This comprehensive guide outlines the social media strategy marketing elements that best engage the audience.
When choosing social media strategy marketing options, you have to compete with lots of other content. Eye-catching visuals are very important – if your posts aren’t visually engaging, users are likely to just keep on scrolling.
Social media strategy marketing factors: how to be engaging
There are lots of ways to make your posts stand out visually. This guide lists the most important factors – as well as tips on how to generate leads from these posts.
Social media strategy marketing factors: Images
Images are one of the prime social media strategy marketing elements to use. Multiple studies show that images can increase engagements on social media posts. Tweets with photos receive an average 35% boost in retweets, while Facebook posts with posts receive a 37% increase in engagement.
Images can be great for visual storytelling (an image really can be worth a thousand words!). Before and after images are a great example of this. You could show just how effective your carpet cleaning company is with a before and after photo of a carpet. Alternatively, if you run a hairdressing business, you could show a before and after photo of someone’s hair to show off the work that you can do. Such images are great for building leads.
Some companies will find it easier to use images than others. If you run a tattoo studio or a jewellery making business, images could be great for showing off your work. If you run an accountancy business or an SEO agency, you might have to get more creative. Consider using photos and illustrations as metaphors for what your company can do. Don’t be afraid to use humour – this can definitely help to build engagements, from which you may be able to generate leads.
It’s important that images are still accompanied by text for added context. Try to use snappy captions – make them informative or humorous. In some cases, text can be added directly to the image, as is the case with promotional posters and memes. When adding text to an image, make sure that it looks professional and legible (for promotional image adverts, you may want to use a graphic designer).
A few golden rules for using images on social media:
- Make sure that the photo is good quality. A poor quality photo could reflect badly on your brand. When taking pictures of products, you may want to hire a professional product photographer.
- Always get permission from a client if you’re going to post a picture of them/their property online.
- Consider copyright when using other people’s images. Use original photos where possible (avoid generic stock images unless you’re using them humorously).
Social media strategy marketing factors: Infographics
Infographics are a type of image that incorporates stats – often as a graph or a storyboard and are a very engaging one of the social media strategy marketing elements. They can provide a lot of information in a small amount of space and can be effective at explaining it in an entertaining way. Studies show that infographics are 30x more likely to be read than plain text.
Infographics can be used to display lots of different stats about your business/industry. You can even use infographics to compare the stats of your product to another product. Alternatively, they could help to outline all the stages of your business process in a fun visual way. You could even use an infographic to show a timeline of your business or industry to show where it started and how it has evolved. You can find more information here on the different types of infographic.
You should hire a professional graphic designer when creating an infographic for your business – this will ensure that the graphic is engaging and good quality. Make sure to credit the person who made it. Be careful of sharing infographics made by other companies – it’s best to avoid sharing infographics made by rival companies so as to not trigger a copyright/trademark claim.
Social media strategy marketing factors: Videos
Video marketing is very effective as a social media strategy marketing element. Research shows that Tweets with videos receive 10x more engagements than those without, while videos on LinkedIn are 20x more likely to be shared.
Videos can be live-action, animated or a combination of the two. There are a few different types of video content used by businesses that can be effective at getting leads. These include:
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- Explainer/demo videos: these can be an opportunity to provide a detailed explanation of what your product is and how it works. This could be footage of an actor demonstrating your product or a screen capture of how to use software or a website with a voiceover tutorial over the top. Animations can be effective for explaining concepts through metaphors or for showing the mechanics behind a product (such as how an air purifier purifies the air).
- Behind-the-scenes videos: These videos offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how you make your product or how you conduct your service. Behind-the-scenes videos can be great at building trust and can help to show the work that goes into your business.
- Testimonial videos: You could dedicate a video to brief interviews with clients detailing their experience with your company. This need only be a few seconds with each client. Such videos are great for boosting credibility.
- Brand storytelling videos: These tend to be the typical video ‘adverts’ you see. The aim is to make your brand memorable by telling a story. This could incorporate actors or animation.
- Vlogs/webinars: These tend to be more basic videos – usually dedicated to providing non-promotional advice to clients by simply speaking into a camera. They can help to show your professionalism and knowledge as an expert in a more down-to-earth way.
Social media videos should be treated differently to videos on other platforms. In most cases, videos should not exceed two minutes in length. In most cases, the snappier the better – if you can get your message across in 15 seconds, by all means do it.
Always front-load your videos with engaging imagery – in most cases, you have about 2 seconds to grab people’s attention before they continue scrolling. A lot of social media videos start with a glimpse from the middle of the video. Alternatively, you could simply start with your most powerful imagery – motion clips and close-ups of facial expressions are great examples.
A lot of people have auto-play videos on mute, so don’t rely wholly on sound to grab people’s attention. Where possible try to use captions in case people are watching your video on mute.
Aside from when creating vlogs and webinars, you should always hire the help of professionals when creating video content. This could be a video production company or an animator. In some cases, it could also be worth hiring actors – which could include live actors or voice actors. Hiring this professional help will ensure that your video is high quality and effective.
Social media strategy marketing factors: Emojis
Think emojis are too informal for a business social media strategy marketing tool? Think again. Studies show that Facebook posts containing emojis have 33% more shares and 57% more interactions.
Emojis can help to convey extra emotion through your posts. They can grab people’s attention the same way that body language can – put a laughing face emoji in your post and people will want to know exactly what you’re laughing about.
Quite often emojis can simply serve as fun visual accompaniment for reinforcing what you’re saying. This could include adding a ☕ emoji to a post about selling coffee or a 🐶 emoji when advertising your dog-walking service.
All in all, emojis show you’re fun and friendly. They may not always be appropriate for certain types of post – when advertising funeral services or addressing complaints at your business, emojis are unlikely to be appropriate.
Social media strategy marketing factors: Hashtags
Hashtags can be small ways to convey extra information. On Twitter and Instagram, they can serve as tags, helping people to search for your posts. However, they can also help your posts to be more visually striking – on the likes of Twitter, hashtags are highlighted in blue. Research shows that Tweets with hashtags can have twice as many engagements.
Use hashtags to make certain important words stand out. Hashtags can be very effective on Twitter when used in a humorous context. They can also be used to show your support for causes or to link your content to hot button topics.
Social media strategy marketing factors: Capitals
Using capital letters, you can make certain information stand out. If you’re advertising a contest on social media, using a capitalised word like ‘WIN’ or ‘PRIZE’ can immediately help to draw people’s attention to your post.
Don’t capitalise all of the text in your post as it will seem as if you’re shouting and may come across informal. Instead, only capitalise one or two important words that are likely to grab people. Capitals, hashtags and emojis can often be used together to make otherwise dull text posts more fun.
Social media strategy marketing factors: Short text
Sometimes text alone can be effective. This is particularly the case with short, snappy text posts. In fact, on Facebook, the font size increases for posts that are under 35 characters – which can make them stand out more.
Questions are a great form of short text posts that may help to engage your followers. It’s worth using short text posts occasionally to add variety to your content if you mostly post images and videos.
