Gotcha, don’t talk about myself. Is that your brilliant social media strategy?
Not exactly. What you’re looking for is balance. Make sure your followers enjoy receiving your updates because of their content, and I promise you that promotional updates will be received heartily.
A good rule of thumb is the 80-20 percentage. That means that while 20% of your posts are promotional, about 80% of your posts should be aimed directly at your followers. The content should be what they like, what they’re interested in, and basically, the reason they followed your social media pages in the first place.
The easiest way is to run a research about your followers:
- What do they post?
- What do they talk about with their friends?
- What aspect of your business is what attracted them?
The absolutely best way to know what your followers want, is to ask them. You can use several services to create interesting questionnaires or simply ask them on your social media channels.
Two easy-to-use systems to create questionnaires are:
- Google Forms – Free and easy to use, plus it saves results in a spreadsheet.
- Typeform – A super user friendly system that does so much more than normal forms.
Basically what all the above tips are all about is for you to LISTEN to your audience. Make sure you are not only talking but also hearing others, so that your social media efforts are really that, social.
Case Study
My client who’s a certified training center has all sorts of followers, from programmer nerds to graphic designing hipsters all the way to hardcore hardware techies.
This is by far one of my easiest client, since their followers are actual students who come into the center to take courses. Some are new and some return because of the great experience they’ve had.
Seeing them daily helps to have one-on-one conversations with them in front of the coffee machine, and ask them about their likes and interests.
What unifies them all is that they are all, more or less, tech savvy, and are mostly into social media. That makes interacting with them on social media a breeze, and finding content for them is even easier, using content aggregators like DrumUp, Muzli and others.
So listen up!
Perfect your social media strategy by:
- Listening to your followers and learning what they talk about.
- Asking them what they’re interested in using social media or replying to surveys.
- Making sure your content is fresh and interesting, and not repetitive promotional posts.
- Check out your competitors’ pages and see how they create high interaction.
Hope this will help you clean up your act. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!
