While a tweet is definitely doable in 10 seconds flat, that doesn’t mean it’s serving you, or your business, to the best of the platform’s ability. Twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest can be some of your best business tools. They’re easy and (usually) free. To get the most out of them, it’s always worth spending a few extra seconds ensuring each and every tweet you send out, post you write, photo you upload or board you create serves its purpose (of having valuable stakeholders engage with you, your business and your ideas), fully.
I was inspired to write this month’s blog following a press release GWlegal and our new partner organisation Ingard co-distributed. The release, revealing the news that GWlegal has joined Ingard’s selected panel of conveyancers, was well received and shared widely, especially on Twitter – which is of course, fantastic and I am grateful. I did make one small observation though. Many who shared the release on Twitter failed to tag in @GWlegal and/or @IngardBroker. In doing so, that tweet was instantly restricted to how many users it could reach, resulting in less engagement, less impact and, importantly, less clicks to that users’ website.
The point of this column is not to criticise. We’re all pressed for time and auto social media scheduling tools are tempting to us all. Rather, I thought i’d take this opportunity to give my readers a little January social media refresher course. If you want to make your social media presence better than ever this New Year, it’s important to keep the following in mind.
#Hashtags
Hashtagging is the primary way people will find your tweets or posts. It’s basically the index of the social media world. Hashtags allow you to participate in existing conversations and have your posts and profile seen by relevant users who are already talking about that said topic. Alternatively, you can create your own hashtag. It may even catch on… #viral
Sharing posts
Social media shouldn’t be all about you and your company. Create meaningful relationships online by sharing the content of organisations you’d like to connect with. Comment on it too!
Liking posts
This one’s self-explanatory. If you share other users’ posts too often, it will drown out your own unique voice. It’s a balancing act. Instead, ‘like’ content that is relevant and inspiring to you and your followers.
Tagging relevant accounts
As discussed previously, tagging relevant users in your social media posts is invaluable. It will increase your reach, engagement levels and most likely see you gain new followers. You can tag users in the copy of your post or in the photograph or image.
Keeping lists
Twitter has an on-platform list function that allows you to monitor the activity of other users, publicly or privately. Scheduling and social media management tools such as Hootsuite go one step further and enable you to keep lists of users, hashtags, keywords and more. Lists can help you remember which users are relevant to you in terms of sharing, liking and tagging.
So, this January, I urge all my colleagues to fight feelings of complacency. Social media isn’t going anywhere in 2018 and, if you truly wish to market your business online, there is no use in cutting corners.
