Five Tips for Making Social Media Posts More Effective

Social media makes up a huge part of your business’ web marketing strategy…or at least it should do by this stage in time! The power of social media hasn’t been much of a secret for years and it’s becoming more and more obvious by the day just how much potential it holds for the canny marketer.    Even the casual hobbyist can take his or her website to the next level by getting it right with their social media efforts, which of course begs the all-important question:How can I make sure that every last one of my social media posts is as effective as it can be?Limit Self-PromotionYou need to engage your readers and you also need to tell them how great you are – you also need to do this without getting carried away with self-promotion. What this means is getting well and truly stuck into conversations and sparking discussion as much as you can, limiting your promotional spiel to a maximum of about 10% of your input. When a social media post of any kind comes across as a simple marketing ploy, it isn’t taken any more seriously than any other ad banner your readers will have seen a million times already that day.Appeal to EmotionSocial media is not…repeat NOT…the place for robotic and heartless posts that could have been scripted by any automated text generator. There’s really no better platform upon which to appeal to your audience’s emotions and trigger a powerful response. Make them laugh, cry or in any way feel something and whatever it is you’re trying to say will have a much bigger impact.Cutting-Edge ContentCommenting on yesterday’s news or reprinting the headline of last week will earn you big yawns and little more. Readers are, at least in about 99.99% of cases, interested in what’s current and on the cutting-edge of whatever it is they’re interested in. Provide this in your posts and they’ll be putty in your hands – fail to do so and they’ll find someone that will.Try Your Hand at HumourSocial media is used for a lot of things, but for the most part it’s where people turn for something of a pick-me-up or to share shiny-happy things with other people. As such, it’s usually safe to say that if you manage to make your readers laugh, smile or even just smirk a little, there’s a much bigger chance they’ll share it with others. They’re just as keen to make their contacts laugh as you are – there’s no better way of creating a sharable and memorable post than with good humour…just be sure to run your jokes by a few of your real-life contacts first!Revisit Old IdeasLast up, if there’s really not much to talk about in your niche right now, delve into the past and bring up a subject, post, event, product or anything else you can think of that was a storming success the first time around. If you can get your audience to at least reminisce about something relevant, they’re still focused on your niche and less likely to forget about you!