How to Dominate the Web in 2015 through Social Media
Do you want to improve your position in the search engines? Do you want to get more traffic to your website in 2015? Social media is one of your best tools to propel your business on the web.
About a decade ago, only giant businesses could afford to get noticed on the internet. Yahoo and other websites were making all the monies from high-end advertisers. But things changed radically from the 2000s. Social Media was born. It immediately leveled the playing field and caused colossal changes to the formula for succeeding on the internet. In this article, I will point out 5 key tips for dominating the internet through social media.
But first, what is social media? I like this definition by Dr. Boateng which states that “social media are Web 2.0 tools and applications which enable interaction, content creation and sharing, inter-networking and other means of collaboration” (Boateng, 2013). Dr. Boateng further explains that social media has turned users into Proactive Consumers who not just look for information but also Comment, Share and Interact. Now, those are some key advantages of social media; the fact that, you could easily get “Apostles” to start circulating your brand for free!
By now, I believe you know how important social media is and why there is the need to master how to make it work on your behalf. I’m not going to bore you with a litany of statistics to buttress the growing importance of social media. In these ensuing paragraphs, I’ll just go straight to the 5 tips which will guide your social media activities leading to internet domination in 2015.
The Top 5 Social Media Tips:
- 1. Define S.M.A.R.T Goals & Objectives for your brand or business
Friend, don’t follow the crowd. You’ve got to write down what exactly you want to use social media for. Perhaps you want to increase sales revenue, increase your market share or create more awareness for your brand. Whatever your goal, just remember that, it must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
- 2. Use different Approaches for different social media platforms and market segments
Don’t rely on a “one-for-all” social media strategy. It will fail. First, you need to understand how each platform works then you make the most out of it.
Facebook for instance provides a lot of “Insight” into their Pages. Take advantage of this.
Facebook Insight – Overview
Facebook Insight – Posts
The Posts tab shows you when (time of the day) your page users are most engaged on your page and which type of posts are doing well.
- 3. Social Media is more than just technology, it is more of Anthropology!
One grave mistake some businesses make on social media platforms is that, they often forget that social media is Social + Media. The fact that your website is about Latest Jobs in Ghana, Jobs in Nigeria or even Jobs in Kumasi does not mean that you have to post only on Jobs. You’ve got to be creative! Spice things up with some popular stories or photo uploads. Something like this:
With the caption: “The smile on my face doesn’t mean everything is perfect.
It means I appreciate what I have and what God has blessed me with!”
- 4. Pay Special Attention to Sharing of your content
Some of you might have heard this over and over that “if content creation is king, then content sharing is queen”. Please don’t under-estimate this.
One of the tools I will personally recommend is to use Dlvr.It. I know many of you have heard or used it before but hey, there’s more to it than just using the free version to automatically share your content on Facebook, Twitter etc. Upgrade to the paid option and get the real benefits. You can share on your company LinkedIn pages, GooglePlus pages etc which are not part of the free option. Besides, you can customize how your posts are shared on the various social media platforms. Remember that all the platforms are different and different tactics need to be deployed across each.
Facebook for instance has been on a campaign to make your regular posts on your page reach as few people as possible. And if you use the free option of the sharing tools, it is even worse. But using the paid option and successfully customizing it could be the miracle you need.
At one point, posts shared by dlvr.it on one of my Facebook pages attracted just 170 post reach on the average for a page of about 16,000 Likes. After upgrading and fully customizing the deliveries, we now get 450 post reach averagely and some times over 1200 post reach.
Pay special attention to the “Posted by dlvr.it” at the top.
- 5. Engagement and Interaction are Key
I’ve heard someone says it is understood that Lady Gaga administers her Twitter page herself and she’s very engaging. It’s not surprising then that she keeps setting major milestones in terms of number of Twitter follows.
You need a solid team of vibrant and young guys to help you prosecute this tactic. For one thing is clear, social media folks expect you to respond to their enquires in not more than 24 hours. On social media platforms, failure to interact might cause you more than the bargain.
Conclusion
Whether you run an article directory, a classified website in Ghana or you are a top voice artist, you’ve got to have a clear plan of action for social media. You’ve got to use customized approaches for each social media platform and you’ve got to remember that social media is more of Anthropology than technology. Also, you’ve got to pay special attention to Sharing of content and finally, you’ve got to engage and interact with your audience.
Once you do all these well, your content will reach places that you could never have dreamed of and you will be publicized beyond imagination in 2015.
Take note however that competition on the internet is very keen and only consistent efforts backed by the “right” information and patience guarantee success.