We all know that social media success doesn’t happen by accident. It’s planned for.
But without a roadmap, it’s tough to know what you’re working towards.
That’s where a social media checklist comes in.
Rather than hopping online without focus, you act on purpose. It becomes your guide and directs everything you post.
If you’re ready to better manage your daily social media to-do list, this checklist is what you need.
Simple steps that create a process. That process when followed will help blow the lid off your engagement!
A Daily Social Media Checklist That Will Double Engagement
Before we jump into promotion, let’s first talk about your content. It’s no secret that content marketing is key to building trust with your customers. As Ron Guirguis points out in an Edelman Trust Survey,
“People
don’t just buy products anymore, they buy the companies that make
products, the values they represent and what they stand for.”
Sharing the right type of content will help:
Prospects begin to recognize you as a the “go to” resource.
Build
trust which translates into trust for your brand and product. It makes
you a top choice when they decide to invest in you or your competition.
Attracts
visitors to your site, some of which may turn into leads, prospects,
and buyers. If new visitors like your content, they will subscribe and
share it with others. Both are key to growing a loyal following and a
successful business.
But you can’t just share any content and expect to get great results. It needs to be the type of content that converts. What does that look like?
Webinars
Video tutorials
Ebooks
Case studies
Infographics
Reports
White papers
Blog content
Vlogs
Use the graphic below to guide you through the brainstorming process. For each type of content, consider:
What
type of content is your audience already engaging with? Look to your
most popular content in Google Analytics and determine how you can
update or create a follow up.
What type of content do you want to be known for? Choose 2-3 topics that align with your business, product, and service.
In
a world where your audience already has a massive amount of hoops to
jump through, you need to make your content easy to access.
Not only will content help build your brand, but it lets consumers connect with you.
90%
of consumers find custom content useful, and 78% believe that
organizations providing custom content are interested in building good
relationships with them.
Use Post Planner’s “Find” section to discover trending and scientifically proven content.
2. Get Visual
In
a split second, your audience is making a decision. Will they stop and
read or move on? Will they create conversation and engage your business
or interact with your competition? Given the speed content travels across social media, grabbing attention fast is critical.
Without it, you may lose an opportunity forever. That’s where visual marketing comes in.
Great marketers know that visuals capture audience attention, increase
engagement, and boost traffic. So where do you get started?
According to QuickSprout, there are 8 major forms of visual content you can integrate into your social content:
Attention-grabbing, artistic photography – Think Instagram pictures or stock photos.
Screenshots – Useful if used right e.g. taking shots of helpful images of workflow or your products/services.
Infographics – Come in handy when you want to convey a meaty or super long message in an easy, bite-sized and informative manner.
Comics – Make a long story short, captivating and humorous with relevant cartoons or comic strips.
Data visualization – Present facts, figures and statistics in a simple and visually stimulating manner through standalone graphs and charts.
Memes – Use trendy memes tailored to fit the context of your updates or posts.
Miscellaneous graphics – Think of diverse images that complement your content.
Visual note taking – Think of casually designed layouts of ideas.
Incorporate each one across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more in unique and channel specific ways.
3. Don’t Forget Video
There’s no doubt about it. Video is hot, hot, hot. Creating several videos (produced and live) that support your social media strategy is a must.
Here’s where to begin:
Take key points from evergreen content, break them down into a simple bulleted list.
Show your audience how to do something, make something better, fix their problem.
Usually, 2-3 video scripts is enough. And they do not have to be long and complicated.
Here’s an example of one our team created based on a recent Pinterest article. We use Animoto to quickly break down content into slides, add graphics, music, and any voiceover.
4. Add Personality and Branding
People
invest in products and services they like, but they also buy from the
companies they love. That’s a factor you can’t ignore. People invest in and buy from companies that represent their own values and beliefs.
Of
course, the product itself is important. But the way the company builds
a community and sells the product is just as important.
Look to Ryan Foland,
a communication strategist who knows how to engage his audience. He
infuses personality into his content in a variety of ways, but I
especially love his stick figure drawings. They tell a story, share
insight, and include his audience in the conversation.
Think about your brand and what you can do to build a community around it.
Your Daily Social Media Checklist
Now
that you know what you’re going to post, it’s time to figure out the
steps you’ll take to increase engagement, traffic and sales. This is your daily social media checklist. An easy to follow list of steps to take each day.
Your daily social media tasks shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes at the beginning and end of your day.
If you don’t have that kind of time, then plan on giving it away. These tasks are critical to building your social media presence.
You’re on your way to tracking and measuring your daily to-do’s.
Facebook
Reply to all comments (be grateful, generous, and giving in your reply).
Thank anyone that’s shared your content (always monitor mentions).
Like and Comment on a 3-5 relevant Page updates (Don’t just say “Nice!” or “Great!” Leave a thoughtful reply).
Share relevant content to niche-specific groups. (this isn’t spammy or self-promotion, but helpful and valuable)
Twitter
Monitor mentions via keywords and respond to any questions, needs, concerns.
Choose 3-5 influencers to interact with. Be genuine in your replies and interactions. That will shine through!
Make 10 new high-value connections with the help of Twitter Advanced Search.
Schedule 3 posts to share throughout the day.
Thank people retweeting your content.
Thank a 3-5 new followers.
LinkedIn
Check incoming messages and respond to any necessary.
Approve all invitations to connect that are a benefit and make sense to you / your brand.
Share a relevant industry article or your latest blog post to your profile.
Drop into 2-3 groups and see if you can volunteer answers.
Instagram
Post 1-2 times per day – a mix of blog posts, roundup tips, top tips, funny/inspirational and relatable posts.
Share an Instagram story.
Like one post from everyone that’s liked your content.
Pinterest
Pin 5 images per day. A mix of your content and other people’s.
Like 5 posts per day.
Repin 5 images per day.
Choose evergreen posts to pin to a specific brand “blog board.”
Pin to group boards for added exposure.
Update boards or titles that need to be optimized.
YouTube
Create a new video from blog content. Use a tool like Animoto to take tips and break them down into a quick tip.
Clean up your descriptions, add keywords, your URL, and tags to older, but evergreen videos.
Google Plus
Share to Google+ 1 time per day – 1 new article and 1 evergreen.
Share your content in specific communities.
+1 anyone that’s made a comment on your posts from the last day.
Final Thoughts
Social media can be time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. The best way to get started is to find 2-3 of the to-do’s listed above that will have the most impact on your business.
Add them to your calendar and commit to them daily.
Once you’re comfortable with those tasks, add to it. You’ll build momentum as you add more layers.
Whether you want to sell products, gain subscribers, persuade
followers to a point or sway the hearts and minds of readers to your
cause, they’ve got to know who you are in the first place.
Your
ability to encourage any of these actions comes from your brand’s
authority -- and one of the best ways to build that is through the savvy
use of social media. In fact, recent research from Econsultancy shows
that 71 percent of brands plan to invest more heavily in social media in the coming year to reach new followers and build brand reputation.
Want
to join their ranks and become known in your industry? Here’s
everything you need to know about using social media to build your
brand:
1. Choose networks that support your brand image.
According to Convince and Convert, 22 percent of Americans use social media multiple times a day,
making it one of the best mediums on which to build your brand. There
are literally hundreds of social networks out there, but most of them
aren’t worth investing your time and energy.
Instead, find the platforms that support your brand image, taking the following factors into consideration:
Instagram is
a great option for brands that rely heavily on images, such as clothing
companies and retailers. It’s also particularly effective for reaching
young adults, Hispanics and African Americans.
While Google+
hasn’t taken off as well as many people predicted, it can be a great
platform to reach men in the technology industry, as two-thirds of the
network’s users are men, most of whom work in engineering or other
technical professions.
Pinterest is an excellent social network to reach women, especially for brands selling jewelry or clothing.
Finally, if you operate a business-to-business company, LinkedIn is a stronger choice for promoting business-related content and connecting with other corporate influencers.
2. Provide valuable and shareable content.
It
should go without saying, but you’ll create a much stronger brand
reputation if you focus on creating useful content that viewers will
want to share, rather than cranking out content to meet arbitrary
publishing calendars or that covers subjects only you’d want to read.
Keep the following principles in mind as you craft content for social sharing:
Every
single piece of content you share should support your brand image.
Remember, humor can be difficult to pull off. If you can use memes
effectively, they can be powerful brand-building tools. But if you
aren’t 100 percent sure how your audience will respond to your image,
resist the temptation to create memes or engage in clickbait strategies
that have the potential to reflect poorly on your company.
Figure
out which content is most likely to gain visibility on your social
networks. Images may resonate better with your audience than blog posts,
but you won’t know that if you don’t look at your data.
One
of the easiest ways to create content for deployment on social media
profiles that’ll support your brand building efforts is to see what
types of posts others have been successful with and put together your
own, better versions.
Say, for example, that one of your
competitors has received good social traction with a blog post
titled “12 Strategies for Increasing Website Traffic.”
Instead of
wasting your time building content around unproven topics, you could
release a stronger content piece on this same subject. For instance, you
could put together a post titled “102 Strategies for Increasing Website
Traffic,” or you could go through your competitor’s list of techniques
and put together your own guide that goes into more depth on how to put
these principles into action.
To find the content pieces that are performing well in your industry, use tools such as BuzzSumo and sort based on past social engagement. To learn more about implementing this technique, check out the Backlinko blog’s guide on the subject.
3. Leverage influencers.
Publishing
killer content to your social profiles is important, but it’s only one
part of the equation. If you have a relatively unknown brand, your voice
is likely getting lost in the noise. While you can eventually build your own audience through the creation of great content, this strategy is going to take time.
A
much faster approach is to leverage the audiences existing influencers
in your industry have already built. There are a few different ways you
can do this:
Mention their names or cite their websites in
your content pieces. Influencers with Google Alerts or other
notifications set up on their names will see your content after it’s
published.
Tag any influencers you’ve referenced when sharing content to your social media profiles.
Email influencers after you’ve published your content to let them know they’ve been referenced in your work.
The
goal of all these different actions is to get them to share your
content piece with their followers via social networking. It can take
time to build up the kinds of relationships that lead to influencer
sharing, but if you’re consistent about producing quality content, your
efforts will get noticed.
4. Use social campaigns to promote content.
Finally, keep in mind that, in an age of diminishing organic reach, paid campaigns -- especially those run through native advertising platforms -- may be one of your better options for building your brand on social networks.
A
growing number of brands use strategies such as contests and other
social media campaigns to successfully gain visibility and generate
leads.
To take advantage of this effect, provide your audience
with valuable incentives that encourage user participation and make sure
that your campaigns offers value to all participants.
While
social media is one of the most powerful ways to reach new leads, it’s
easy to waste time or alienate people if you don’t use it appropriately.
That’s what makes having a sound social media strategy in place so
important.
If you make it a priority to consistently share great
content and leverage the power of existing social media influencers,
your brand building efforts are bound to pay off in the long-run.
This is a very interesting article, with loads of good advice, what do you think?
When it comes to social media, it isn’t just enough to be on it. You need to know how to be effective with it.
If you're not using social media to build your brand, you are missing
out. Globally, a third of all digital consumers follow brands on social
media, according to a 2016 report
from Global Web Index. Assuming you don't want to ignore a market of
that size, you should be asking yourself: How do I build my brand on
social media? Here are seven ways I’ve found from working with Coaching clients that make the biggest difference:
1. Pick the right social media platform.
There
are literally hundreds of platforms, and more spring up all the time.
Not all of them are right for all brands, lead generation software
company Wishpond
notes. Facebook is by a wide margin the biggest and most-used network,
so most brands will have some kind of presence there. However, if you
sell to other businesses, LinkedIn may be a better choice. Likewise,
young consumers are more likely to be active users of Snapchat or
Instagram. See what kinds of people participate in the major social
networks and dedicate your brand building efforts to the ones that are
popular with your customers.
2. Be active.
One
of the most well-established rules of social branding is that you must
be consistently active if you are to effectively build your brand. A
once-weekly Twitter post or monthly Instagram photo are not going to
accomplish much, if anything. For this reason, it's best to focus on two
or three carefully chosen social networks and try to be active on them,
rather than posting sporadically to a half-dozen.
3. Engage.
Posting nothing but blurbs about your brand's features and benefits is not likely to lead to engagement, according to Convince & Convert
President Jay Baer. Your brand's social media feed must include a
healthy portion of posts about interests that your customers have but
that are not merely promoting your brand. For instance, a food brand
could post recipes or a financial services brand could post household
budgeting tips. And make sure your engagement is two-way. In addition to
posting your own content, like, share and reply to others' posts.
4. Be visual.
Posts that include photos get much higher engagement rates
than text-only posts. So include images whenever possible. Video, in
particular, can encourage engagement. And don't be afraid of using color
to help you stand out in the stream of postings.
5. Be consistent.
Create a strategy for your social media brand-building efforts, advises Sproutsocial,
maker of social media management tools. And make sure that every post
you make supports that agenda in some way, even if it is not a
straight-up plug. Avoid random posts that don't connect to your
overriding goal of customer engagement with your brand. If you use
colors, select the ones you will use in advance, making sure they
harmonize with and amplify your brand logo. And always use your logo and
brand name the same way, just as you do with your branding message.
6. Get influencers to help you.
Starting
a social media brand from scratch can be labor-intensive and take a
long time. If you can piggyback on already-established social media
participants, it can greatly shorten the time, energy and other
resources the task will consume. So share, like and reply to posts from
well-connected participants, and be sure to thank them if they share,
like or reply to one of yours.
7. Use social media for other types of communication that help your brand.
Social
media is increasingly important for customer service and support. When
customers are happy or unhappy with an experience they have had with a
business, today they immediately turn to social media to report that to,
potentially, millions of other users. The good part of the way social
media has become so important for posting customer reviews is that
businesses can also see the communications from satisfied or
dissatisfied customers. This provides an unparalleled opportunity to
very publicly thank a happy customer or solve an unhappy customer's
problem. In the process, it's possible to demonstrate to countless other
customers and prospects that your brand is dedicated to customer
satisfaction.
Social media has become a major communication
channel between customers and the brands that serve them. It has its own
rules and brand-builders who want to succeed on social media need to
know those rules. But if a brand follows the social media principles for
success, social media is one of the biggest, most powerful and
accessible channels available for brand-building.
