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Opinion | Five tips on how post

Knowing and Understanding Your Audience

Starting a conversation without knowing who you’re talking to can lead you down the wrong path. The same is crucial when making a post on social media; understanding your audience’s preferences, interests, and their online behavior will determine how your content gets received. Like an artisan choosing the right materials to design a masterpiece, your content must align with what your audience yearn for.

The trivial things matter most from the time your audience are most active online, to the topics they most engage with. Keep these factors in mind, as they will set the tone and dictate the nature of your posts. Sure, it might be a little tricky at the start, but once you get these details down pat, creating engaging posts becomes somewhat second nature.

Data analytics tools make this easy. Facebook’s Page Insights or Twitter’s analytics page offers detailed data about your followers and their activity. These platforms break down the metrics in a digestible format so that even novice users can easily interpret them.

Different organisations, for instance, use different strategies based on their target audience. A company targeting youth, like Red Bull, would adopt a more vibrant, upbeat style with lots of visuals and engaging content. On the other hand, a professional service firm like Ernst & Young would maintain a formal conversational tone, focusing on sharing information and thought leadership pieces.

• Review your existing audience’s demographic characteristics—age, location preference, etc.
• Uncover popular subjects and formats among your user base through analysis tools.
• Refine your content strategy by monitoring engagement levels on your previous posts.
• Remember the goal here is to attract, engage, and retain your audience.
• Implement necessary changes based on insights from the analysis.
• Analyse competitor profiling for comparison and improvement.

Content Creation: Quality Over Quantity

The internet is inundated with millions of posts per day, but only a select few create the impact intended. The reason? Quality content rules over quantity straightforwardly. It’s not about how much you post, but what you post. Your audience will value insightful, engaging, and useful content.

While it is necessary to update your social media pages regularly, don’t fall into the trap of thoughtless posting. Each communication represents your brand, reflects your brand values, and therefore must be well thought out. A piece of content will perform incredibly well if it’s relatable, shareable, fulfills user intent, or solves a problem for the reader.

Quality content also helps in building and increasing organic reach. How? Well, most social media algorithms prioritize displaying quality content that stimulates interactions and meaningful conversations among users. So the next time you feel the pressure to post something right away, take a step back and reflect on whether your shortlist matches up on these parameters.

Nike has mastered the art of quality-over-quantity. Instead of bombarding their followers with daily posts, they carefully craft impactful content in line with their brand image and targeting their audience effectively.

• Understand that flooding your timelines with posts can lead to reduced engagement.
• Approach your topics creatively—find new angles, interesting facts, or personal stories.
• Curate content that aligns with your brand’s personality and values.
• Make sure every post is working towards fulfilling a specific goal.
• Create an editorial calendar to plan your posts and manage your content strategy.
• Monitor engagement levels and adapt your strategy accordingly.

#Goals: Setting Post Objectives

Every post on social media should serve a purpose. Whether it’s boosting engagement, increasing followers, promoting a product, or driving traffic to your website, clear goals must drive each post. More often than not, the objective of a post is directly connected with your broader business strategy.

For example, if you’re launching a new product, your posts should generate buzz around it. If you’re trying to position yourself as an industry expert, then content that showcases your knowledge will be valuable. Setting clear objectives for each post will guide your content creation process and help you assess how well the content is performing against defined metrics.

However, defining objectives is just one part of the equation – measuring their success is equally important. Use analytical tools provided by various social media platforms to gauge whether your posts have hit their targets.

Apple, for instance, is an excellent example where every post serves a unique purpose within their broader brand strategy. They use their social media channels mainly for product launches and announcements, and their subsequent posts typically elaborate on the product features.

• Clearly define what each post seeks to achieve; engagement, brand awareness, conversions, etc.
• Tailor your content based on the defined goal of the post.
• Monitor how well your post performs relative to its objective.
• Realize that the objective may not directly be sales but something that contributes to it like creating buzz or brand recognition.
• Revise your strategy if a post doesn’t meet its defined objective.
• Understand that content success objectiveness can change based on what you’re trying to achieve.

Appealing Visuals: Catching Attention

In a world where information overload is increasingly prevalent, catching and maintaining someone’s attention becomes more challenging. And this is where visuals enter — they are the game-changers in your social media posts’ effectiveness.

With images, infographics, videos, GIFs, cinemagraphs, the options for incorporating visual elements into your social media offerings are almost endless. These elements add an element of attraction to your posts and therefore, increase leads, shares, and engagement rates.

Keep in mind the nature of the platter at hand, though: what works for Pinterest may not work well on LinkedIn. Each platform has a set of technical specifications for images and videos, from formats to dimensions. Avoid stretching or cropping by adhering to these specifications; otherwise, you might disjoint the overall look and message of your assets.

GoPro is a prime example of effectively utilizing images and videos to appeal to its audience, showcasing high-quality visuals taken with their action cameras.

• Use attractive, relevant images, videos or infographics in your posts.
• Tailor visuals according to the specific social media platforms’ guidelines and expectations.
• Ensure visuals align with your brand’s image and objective of the post.
• Optimise images for mobile viewing as most social media usage occurs on mobile devices.
• Experiment with different types of visual content such as infographics, GIFs, videos, etc.
• Understand that visuals can help increase engagement and make content more shareable.

Interacting with Your Audience

Social media isn’t just a one-way street. It’s an interactive platform meant for two-way communication to occur. Interacting with your followers is not only necessary but also beneficial as it increases post engagement, develops relationships, and is an opportunity to provide excellent customer service.

You can interact with your audience in different ways: respond to comments on your posts, react to direct messages, or even comment on their posts. Engaging with them makes them feel acknowledged and valued. It weighs beyond just building brand loyalty; you see, when you interact with your customers, they’re most likely to recommend you to their peers.

Remember, everyone viral post that trends the internet starts somewhere. If one person shares your material and their networks do the same, it could lead to a domino effect. But first, they have to deem it worthy—it has to resonate with them. When you engage with them, you continually place your brand in their radar.

A company like Wendy’s does this exceptionally well. Not only do they regularly engage with their customers, but they also utilize humor in their conversations, which has been received very well by their followers.

• Engage positively with followers by responding timely and effectively to feedback and inquiries.
• Create interactive content such as polls and questions to encourage user participation.
• Acknowledge followers who frequently engage with your brand.
• Host chats or live sessions to facilitate real-time interactions.
• Personalize interaction to make customers feel valued and understood.
• Moderate your social platforms to maintain decorum and manage negative comments professionally.

By following these tips, you’ll be set to create effective and engaging social media posts catered to your targeted audience. Remember to emphasize knowing your audience, creating quality content, setting objectives, using appealing visuals, and interacting with your audience. Happy Posting!