How to Stay Relevant on Social Media

Keeping your brand current in social media conversations is one of those tasks that just never ends; it’s the sort of thing that can’t just be crossed off of a monthly to-do list. Rather, keeping your brand relevant in the sm world is an ongoing challenge that requires you to continually ask yourself how and with what audience you’re communicating.

The brands that are popular now in social media didn’t get that way by chance. Someone came up with a strategy that caused the popularity of their brand to bloom and grow, and while each strategy naturally has it’s own set of goals, there are some universal actions taken by all these brands that can help you stay relevant no matter your goals. 

• The time to update is always. Whichever social site is the mainstay of your branding efforts, be sure to update your content continually and consistently, and keep in mind that each site is different. LinkedIn, for instance, should require at the most one post per day outside of normal job postings. The same holds true for Facebook. On the other hand, Pinterest and Instagram require a lot of content linked closely to the time of its posting. Twitter sits right in the middle—tweeting about five times a day should be about right. Stick to a schedule for updates–set reminders or consider automatic content updates! (Ask Us!)

• Engage the audience. Use your online social presence to talk with your followers, not at them. When you add content, ask what the viewer thinks. Engage followers in a  conversation that promotes a back-and-forth interaction, and answer questions soon and accurately to get the best results.

• Lead with your ideas. When an event becomes the topic of the day, be the first one who posts an opinion on it. Take a position—don’t ever try to be even-handed unless that’s the characteristic you’re going for in your campaigns.

• Understand your audience. Don’t switch topics on an audience. They have begun to follow you because you’re saying something of interest to them. If you switch topics, therefore, they’ll leave. Period. Understand that this tactic applies across all platforms of online social interests.

• Know your plan. It’s key to not just go online at random and post wherever you feel like posting. You may be surprised to find that the most popular places online, though seemingly casual, all have plans for engaging with their audiences! There’s a message going out, and it’s going to those specific online places where it will have the biggest impact. Can you say the same for your message? Do you know what your message is? Who do you want to reach out to? When? Where? How? And why?

Regardless of your strategy or goals, it’s important to keep the above tips in mind when engaging your audience with your brand through social media. People like consistency and feeling like they’ve been listened to. With a little planning and clarification of your plan on your brand’s side, you should be able to connect with your audience online and build your brand in a positive way.

Petals' List of Do's & Don'ts for Marketing on Facebook

With over one billion members, Facebook is hard to ignore. There are many features that make it useful for businesses and provide new opportunities. Having a Facebook page makes it easy for potential customers to find your business and interact with you. Businesses can answer questions and receive feedback from people who are interested in what you do. You can use it to establish yourself as an expert in your field and gain credibility. Furthermore, Facebook Insights enables you to see how people are reacting to your posts and therefore better understand your customers.

On average there are 1,500 potential stories someone could see on their newsfeed when they log in to Facebook. The algorithm Facebook uses to decide which of these the user sees is suitably complex and responds to various things they do in order to decide what’s best to show. This includes who or which pages they interact with most often, the popularity of a post amongst their friends and whether or not they have hidden similar posts in the past.

For businesses on Facebook this has meant that the number of people that see your posts has been restricted. In order to make money, Facebook emphasises its sponsored posts and you can pay to promote your page or individual posts to reach more people. Therefore, without using these ads, we need to work harder to stand out and appear in people’s newsfeeds.

Facebook also changes its algorithm every so often to show people more of the types of posts it determines they want to see. Negative feedback in the form of people reporting your posts as spam or hiding them from their newsfeed count against you and will make your posts visible to less people.

So how do you ensure your posts get seen? Here are some of our top tips:

Do’s

• Offer your Facebook fans something new to give them a good reason to like your page – whether that be an invite to an event, special promotions or discounts.
• Post consistently and regularly to help build up a relationship with fans.
• Ask questions, be conversational and gather feedback.
• Stay relevant and interesting by posting about topical issues, current events and news.
• Research your target audience and what sort of posts they like and react to.
• Post short, snappy updates and vary up your posts by using photos, videos, polls and links as well as just plain text.
• Ask discussion questions to get people talking about your posts – this is especially important when you’re posting your own content as you want people to discuss what you’re doing and it’s a useful way to receive feedback.
• Be aware of what times of the day your fans are most likely to be on Facebook and engage with your posts. This will vary depending on the type of business, but generally speaking the later in the day, the better.
• Check to see what your competitors are doing and how successful it is.

Dont’s

• Don’t simply ask people for likes and shares, make them want to engage and share by posting relevant, interesting things.
• Don’t overwhelm people with your updates. Find the right balance between how little and often you post so that you stay connected with your audience but don’t spam their newsfeeds.
• Don’t ignore customers that reach out to you on Facebook. Respond as quickly as you are able to when people ask questions on your page or send you a private message.
• Don’t post similar updates over and over again.