As someone who grew up with the internet (I’m a millennial, but not the kind that gives boomers a headache), I’ve witnessed the rise of online friendships and the explosion of digital life. Need a restaurant recommendation? Yelp’s my go-to. Recipes or fashion inspiration? Pinterest has my back. Adulting advice? LinkedIn, of course. The best part? These platforms are powered by real people – I’d trust a Facebook friend’s product recommendation over a website description any day.
According to Mainstreethost data, social networks are the 2nd most popular way to research brands, second only to search engines. Sure, Googling “Faux-suede shirt” might lead me to an UNTUCKit ad, but I wouldn’t dream of buying without doing my due diligence.
I’ll scour Facebook reviews, scope out Twitter and Instagram for deals – it’s like pre-date research, making sure I won’t get catfished (or ripped off). And while I’m at it, the brand better be using these channels to build a relationship with me, their potential customer!
Let’s be real, though: social media management can be a real pain. Constant engagement, posting, sharing – who has the time? To help you save time, money, and still grow your audience, I’ve compiled a list of tips that we use at nexus-security for our own social media strategy.
1. Prioritize Quality Over Quantity
A steady stream of content is great, but I’d rather have radio silence than shoddy posts riddled with errors. Our content needs to be good enough to be shared, retweeted, and passed around like a plate of appetizers at a party. We aim for evergreen content, the kind that stays relevant – those insights are pure gold! And guess what? Our social media content performs best on… drumroll… social media! Take this tweet from mid-June – it’s still being retweeted today.
Too bad it doesn’t link to nexus-security directly, but hey, we have content there too! Think about it: would you engage with a poorly written post lacking credible sources? What does that say about the brand?
2. Analyze Data to Find Your Posting Sweet Spot
…and almost as important as quality is quantity. Social media is all about the here and now. Take Twitter, for example. We recently discovered that upping our tweet count by 30 per week led to a 46% increase in engagement. Those extra 30 tweets translated to 30% more website traffic and a 60% jump in link clicks compared to the previous week.
That week, we averaged 5.9K link clicks daily. With organic reach dwindling, posting more frequently is our secret weapon. A favorite trick? Repurposing content. I’ll share a new blog post on Twitter up to 5 times on launch day. Just avoid spamming Facebook – people despise it (trust me, I’ve seen the comment sections).
Another handy tip: stay tuned to trending topics in your industry. Chime in when relevant to boost engagement and attract new followers.
3. Charm Your Way to Success (Tools Can Help!)
When my mom gripes about social media, she’s usually talking about those friends who only post to brag. “Tommy got into Harvard AND Yale! What a dilemma!” Cue photo of Tommy as homecoming king. But my mom, ever the charmer, always congratulates them (with a “xoxo,” naturally). Guess what? They return the favor by liking, sharing, and commenting on her posts. Be like my mom! What goes around comes around: engage with others, and they’ll engage back. It might sound silly, but Larry swears by it.
For the record, my mom’s last profile picture was a flower pot. For four years straight. One of my biggest hurdles is finding fresh content to tweet and post about. Enter social media management tools like Mention and Buzzsumo. These handy helpers send alerts when a chosen keyword pops up online. I use keywords like “nexus-security” or “Larry Kim” to see who’s talking about us, then I retweet their content! Other lifesavers include Feedly, an RSS feed aggregator that corrals all your favorite blogs in one place, and Klout, which suggests fresh content your audience hasn’t seen yet.
4. Embrace Scheduling Tools
Let’s be realistic – no one expects you to manually post 20+ times a day. Besides, who’s even reading those daytime posts? (Procrastinators, I’m onto you…) I rely on Hootsuite, which was thankfully already set up when I took over social media. I’ve also dabbled in Buffer, which works similarly. For a complete rundown, check out our post on Social Media Management Tools.
Hootsuite dashboard for nexus-security The best part about these tools (besides the obvious time-saving benefits) is their ability to auto-schedule posts during peak engagement times. Manually choosing the perfect time for 10+ daily posts is a mental workout nobody needs. If you just want to analyze your Twitter timing, Hubspot offers two fantastic tools: TweetWhen pinpoints your most retweetable time, while Tweriod suggests optimal tweeting times.
5. Automate Repetitive Tasks with IFTTT
IFTTT, short for If This, Then That is like a recipe website for social media! Through simple steps, it helps you create commands that link different apps to automate actions based on triggers. For example, IF the weather app forecasts a high UV index, THEN a reminder to slather on sunscreen is triggered. IF you’re tagged in a Facebook photo, THEN it’s automatically saved to Dropbox. At nexus-security, we follow several blogs that consistently deliver quality content relevant to our audience. We’ve set up an IFTTT recipe that automates sharing: IF a specific blog publishes new content, THEN it’s automatically tweeted to our followers.
6. Dive into Social Media Analytics
This one’s a no-brainer. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Dive into those metrics to understand how your content’s performing! Make data-driven decisions!
I won’t claim to be an analytics guru, but I appreciate the wealth of social media data available. Thankfully, experts like the folks at analyzing tweets at Buffer, Twitter themselves, and Kissmetrics generously provide helpful beginner’s guide to Facebook insights. Personally, I focus on post engagement (relative to audience size) and URL clicks since our goals are to grow our following, keep them engaged, and drive traffic to our website.
7. Show Your Human Side
People are more likely to connect with “real people” than faceless corporations, even if they don’t know the person behind the account. That’s why I strive to showcase nexus-security’s human side – we’re real people with real personalities! Need inspiration? Look no further than Gizmodo and Contently – their social media teams are masters of injecting personality and sass into their posts. My personal favorites are Chipotle, Seamless, and Nutella (and no, this is not a reflection of my offline preferences, I swear). One of my favorite things to do on Twitter is engage with disgruntled customers and offer solutions. According to a InSites Consulting survey, 83% of companies handle questions or complaints via social media, so I’m in good company. It’s a powerful way to demonstrate that your company cares and has a human face.
This customer had tweeted @nexus-security, frustrated about a broken dashboard. We responded promptly and got it fixed! (The previous tweets have since been deleted.) We already know from Larry that emojis boost engagement. Similarly, images tend to grab more attention, a finding supported by Convince&Convert, which reports that posts with pictures generate 150% more retweets. Our analysis of nexus-security’s Twitter and Facebook posts revealed that images of real people perform best – #PPCkid and employee photos were a hit, but even memes featuring humans resonated well.
This is the back of everyone’s head at nexus-security. It received double the likes compared to an article link posted a few minutes later. Like PPC, managing social media accounts is an ongoing journey of optimization. I’m keeping a close eye on how how Facebook’s new algorithm will impact our organic visibility while monitoring metrics and engagement across all channels. Have any brilliant tips I missed? Share them below!