In a recent TekGroup social media news survey, 37 percent of respondents confessed they are hooked on social media about 1 to 2 hours a day and are using tools habitually with almost 90 percent saying they use Twitter, Facebook, and blogs on a daily basis to follow and monitor a brand's news and information. Facebook statistics indicate that each user has roughly 350 social media connections. These are potential customers you can meet on social media, but aren’t sure you can implement a social content strategy for optimal results? Here’s 5 tips to help your business craft the best social media posts EVER!

Use Images in Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

According to Facebook successful posts are visual. Photo albums, images and videos get 180%, 120%, and 100% more engagement respectively than any other type of post. Fast Company (the online business and innovation directory) claims that images have the highest engagement rates on social media, trumping than both video and text- based updates. They take it even further saying, “they (images) account for 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook”. At Social HorsePower, we encourage clients to use high resolution, glossy images with as little text as possible as these types of posts have the highest engagement rates.

Utilize Hashtags in Your Posts

Hashtags are an amazing way for your business to reach beyond traditional mediums to access an audience that may have no direct connection to your brand. They are an efficient method to find content related to specific topics, as well as the people talking about those topics. Considering Google’s most recent update to it’s algorithm to make hashtags searchable on search engines, you should really hop on the hashtag bandwagon – as you will see an increase in unique traffic to your website driven by the awesome combined power of search and social media. Here’s Social Media Today’s 3 Key Hashtag Strategies to inspire some great #ideas.

Create Strong Calls-to-Action

Click, read, buy. Three actions you want your social media fans and followers to take. But they’ll never know how to react if you don’t ask. According to Social Bakers, tweets with effective call to actions have 3,600% higher engagement rates than those that do not.

Simply Measured recommends being specific, direct and creative in creating calls to actions that drive results. As demonstrated in the following graph, the branded posts that included strong calls-to-action enjoyed the highest social media interactions versus those that did not.

Incorporating an effective call to action that meshes tone, voice, content and strategy can make the difference between a post that flops and one that soars.

Run Contests That People Want to Enter

Social media contests are a great way to build your social media audience, attract new customers and drive sales – but Facebook has some pretty strict contest guidelines that could leave you confused, potentially jeopardizing your account and/or paying enormous sums of money to a third party source…

Considering photos have the highest engagement rates on social media - with a whopping 37% higher engagement rate than any other type of post (according to an MIT study), creating a photo sharing contest is the most effective social media contest. Simply review your content strategy, and ensure a photo sharing contest fits with your overall brand message.

Track Your Social Media Marketing Results

Measuring the success of your social media posts is the most important aspect of your social media strategy. It is the indicator as to whether your social media efforts are driving new business, reinforcing brand loyalty and increasing brand exposure. At Social HorsePower, our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) include tracking Likes, Comments, Shares, Clicks and overall Click-Through-Rate (CTR). These specific metrics indicate whether or not your audience is interacting with your content, determines how far their social reach goes and whether they are converting to website visits. You can learn a great deal from these KPIs which allow you to optimize your content so that each post written gets the highest social engagement possible.

Improve Your Social Media Presence

Writing engaging social media content for businesses is no easy feat. It takes creativity and the right mix of images, hashtags, calls-to-actions, contests, great content and metrics to ensure you are seeing social media results.

Social HorsePower, the social media application that allows businesses the ability to reach tens of thousands of new customers – with a click of a button, understands this unique challenge faced by businesses. That’s why we offer a full 360 Solution that couples our social media application with content writing services to ensure each message your business sends out is perfect every single time.

Request your FREE Social HorsePower demonstration today!