The best time to post online is when the people you want to reach are present. This sounds obvious but how many of us think first about what we want to say and second about who is listening and when they are likely to be listening?
What is the best content to post?
The best content to post is content that the people you are trying to reach find interesting. Again this sounds obvious, yet how many of us publish about us and what we want to say without first thinking about those we want to reach and what they want to hear?
If we talk when those we want to reach are not present we are only talking to ourselves. If we only speak about ourselves we become uninteresting to those we wish to reach.
When it comes to face-to-face social interaction, we instinctively know these things. We speak when we are with people we value and when we speak we try to talk about what people find interesting. As a rule of thumb when speaking to someone else we try to make sure we talk about something of common interest; we add value to the other person; we give first.
When we publish to social media we should remember this. It's SOCIAL media, not push media. We need to consider that what we share is of interest to the people we wish to reach. This includes the times when we do deliberately advertise.
Social media companies are aware of this. In fact, they have built visibility algorithms around it. So, the more people engage with your posts, advertising or otherwise, the more that what you say will be seen.
The challenge is that we do not have the benefit of body language when publishing to social media. Body language is useful as it provides signals of interest, or the lack of it. It helps us build or modify the conversation to keep the person we are speaking to interested.
With social media we don’t have body language but we do have likes, comments and shares. The amount of engagement your posts receive is a form of social media body language. If you’re not getting any kind of engagement you’ll almost certainly find that you are publishing at a time that no-one is present, you are saying things that are of no interest to those you wish to reach, or both!
What to do and when to do it?
- Find out when people use each social media channel (a quick Google search).
- Check the profile of the people that use your chosen channels.
- Look at the posts of those you seek to engage and see what interests them.
- Publish content that is relevant to both their and your interests.
- Follow them and engage in a ‘give to get’ way to win their attention and admiration.
- When they follow you, thank them.
- Build trust over time by sharing a mix of posts that include expert articles, what you are doing, what others are saying about you and your business.
- Don’t forget to genuinely engage with others through likes, shares and comments. After all, it is SOCIAL media.
For a franchise brand, it can be a challenge to get the right tone of voice across networks. This is the minimum requirement for effective engagement. For this reason we have built and launched SocialHANDLER.online. It is a system that enables the Head Office, and/or their agencies, to provide social media posts and campaigns as a service to each franchisee in their network.
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/socialhandleronline/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/social_handler
For your free demo please:
Email nick@socialhandler.online or call 023 8027 5710