Steve tried all sorts of stuff to improve his company’s social media growth, but he never got a ton of traction on his posts. He was constantly researching how to improve social media KPIs, and all he could find was POST MORE. At his best, Steve spent up to 6 hours a week writing and scheduling daily posts, and barely had time to monitor the accounts while doing his other responsibilities as business owner. The more Steve dreaded this part of his job, the more he realized he needed a new organic social media strategy.
If you feel like you’re running on a hamster wheel and not seeing the results you want, it may be time to re-evaluate your strategy for organic social media growth. Be specific with the channels you use, optimize for organic search, and create meaningful content.
1. Scale Down Your Social Channels
Just like your business, your social media presence should start small and grow based on demand. To start, pick just one platform and focus your time and effort on growing that audience. Then, when you’re ready to enter new channels you’ll have an established following you can take with you.
Also, be careful of letting abandoned (or barely used) social media profiles linger. These are red flags for consumers because they may think your business isn’t as attentive to its customers as it really is or even that you’ve gone out of business. If you have social media profiles that you don’t use, consider deactivating or unpublishing them until you’re ready to give it your full attention.
2. Optimize for Organic Search (Read Google)
Google and other search engines are getting better at understanding your content, but you can help them along. One of the most simple things you can do is include your NAP (name, address, phone) on your social media profiles. Search engines use this information to identify your business in local search. So if you’re hoping to grow your organic traffic, follow these steps to make sure consumers can find you organically.
3. Create Meaningful Content
Creating content for social media is the most important and most challenging aspect of running online social profiles. While it may be time-consuming, it doesn’t have to be complicated.
Put your customer first.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and imagine what they might be looking for on social media. Your customers may not know your jargon, so when in those shoes, you need to forget all the experience you have in your industry.
If you were looking for a new place to get a haircut you would probably want to see photos of the salon, haircuts, and styling they’ve done for other customers.
Now let’s imagine you’re about to buy a house. If you were referred to a realtor, when you look at their Facebook page what would you want to see? Home listings, customer testimonials, and maybe some blog posts about buying, renovating, or moving into a home would all be valuable content to a prospective home buyer looking for a knowledgeable realtor.
Quality over quantity.
There is no magic number to how many times a business should post on social media. Research seems to indicate that to dominate a market online, you need to be posting 2 quality posts each week. This can be daunting for someone just starting out. However, if you generate content that is valuable to your customers, you will have meaningful content. And that content can be shared by your customers, sales, employees, and others, and search engines will take notice!
A great rule of thumb is to follow the 80/20 rule. Post all value 80% of the time and only push people toward the sale 20% of the time. In essence, no matter how many times a week you post, make sure the majority of your content adds value for your customers.
Engage in human conversation.
Social media is about being social! When consumers leave reviews on your page, leave a response. When your current followers share your posts with their friends and family, get in on the conversation. Based on recent algorithm changes, actions like comments, reactions, and shares carry the most weight. And it makes sense why; it exemplifies social activity. In order to grow your organic following you need to be social, too.
By IndoorMedia Marketing
By Eric Shafer
