Four tips to stand out on social media
Photo by Marina Claire Photography courtesy of Modern CLE.
The old saying “if you build it, they will come,” may have once been pertinent to a business strategy before the internet, but when it comes to scaling in 2019, it couldn’t be farther from reality. In the decade or so since social media for businesses has mainstreamed, most of us have come to discover that to do it well and to see it affect your bottom line positively, you have to make consistent, dedicated, and strategic effort.
Now with hundreds of millions of users – even billions on Facebook – the social space is more congested than ever. How do you get your brand to stand out amongst the crowd? Here are a few guidelines you can implement right now that I shared with the audience at Behind the Story with Modern CLE to help get you started.
Four tips to stand out on social media
1.) Have a strong sense of brand.
This is beyond just a logo, but who you are, what you look like, what you are trying to say and how you say it. Standing out on social media is an art and a science, and your brand falls into the art category. What does that look like? Beyond just a logo, have a website to capture leads and emails beyond your social media followers. Make sure that website like your social channels has a consistent voice, the same color palettes,
A brilliant way to help you illustrate your brand is to have quality photography. Quality content is often Save the amateur photos and videos for your Instagram Stories, and view your feed as more of a portfolio or catalog. Schedule a quarterly photo shoot and capture three months worth of high-quality images and video for your social media channels. The rest of your posts can be filled in with user-generated content, your own social media graphics you’ve designed, and so forth. You’ll want to create an aesthetic that is true to your brand as well as shows a rhythm that your audience can anticipate. A great way to do this is stick with a handful of conversation topics (I’d suggest no more than five). For example, on the FACTEUR feed, we focus primarily on 1. offering tips, 2. featuring our clients, 3. sharing behind-the-scenes content of our studio, 4. revealing the latest marketing news, 5. sharing content we find to be inspirational to us in the moment. You won’t see a curveball post of what we are having for lunch, unless it ties back to one of these topics (like lunch at a client’s restaurant, behind-the-scenes of a team meeting, etc).
2. Make a date with your audience.
This next tip is more behind-the-scenes, but it’s one of the most important: be consistent on the platforms you choose to communicate. Spend time every week to schedule content for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Be sure are you are scheduling at the optimal time based on your analytics, and try to always sign off with a call to action. Be sure the times that you are scheduling are times you are available to engage, as well. Algorithms favor responsiveness, so don’t just post and disappear. In general, people are on social media during hours outside of the work day, but not the weekend. So think lunchtime and evenings, but check your own analytics to determine when your audience is most likely to see your content and engage with it to help you stand out. Every Monday at @facteurpr on Instagram, we do a Monday Q+A on Stories. Our followers have come to expect this dialogue from us, and if we miss a Monday or post late, we now hear about it! Need some ideas on what to post? Check out our content calendar workbooks.
“Instagram business accounts that posted up to 10 segments on Stories each day earned twice as many impressions than those that didn’t post on Stories at all.”
3. Be real.
The best place I can tell you to exercise this is on Stories. Forbes recently revealed that Instagram business accounts that posted up to 10 segments on Stories each day earned twice as many impressions than those that didn’t post on Stories at all.Furthermore, engagement is higher on Stories than the news feed, meaning brands are more likely to see action taken – likes, emoji drops, or DMs – if they post on Stories v. the newsfeed. (Stories alone has 400 million daily users!) Being at the top of the news feed with your Stories is prime real estate, and you want to keep it, so try to post on Stories often. Plus, video is the most consumed content type and this trend isn’t going away anytime soon. I think we’re going to see more for IGTV, too. Better yet, make a date with your audience and do an IGTV or Stories the same time each day or week. Similarly, show your face on Stories and on your feed as often as able. People want to know who you are, not just what you are selling. Plus photos of faces are 40% more liked than photos without faces. Audiences like relatability and vulnerability, and it’s great to do that in your photos as well as captions.
4.) Spend your money wisely.
Social media is becoming more pay-to-play, and even with Instagram’s latest algorithm shift back to a more chronological feed, we’re still finding only about 5% of anyone’s followers seeing the content that they post. My favorite avenue to advertise on is Instagram Stories. We already know the engagement rate is higher there, and with an ad, you get the coveted Swipe Up button. This is a great way to spend any quarterly ad dollars.
Another great way to spend any quarterly ad dollars is to partner with micro influencers and community members over a period of time vs. for a singular post. View these collaborations as long-lasting relationships versus simply “sponsored” opportunities. This is a great way to build an influential ambassadorship, support other business owners, and really see the long-term value of your efforts.
What do you think of these tips? Any you’d like to share? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!