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- Plan your strategy so that you achieve your goals!
It’s important to post with purpose. Before posting aimlessly put on your thinking cap and come up with a strategy for your social media. Think of the who, what, why, and how. Come up with several objectives and how to achieve them to meet your desired goals.
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- Treat every platform differently.
Every platform is different. Although they all exist to connect with others they have different features that make each platform unique. It’s important to educate yourself in knowing the in’s and out’s to each platform to know how you can best extend your reach and influence. Some things can be done best on Twitter while other things might be better if done through Facebook.
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- Know your demographic for each platform.
Your demographic is not going to be the same across all platforms. You will have a different demographic for each platform you choose to utilize. Use this fact to cater your content to these different demographics. On Instagram you might be trying reach a younger audience whereas on Facebook you will be reaching an older audience.
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- Stay organized, create a social media schedule.
Creating a social media schedule, whether it’s weekly or monthly, can help you carefully plan out what to post to, when to post, and where to post. This keeps things organized and easy to analyze at the end of the week or month. It’s helpful in helping you meet your mark.
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- Consider social media scheduling platforms.
Can’t keep up? It can be a daunting task to keep up with every single social media platform and posting on each platform at the peak times for your various demographics. The good news is that there are several social media scheduling platforms available to you. Hootsuite, Sprout, Hubspot are a few of the scheduling platforms you can utilize.
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- Be consistent.
Social media is changing daily. If you’re not posting and engaging daily you’re miss out on extending your reach. With ever changing algorithms it’s important to post consistently to be seen. If you’re not being seen having a social media platform is pointless and a waste of time. You don’t want your follower to forget you exist. Be present by posting consistently.
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- If at first you don’t succeed try again!
Things may not work. Actually there’s a big chance you fail at or mess up something. Keep note of what didn’t work and go from there. Eventually you will find out what works and be well on your way to carrying out your strategies and meeting your goals.
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- Create quality content.
Don’t post lackluster and bland content. The speed of social media is speedy. It can be easy to be lazy and post to just get information out. Pause for a second let your creative juices flow in order to post something that’s not only relevant and helpful but equally striking and entertaining.
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- Graphics are important.
People see pictures first! It’s scientifically proven. An attractive graphic is key when posting as that’s what your audience’s eyes will catch first. In most cases, the less wordy your post is the better. If you can create a graphic that includes your information even better!
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- Follow up with examining your insights and analytics. Utilize them.
Most social media platforms will provide you with insights and analytics for your accounts. Analyze and evaluate these. They will help you to learn more about your audience and help you learn what to do more of and when to do it. The insights and analytics don’t lie it one of the ways you measure your success.
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- Invest in yourself!
Don’t just invest your time into your social media, invest your money! Do what you can with the budget you’re given. Money can help you boost your posts and expand your exposure. Also look into Facebook and Instagram ads to attract a larger following.
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- Boost your exposure by learning tips and tricks.
There are many tips and tricks when it comes to trying to gain more exposure. Seek to learn a few tips and tricks that will give you a leg up on the competition. For example, posting a character such as “.” before a tag “@” on Twitter will help you to be seen be much more people. If you tweet “@oprah love this month’s O mag!” the only people who will see that tweet are those who follow Oprah and who follow you. By adding that character people who don’t follow you or Oprah have the chance to see it.
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- Partnerships are great tools.
It’s great knowing you’re not the only one out there trying to expand their reach. Look for a business or organization that you could partner with in sharing posts or doing collaborations with. This automatically expands your reach to their entire audience and in turn your partner gains a greater reach as well by having access to your audience.
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- Hashtags, hashtag, and then hashtag some more!
So maybe you don’t have that great of a following….. #sad. Hey it doesn’t have to be #sad. Using hashtag on every post help people to find you. So hashtag until you can’t hashtag no more! When you do this you’re expanding your reach and gaining more followers. #yay #goyou
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- Promote by using giveaways!
You have followers but they’re not quite engaging with your content as much as you’d like them to. You can stir them up by hosting a giveaway. People love free! Have people like, comment, follow, and tag their friends in order to win and then you will have instant interaction and engagement on your platform and it will give your followers something to be excited about.
Happy posting y’all!
Evangel University Social Media Communication Website 