Social media optimization is a strategic and purposeful approach to growing your presence on this channel. Read on for some of the top strategies you can use to optimize your social media accounts.

Social media marketing allows you to connect with your audience like few other channels can. It’s also a significant investment of time and resources. Focusing on social media optimization will help you get more out of what you invest in this channel.

What is social media optimization?

Why is your brand present on social media? If you joined Facebook because your competitors use this platform or if you share tweets because your audience expects it, you’re not optimizing your social media presence.

Instead of simply existing on social media and posting occasionally, optimization is about taking a strategic approach and turning this channel into a powerful agent for growth. It’s the difference between being proactive and reactive.

Your business has goals. Social media can support these goals by helping with brand awareness, outreach, sales, and other aspects of your mission. With optimization, you’re adopting the strategies that make the most sense for achieving these goals.

The basics of social media optimization

There are four key areas to focus on to optimize your presence on social media.

Adopt a strategic approach

Social media optimization begins with goals. These goals need to be measurable and aligned with your broader business objectives. If applicable, you should also think about these goals in relation to the other channels you use and to your paid social campaigns.

Everything you do on social media should support your goals. A common mistake is to focus on vanity metrics such as the number of followers your Twitter account gets. With optimization, your focus shifts to metrics and actions that translate into results.

Establishing clear goals will inform the way you grow your social media presence. It can help you identify the platforms to join. For instance, LinkedIn is one of the fastest-growing platforms for B2B marketing, but Facebook is the best social network for reaching out to men between the ages of 25 and 34.

If you want to schedule your publications to get as many impressions as possible from your target audience, your goals can also inform your post-development strategy and help you with automated social media marketing.

You can go further by using social media analytics. Tracking things like which platform results in the most sales, which network brings in leads that spend the most, or what type of content generates the most engagement will help you fine-tune your efforts.

Achieving continuous improvement through goal-setting and analytics can be technical. It’s something a social media management partner can help you with, and social media management pricing is justified by the results you’ll get.

Build a strong profile

The purpose of a social media profile is to tell users at a glance what you do and what differentiates you from other businesses.

A strong profile should be immediately recognizable, which is why it’s important to integrate your social media marketing efforts with your other campaigns. Consistent branding with your copy and graphics will increase brand recognition and awareness.

You’ll also need a compelling description of your business with some strong keywords to capture traffic from social searches. Don’t forget to add a link to your website, your contact information, and a name, address, and phone number (NAP) mention to support your local SEO goals if applicable.

Optimize your activity

Posting content is at the heart of your social media presence. You can write posts specifically for a social network, curate posts with links to third-party sources, or integrate your social media presence with your content marketing efforts to share links to your own blog posts or news stories.

Just like with every other platform, content quality matters. Write content that solves problems and delivers value. Use strong calls to action to get conversions and craft eye-catching headlines that will make users want to click. Then optimize the copy, keywords, hashtags, and visual components of each post.

However, your activity shouldn’t be limited to written content. There are other avenues to explore:

• A growing number of brands are using social media as a customer service channel thanks to chat features.
• You can also interact with your audience by liking their comments or responding to them.
• Visual content, like photos and infographics, can grab the attention of your audience and generate engagement.
• Video is another interesting format to use. There were 2 billion video views on Twitter this year, a number that increased by 67% compared to the previous year.

Boost audience engagement

Social media optimization should extend to your follower outreach efforts. The more you know about your audience, the easier it will become to engage them on social media and inspire loyalty.

The first step is to get your content noticed. Brevity is important since users often scroll and skim on social media. Eye-catching visuals, clear formatting, strong headlines, emojis, and hashtags are things that can make a difference.

Speaking of hashtags, they’re important for three reasons:

• They make your content discoverable for users who explore hashtags related to topics they’re interested in.
• They allow you to spark conversations related to your brand and products by creating branded hashtags.
• The existence of branded hashtags will encourage more people to create user-generated content (UGC), which can act as social proof for your online reputation. You can extend the scope of UGC by launching an employee advocacy program and having employees join the conversation on social media.

Hashtags will also help you get a feel for the trending topics your followers care about. Being timely is crucial on social media since there are plenty of opportunities to join existing conversations and bring something new to the table. Examples of trending topics on Facebook for 2021 include conversations about education, racial inequalities, sustainable living and gardening, banking, and self-care.

Audience engagement is often about small things that people will remember, whether it’s responding to a comment, creating shareable content, posting regularly, or adopting a voice that is human and relatable. You should also leverage word of mouth from your top fans and look into establishing partnerships with influencers.

The takeaway

Social media optimization makes your presence on this channel more purposeful. A social media management price is an expense you’re going to incur whether you decide to outsource or invest in in-house resources.

With optimization, you can get a better ROI thanks to the following benefits:

• Increasing your outreach and brand awareness.
• Building a community of loyal fans.
• Getting more traffic for your blog or site.
• Contributing to existing conversations and positioning yourself as a thought leader.
• Supporting your SEO and content marketing efforts.
• Having the resources in place to mitigate potential PR issues.

Do you need help with social media optimization?

Social media is one of the areas Tempesta Media can help you with as part of our managed service. From post-development to follower outreach, we can ensure you get better results with this channel. Contact us to learn more!