We live in the information age and things move quickly. With the evolution of social media, we have the ability to reach people like never before. The key is to be consistent because people do business with those they know, like, and trust. We have but a split second to capture a potential customer’s attention. Here are some tips I have learned along the way to make navigating
Facebook,
Twitter and
Pinterest a little easier.
Each platform gives you the opportunity to share your ‘why’ in the form of a brief bio. This is your chance to connect with your audience. Be sure to include who you are, what you do, and how it brings value for the other person. Keep your bio short and to the point. Your bio should include a link back to your personal website for more info. Make sure your website lists all of your social media handles so people can easily find you.
Social media outlets are the most influential platforms of the century. Having a profile is not enough. Building rapport with other organizations and honing strategic partnerships can explode your business.
Target your market. It is important to know your ideal customer and, trust me, its not everyone. Are you looking to capture organizations, a particular age demographic, or a niche market? Targeting your market does not mean excluding people that do not fit your criteria from buying from you. It is a guide to allow you to focus on the people that are mostly likely to buy your product and share it with others, building your customer base.
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest have changed the game for search engines. They have introduced additional social search signals that can be used for ranking content to your target audience. Social search refers to search engines using signals, such as the number of social media shares of a link, to determine how that link ranks for a given keyword.
The demographic of Facebook‘s 1.28 billion monthly users is vast. If you want to reach 15-34 year olds, they are most active on Facebook from 9-10 p.m. so post during those times. Keep posts short; 27% more sharing happens when a post is three lines or less. We want people to re-post our info to friends, so keep on point. One-liners typically get the best response rates. People want to be engaged, so ask questions that create conversation. If you post outside normal business hours, which are considered from 9 a.m. -4 p.m., there is a 20% increase in engagement. Fridays are the highest traffic days on Facebook, so it’s a great day to post. Comment on other pages where your target audience is already having conversations, lay the ground work, and build rapport. If you host live events, post lots of photos and encourage your friends/followers to tag themselves. When they tag themselves, they will voluntarily be sharing your content with their friends causing a ripple affect. A great way to increase traffic to your page is by offering a special or exclusive offer; the sky is the limit on this. Ads are becoming more widely used on this platform. Slowly, Facebook will increase advertising including: full-motion video ads and image ads on its Instagram photo-sharing service.
Twitter is great as you get up to the minute info; it could be called the ‘real time social networking’ site. A key to Twitter is to tweet in intervals. All tweets have to to be 140 charters or less. Engaging others through replying to their tweets builds your community. While it is great to follow lots of people and hone valuable information on Twitter, you must also grow your own base of followers. This is known as your Twitter reach. To make your tweets as visible as possible, avoid putting @USERNAME in the very beginning of your tweets. Adding the @USERNAME to the very beginning will make your tweet viewable only in the Twitter streams of people who follow you and the user to whom you’re tweeting. Hashtags are widely used on Twitter as well. A ‘#tag’ makes searching key words easy. You can dominate a hashtag so that when people search a key word, your brand is the first to be featured. Selecting a hashtag for your own event will be beneficial in a couple of ways: During the event, people often use the hashtag while live-tweeting, i.e. tweeting what they see/hear in real-time. The hashtag will tag and aggregate the event’s tweets, building an online conversation around the event. Make your tweets useful resources so people need you. You are what you tweet. People will want to follow you if they think they will get value from your tweets. Avoid making your Twitter account a purely promotional tool. The goal is to get people to your personal page and viewing your products. Make a decision on how much time you want to devote to this platform, as it can be a time-sucking activity.
Twitter is redesigning its profile, and soon it will look like a merger of Facebook and Pinterest. Twitter has announced it will be gradually making changes to the timeline, mobile updates and they will have bigger photos. There are also rumors of the imminent death of @-replies and hashtags. Users will be able to pin or highlight key pieces of information to the profile of your newsfeed. We will now be able to add multiple photos to the platform and tag up to 10 people in these photos.
I didn’t know this until recently: Pinterest is the 4th largest traffic driver worldwide. People spend more money on Pinterst than any of the other social media sites. On average, people will spend $68 on Twitter, $80 on Facebook, and $179 on Pinterest. People use Pinterest to shop and buy online. The difference is that 70% of people on this platform are looking for brands and products. Many think it’s about moms (the average Pinterest user is 35-50) at home finding projects to do, but having a presence on Pinterest can effectively spread the word about your business. In fact, 80% of the content on Pinterest is re-pinned, which means your message could go viral quickly. The key with Pinterest is to create content unique to the Pinterest platform which will increase brand visibility and get more sales. Info-graphics, checklists, tutorials, teaser text (which drives traffic back to your site), and videos are the most shared on Pinterest. Early morning or late at night is the best time to post to your page. The most people are on Pinterest Saturday mornings.
I understand this can be a lot to digest and you may be thinking, who has time for all this? If you are doing all of these, an easy way to manage all of your sites in one place is through HooteSuite. They offer a free program to maximize your presence on social media and cut the time you spend daily on each site. It is better to do one thing really well than to do three things in a mediocre fashion. If taking on multiple social media sites feels daunting, start with one and master it; you can always expand your reach. You can see now how important it is to know your customer, what they need, and where you can find them to connect. Now let’s share something we learned here with a friend on one of these social media platforms!
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Stephanie Weeks is a wellness consultant and social entrepreneur. She has traveled the globe extensively and is a sought out speaker. Stephanie’s focus is on teaching simple lifestyle changes that create health and wealth in our lives. Stephanie is the founder of 
