Amongst marketers, the word ‘optimisation’ usually brings to mind technical concepts such as SEO, conversion rates and automation techniques. But as a recent Business2Community article explains, the meaning behind the actual word is much simpler: to make the best of something that you already have.
This means optimisation should be a key consideration of all of your marketing efforts, including social media. By experimenting, measuring and improving, you can make your social media profiles even better, ensuring the best possible results. Here are some ways to optimise your social media channels:
Make sure profiles are fully completed
Your social media pages are likely to be one of the first places potential clients , partners or employees will look to find out more about you, so it’s essential to make the most of them by filling out every field in your ‘About’ sections. View this almost as a second website, including core information such as location, services, hours of operation, contact details, and links to your website and to other social accounts.
Keep user names consistent and take advantage of branded URLs
Help increase brand recognition and visibility by keeping all user names consistent across all social media channels. If your ideal name isn’t available, choose one that’s as close as possible and easy to remember. You should also customise your profile URLs on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, making it easier for people to find you.
‘Pin’ important or impressive content
Got an important event coming up? Just launched an amazing new service? Looking to drive more traffic to a high profile blog post on your website ? ‘Pinning’ posts to the top of your page ensures that they’ll be seen by more people, for longer. The flip side of this, of course, is not to ‘pin’ and update and then forget you’ve done so. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve visited Twitter profiles that have long-out-of-date content pinned to the top of their profile - often from companies or individuals who should know better!
Get the picture?
B2B clients - just like their B2C counterparts - are visual folk, and the power of visual content in the form of images and video is increasing by the day. According to a recent report by MDG Advertising, including images in your social media posts boosts views by a staggering 94%! So there’s no excuse not to get snap happy. And if you find it a hassle capturing images from articles, then uploading them to your social media posts here’s a top tip. There’s brilliant (if weirdly named!) Chrome extension that I use dozens of times every day called I’m A Gentleman, which makes adding images to your posts an absolute breeze. So give it a whirl and please do let me know if you find it as incredibly useful as I do!