How to get a great return on your Social Media Activity

Social Media is here to stay. Like it or loathe it, it’s changing the way we sell, the way we network and the way we grow our businesses. This is part two of a two part blog, in part one we asked what does this really mean for business owners – if you haven’t read it then click here to put this blog into context and make the most of it 🙂

In this blog we share some ideas for social media content and think about the actual platforms in a bit more detail.

The Platforms

It is important to understand the nuances of the different social media platforms. This section also contains hints and tips on making the most of the various platforms for your business.

You will learn:

How often you should post and how to check whether the effort you are making is paying off
Extra hints and tips for getting the best out of the platform.

My advice, hints and tips vary for each platform. Social Media is changing all the time – there is a huge amount of information out there about this very subject, some of which we have covered above.

With 630 million users on LinkedIn, 303 million of those access the site on a monthly basis. Of all the social platforms, it has changed the most over recent years, evolving from a platform primarily focused on recruitment to the number one channel that B2B marketers use.

Optimum Number of posts: once a day.

When: between 10am to 11am

Plus: Curate, re-share one post every other day

How do you know if it’s working: Visit https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi and check out your score. Scores of 70 and above mean you are a social selling leader who will benefit by generating more opportunities for your business. (Top tip though, the SSI scores are generated by and for LinkedIn so need to be considered in context. Extra ‘points’ are given for being a Sales Navigator user (LI’s expensive sales-focused plug-in which may not be a good investment for smaller businesses.)

The optimum number of posts is just one per day but you will also benefit from liking, commenting and sharing others’ content.

Extra Tips for making the most of LinkedIn:

Upload a headshot to your profile. Profiles with professional pictures get 14 times more views.
Make sure your photo and your profile information is on brand. You should be business-like in your picture and your descriptions should contain keywords associated with your line of business. Investing time in honing – and updating – your profile is very worthwhile. You really are ‘on show’.
Make the most of the updates and the ability to write and share Articles.
Use images.
Optimal posting times vary on LinkedIn with some opinions suggesting there are no ‘best’ times. However, posting in time for the morning commute is a popular suggestion, as well as before mid-morning or lunchtime when people might take a short break and glance through their feed.
You can schedule your post using a tool like Hootsuite.
Keep your posts business-like. Don’t sell, curate. Re-share one post every other day.
Use alternative content styles such as video.
Interact, comment, like, engage and share – LinkedIn currently operates a scoring system – to gain exposure posts need 23 points within an hour of posting – a like gives 1 point; shares 2; and comments 3 points.

Twitter

With 126 million daily users, Twitter hosts 6,000 tweets every second. Twitter is great for news, articles and conversation. The maximum characters allowed in a tweet is now 280 but interestingly, the most common length of a tweet is 33 characters. You can also add images and links.

Optimum Number of Tweets to send per day is 15

When: Spread them out throughout the working day and a couple late at night and early morning

Plus: Retweet or curate about seven a day

How do you know if it’s working: Use Twitter Analytics and navigate to Tweets to check out the bar graph of dates with the number of tweets that went out on those dates.

Extra Tips for making the most of Twitter:

Interact with other people you find interesting as much as you can, quote, retweet and reply.
Use images.
Change your timeline so that you aren’t seeing the timeline the Twitter algorithms want to show you.
Make the most of lists, you can create your own timeline by interest.
Use hashtags, this is how people will find you, use no more than three in a Tweet.

Facebook

According to Statista.com, Facebook has 2.4 billion monthly active users, with approximately five new profiles being created every second. There are an estimated 83 million fake Facebook profiles; there are 80 million small or medium-sized and Facebook remains the number one platform for both B2B and B2C business.

Optimum Number of posts: once a day

When: between 1pm and 4pm, best time to post is 3pm on a Wednesday

Plus: curate or reshare every other day

How do you know if it’s working: Insights are great to see performance of individual posts and when engagement is increased or decreased based on how frequently you post.

Extra Tips for making the most of Facebook:

Use visuals
Post standalone graphics to share quick tips (Canva is great for creating your own images)
Show brand personality, but remember it is a business page
Make the most of Facebook Live – people spend 3 times longer watching live video than pre-recorded
Create a FB user group for maximum engagement
Pin posts to the top of your page for higher visibility
Pay to boost your posts – you can chose audience by interest, geography, chose costs and number of days to be boosted – but Facebook is very strict on the amount of text on an image – be careful and keep checking advert status as it might not be approved or it could be held in review

250 million active monthly users, 81% of which are female and use the platform for “scrapbooking”; saving and sharing images. It’s great for lead generation of clothing, art and food. The downside is that it is images only.

Optimum Number of Pins: 11 per day

When: mainly early hours and evening, but the best time is Saturday 8pm to 11pm

Plus: Re-pin or curate at least 5 pieces of content from others every day

How do you know if it’s working: Go to Pinterest Analytics select Profile and check out the impressions.

Instagram

Now owned by Facebook, Instagram is a hugely progressive platform for businesses. Even if you feel you are not a visual business, Instagram allows you to show what you do in a creative way. Currently, more than 60% of the world’s top brands are using Instagram for marketing. (fanzappy.com)

1.1 billion monthly active users (of which 500 million visit daily), 95 million photos and videos are uploaded each day, 4.2 billion likes per day and the favourite emoji is the ‘love heart’. Use it to build relationships and conversations, 90% of users are younger than 35, it takes images and video only and is good for led generation for retail, art, food, entertainment and beauty businesses.

Instagram personal profiles are all about the basics, whereas business profiles give users access to lots of advanced features, such as contact information, Instagram Insights, promoted posts, and the ability to schedule and publish posts automatically using Later.

Optimum Number of posts: 1 – 2 posts per day

When: 8am – 9am and 2pm

Plus: Curate only when necessary or beneficial to your audience.

How do you know if it’s working: Iconosquare has been recommended, it has an Instagram Analytics feature.

YouTube

With 1.9 billion users (that’s half the internet…), people have watched 50,000 years’ worth of product review videos and a mind-numbing billion hours of video are watched daily on the platform.

Optimum number of posts: Dependent on budget

When: lunchtime (but this will depend heavily on your target audience)

Plus: Share links to your video channel on other social media channels. You’re more likely to increase views that way.

Plus: YouTube is brilliant for searching how to do something. It is also great for brand awareness in the service industry. .

How do you know if it’s working: keep a check on the views and other analytics available in the channel.

In Summary

There is so much to cover on the subject of social media, this e-book can only scratch the surface. It’s worth revisiting some underlying themes which will help all businesses and these are:

Cherry pick frequencies that make the most sense to you on the platforms which make the most sense to you. Play around with the time of day and day of the week and see what happens using the analytics tools.
You do not need to be on all Social Media platforms or networks.
Social Media presence should reflect your brand and be part of your marketing strategy.
Tie in your presence with your other systems such as CRM – drive traffic from other Social Media sites.
Use, and promote, the call to action
Use images and videos.
Have cover photos and profile photos that reflect your business brand. Be clear and consistent with your personal brand.
Engage with others.

The final bit of really good news is that there are free systems like Hootsuite, which enable you to schedule your messages all at once to save you time.

Next steps:

Finally, a reminder that social media is only a part of your overall marketing strategy. We are sometimes led to believe that simply by sitting back and posting we can grow a successful business from behind our screen or device. This is most certainly not the case for the vast majority of businesses.

If you’d like to find out more about how to accelerate your business towards true success, why not check out Blake Consultancy’s Business Accelerator package. Are you ready to start your growth journey?

For more advice and inspiration in business, and to find out about other e-books or our complimentary initial Skype meeting to review your business, sign up to our Growth Hack Bulletin.

How I can support you

My goal is to help you, as a business owner, to grow your business by getting the most value out of your three most valuable assets:

Your contacts/data
Your processes and systems
Yourself

Social media attracts previously unknown contacts to you, when you then make the most of your contacts/data you are in the best place possible to increase your revenue. When you have efficient, repeatable processes in your business, you reduce the cost of sales. Both of these give the business owner more head space to focus on growing their business.

The overall result is an increase in net profit.

I’m always happy to have a chat – you can contact me at julia.blake@blakeconsultants.co.uk

I have been working with CapsuleCRM for over 9 years and helped many clients increase revenue, reduce costs, make the most of their contacts, manage their pipeline and deliver great customer service.

I do this by designing and installing Capsule to meet the client’s needs, offering a bespoke CRM to suit their business requirements. Capsule really is a great solution for coaches, consultants and business owners and when it is integrated with Mailchimp and Xero you have really solid foundations in place to grow your business. Check out my YouTube videos which tell you more about the benefits of having Capsule and help you set yourself up.

To find out more or arrange a time to discuss how I can help you, please contact me.

Here’s to a great 2020!

Julia
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