As you can guess, there are some social media best practices that can be applied across all social networks. Consider the following questions when publishing any social media update, whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn.
- Have I included keywords? Search engines are taking cues from social media more and more, making it increasingly important to include appropriate keywords for your business and industry in your social media updates. This will make them even more searchable and help people find you and your content in search engines.
- Am I being engaging? Sure, social media is an awesome platform to promote your content and offers, but you also need to be social. Allocate some of the posts you publish purely to engaging with your fans and followers. Ask questions, respond to their comments, and stay involved.
- Am I including lead generation content? As a marketer, you need to prove the ROI of your social media engagement. If you’re not actively sprinkling in your lead generation content like webinars, downloadable ebooks, and other offers, you’ll surely miss the mark.
- Is my update valuable to my target audience? Every update you publish should provide value to the audience you want to reach. Don’t waste you and your fans/followers’ time with useless information. Share information that informs, engages, interests, and educates your target customer.
- Am I posting frequently enough? You need to make sure you’re regularly engaging your fans and followers with fresh content on a regular basis, or they won’t have a reason to come back and visit your account often. Acceptable posting frequency can vary from social network to social network. For example, you’ll find that you can get away with posting more on Twitter than on Facebook, given the shorter lifespan of a tweet compared to a Facebook post.