16 Social Media Optimization Tips You Need to Know

With so many people presenting so many different social media optimization tips, it has become impossible to know which ones work and which don’t. That’s why, below, we are listing SMO tips that actually work — old school or not.

1. Optimize the Social Media Marketing Strategy

Lack of an effective and robust social media strategy is the key hurdle when it comes to why social media campaigns fail. 28% Brands believe not having a proper and planned social media strategy is the first reason why they can’t get social.

Social media is ever changing and the companies need to adopt the new policies for best social media optimization results. This can be done when you follow the social sites, track performances, evaluate your campaigns and improve them. A full-fledged and effective social media strategy must inculcate your goals and objectives with means and ways to achieve them.

2. Do Keyword Research

Just like search engines, users on social sites also use keywords, phrases, sentences to find a business and connect with the brands. Are you doing this kind of research and include the most-searched keywords in your social posts? If not, your social media marketing strategy is bound to fail.

There is a need to do comprehensive keyword research and come up with the relevant keywords, hashtags, phrases, slogans and words people use to connect with a business. Moreover, include the key terms or slogans in every social media post, image and make sure everyone can find them easily.

3. Hashtags

You should have unique and separate hashtags to include in every single post for better social media optimization. With the right kind of hashtags, users will easily find your business, social profile and connect with your representatives.

4. Optimize Social Profiles

For search engines, you have to optimize the website in a variety of manners. Same is the case with social media platforms. On social sites, you have to improve the profiles instead of the website. This can be started by making your social profiles look more professional. Below are few things you should consider while improving social profiles.

• Username: The profile name should be brand/business name. it is the identity of your business so make it as much professional as possible. Try to get it verified so that it looks more trustworthy.
• Bio/Profile: For every social profile, you will need a short intro or bio. It must be attractive, conveys your message in fewer words and lists important features of your business. It may not be a social media marketing strategy, but it’s essential.
• Photos: Along with what we discussed above, the social media profile pictures and cover photos are also impact social media optimization. They should be highly optimized, should have standard size and must represent the business idea. Again, not a social media marketing strategy, but still immensely important.
• Headline: Another social media marketing strategy is to be creative with headlines if you often share content on social sites or make announcements. Test them, include hashtags, keep headlines shorter and they must be catchy.
• Optimize your Content: Social media is all about quality and great content for a business. Without well-researched, quality and informative content, no brand survives on social media. Users have become more educated because of social sites. Brands provide their followers with quality content. This has created intense competition for new businesses.

Always do research, find the best interesting blog and content ideas, create quality and unique content, and make sure it is formatted the right way for better social media optimization. The featured images must be appealing for the social followers. Further details are listed below.

5. Visuals and Videos

Apart from guest or blog posts, you can also work on visual content like infographics and videos. These types of content get viral instantly. But all they need is a great theme with information and quality content. On social media, people respond to videos better than other content.

A golden social media marketing strategy is that the social media posts should stand out. You need to be creative with everything from content to hashtags and images. Without creating unique and great social posts, a business cannot do social media optimization well. In order to attract users, there should be a touch of humor, fun, information, excitement, weirdness and the human emotions.

• Post Length: When you create social posts, keep them short. They must include the best marketing words, must not be too much promotional, carry important information, include hashtags and have an image as well.
• Set Posting Schedule: Understanding at what time the social posts get better response and have user engagement is way too important. It must not be ignored otherwise your all social efforts on posts will yield none. You can test and see when your posts get more response and when more users are online. It is sometimes overlooked, but vital social media marketing strategy.

Make sure you schedule your posts on the right time for social media platforms. Apart from this, you can also choose post scheduling tools like HootSuite or Social Report which makes it easy for the users to schedule their social posts in a short time. It allows scheduling for multiple platforms and different profiles on a single social site.

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7. Connect with Followers

A business must connect with the followers. It doesn’t mean create a social profile, invite people or run campaigns and increase social following base. It is more than this. It goes to increasing user engagement, keeping social profiles active, sharing every single update so that users stay on the pages.

Without properly connecting with the users, a business cannot achieve much from social sites. Customer issues should also be resolved through social sites in order to encourage more users to share their problems. You can also use these sites or profiles for getting customer feedback and to improve the services and products.

8. Choose the Right Social Platform

It has been noticed some brands keep working on the social sites that give them a little in return. The wise managers will never make this mistake. They will put efforts into judging which sites offer them the better results, user engagement, more customers so that they can focus more on those.

For example, Facebook and Twitter cannot be of same preference for a brand because they have different user base. On Facebook users are young whereas Twitter has mature followers. A business should track such records and change their strategy to improve productivity.

9. Create Social Media Campaigns

Companies should also invest in social media marketing. Free work is effective but it takes time to show results. Sometimes, a paid campaign can be more fruitful. For example, for increasing followers or user base, targeted campaigns should be run so that a brand can grow its follower base.

The paid campaigns do work. Facebook allows brands to create customized ads, choose the users with respect to age, location, choice, taste, preferences and run these ads for shorter and longer time periods. In order to increase customer base, you should work on such campaigns. They will also increase your site traffic when you will drive them to the website through social media posts.

10. Use AI to Boost Posts

Social media sites favor paid posts and ads. Some brands spend on every single post and create ads while others are selective and choose specific posts to run ads on the social sites. The second option is better, more affordable and brings about better results.

As you will run specific posts, you will be able to target more users. This can be done by using AI feature of social media. You should track the posts and see which type of posts and on what time get the better response. It will help you to target those posts and time for future campaigns.

11. Micro-Blogging

Micro-blogging is different than blogging. These are posts with little content. Usually the micro-blogs carry information from other sources. Like you can get it from Tumblr or other sources. Such type of content and posts are very engaging when it comes to attracting users.

These can be links from other sites, short videos, news, headlines or even research reports. A brand should try to use such posts on their social profiles in order to keep the profile active and engage users in some discussions. It will also help you drive traffic to your websites.

12. Do Competitors’ Analysis

Another great way to improve social media campaigns and make the strategies optimized is to see what the competitors are doing. You can check their social media ads and strategies to learn the unique and different things that help them perform better as compared to your business.

13. Compile a List

The first thing is to create a list of all the top competitors. You can search them on social sites, visit their profiles, collect the data like social names, bio, image types, content nature and type, time of posting and other relevant details in this audit.

14. Analyze Competition

When the list is ready, start analyzing it. A detailed comparison will help you point out the important things like what mistakes you have been making. The reports will also let you create better social media strategies and learn new optimization methods.

15. Use Analytics Tools

In case you feel difficulty while assessing or creating the reports, you can use analytics tools. There are many such tools, free as well as paid, that will suffice in this regard. They will make your work easier, save time and let you perform better.

16. Track Analytics and Improve

A business must also track its own performance, see where they have done better and which areas need to be improved for better social media optimization.

Social media pages or accounts provide detailed analytics to the users. They are quite helpful in diverting focus, targeting more important areas and getting rid of less useful strategies.

Originally posted in: https://freelancers-hub.com/16-social-media-optimization-tips-you-need-to-know/