off point for your social media optimization, when you’re ready, you’ll also want to check out some of the other techniques and strategies that can give your SMO a boost.  I’d recommend trying out the strategies I’ve laid out here first, though, and when you figure out which ones are the most effective, fully incorporate them into your marketing strategy.  Just remember, even if things don’t take off like a rocket, if you keep putting out high-quality content and consistently fine-tune your SMO, your marketing business will be a success.

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