I do #SocialMediaMarketing for about 13 small businesses. I keep my eye out on what others are posting and see a lot missed opportunities to reach more people with your message.
What makes a good business post?
What is your Message? Have a Good Title In this case:
The Anatomy of a Good Social Media Post for Businesses
What you need to include:
Use hashtags – but don’t over use them. They get obnoxious fast and make posts hard to read.
From Wikipedia:
A hashtag is a type of label or metadata tag used on social network and microblogging services which makes it easier for users to find messages with a specific theme or content. Users create and use hashtags by placing the hash character # in front of a word or unspaced phrase, either in the main text of a message or at the end. Searching for that hashtag will yield each message that has been tagged with it. A hashtag archive is consequently collected into a single stream under the same hashtag. For example, on the photo-sharing service Instagram, the hashtag #bluesky allows users to find all the posts that have been tagged using that hashtag.
Use an image – it brings your post to life. (Even if you’re not terribly photogenic, few people think they are.)
Tell Your Story Concisely and be interesting.
If you publish a post and no one interacts with it (views, comments or likes)– you are in what I call the Facebook death spiral. Facebook will think it is a boring post and it won’t show up in other people’s feed. It is my experience that future posts will be handicapped because Facebook thinks you’re boring.
Provide Links, preferably back to your own site.
This is called a back-end link. The more links to your website from external sites, the better Google and Bing will rate it. Social Media links are good sources of back end links.
Post at least weekly
If you visit a Facebook business page and there is no action, you wonder, “Are they still in business?”
Tag people and location
May be a little harder to do – but if you can tag people (usually with their permission) their contacts may see it – helping the post go viral. If you tag a location your post will show up when someone views that location’s page on Facebook.
Note – Facebook is #1 for social media but there are others. And since you’ve done all this work share it on other channels.
Instagram – owned by Facebook, it is a mobile, image-based platform. Really handy for some businesses. But since I’m not there I can’t do it for my clients. I wonder why restaurants or anywhere that can promote visually don’t use it more often. And link it to your Facebook page so it will show up there as well. You’ll be surprised how quickly you pick up followers.
Google My Business – a failure as a social network but extremely important for search engines. Posts on Google My Business, formerly called Google+ often end up on the first page for Google Searches. Make sure your Google My Business listing is correct and points to your working website.
Twitter – A lot of people are intimidated with Twitter, it is not terribly social but it does work, ask Donald Trump. If you’re not Donald Trump, Twitter is the best way to meet those people you really want to meet.
You can also take your info (such as this post) and create a blog (I love WordPress) and an email (I love MailChimp).
And you’ve got your Internet Marketing Covered.
And if you need help with your Social Media Marketing – you know who to call!
