One of the things that can cause paralysis when using social media for marketing is not knowing how it works. You might have lots of ideas and you may even post a few stuff but, are you really using it effectively? Do you know all the things you can do on a particular platform?
Social media platforms cover 4 areas, video, audio, text and images. However, each platform has different implementations of this and knowing these can help you in your content creation.
Newsfeed post criteria
Every platform has a newsfeed. You can see people you follow and those who follow you can see your updates.
On Twitter, there’s a combination of written word, images and video. However, each of these has a limit. Images must be a certain size, a video has to be a 2 minute and 20 seconds, and also the 240 character limit.
You can use this information for your advantage in your content creation. You can craft your message to fit that limitation. It will also make your story powerful and consumable by your customers.
Radio & TV ads are 30 seconds to a minute. Companies had to tell their stories with that limitation for that platform to work for them. Same applies online.
Stories
Not all social media platforms have this feature, but it’s still a useful tool. You’re able to share ongoing progress of what you are working on throughout the day. It goes away in 24 hours. You can use stories to test ideas out before committing to a post on your newsfeed. You can also create specifically for that. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, youtube, Snapchat all have the stories feature. You can use it to good effect.
The interesting thing about stories is that people check it very often. Sometimes multiple times for the day. This is interesting because you can use stories to drive traffic to content in your feed. Instagram as a swipe up feature where you can post to stories and persons can swipe up to learn more.
Direct Message
Direct messages are also a great way to interact online. If a customer asks a question on your newsfeed you can either reach out publicly or send a private message offering more help.
In the book fill your funnel by Tom Hopkins and Dan Portik says asking instead of telling is the most critical concept to grasp in selling. The person who is asking the questions controls the direction of the conversation. This further demonstrates that you can use direct messages to ask questions and further et up to speed with social media tools for good effect.
Search function
Search is the perfect way to find conversations online. You can search hashtags, keywords and see what your potential customers are saying or talking about. This will allow you to answer questions and meet new people who might be interested in what you do.
Like, reply with a comment or reshare
All platforms allow you to interact with other content. If you see something you like, press the like button, reshare it if you find it interesting or leave a comment so that the person can see your thoughts. This is a great way to interact with the community and meet new people and potential customers.