How Can I Improve my Social Media Impact?

Welcome to The Social Lab! This blog will not only help you navigate your personal social media, but also investigate marketing trends and examples of great social media work. Do you have something we should talk about? Make sure to send us an email or contact us on social media.

So you have created a social media account, and you are ready to change the world. You create content on a regular basis, and you even spend $100 a month on a program that promises more followers. Still, at the end of the month, you are feeling like your social media accounts could have much more impact. So how can you become more powerful on social media? First of all, what does impact really mean?

im·pact

noun

ˈimˌpakt/

have a strong effect on someone or something.

When it comes to impact for social media, this includes the level of brand awareness and engagement you are getting. While you can definitely improve your impact through paid media campaigns, it is also possible to do it naturally. Why is it so important to improve your impact organically? The rise of bots and APIs have culminated in a lot of "get rich quick" type schemes that will result in a drastic rise in vanity statistics, like followers. While there is definitely a small place for online programs, especially when it comes to organization, there is not a place for utilizing bots to engage, rather than doing it yourself.

If you are willing to put in the work, here are four easy ways to improve the level of engagement and awareness you are generating from you content.

Utilize Multimedia

The copy or text of a post is important, but utilizing photos, GIFS, and videos are incredibly meaningful. Using these in your posts will result in more impressions and engagement. Furthermore, video is continuing to show that it is the future of social media and is very useful in paid media campaigns. In fact, videos can result in cheap, but effective Facebook advertising. As you can see in figure 1, tweets with images received 150% more retweets. Now that images don't count against your character limit, it is even more imperative to include multimedia in your social media posts.

Engage with Others

Social media is a two-way street. You can't just post content and expect everyone to like what you put out there. Instead, engage with people that post content that you enjoy. Talk about how great their posts are, like their posts, or even share/retweet them. They may in turn like your profile and begin engaging with you. This is where the hard work comes in. Why not search for content that is applicable to your own, and then take the time to engage with that content? Social media is increasingly becoming a place where people are entirely too selfish, so try to remember the essence of social media, which is creating relationships.

Optimize your Profile

Do all of your social media platforms have a bio? Proper profile and header image? Do you have a link for your website? Many people get so caught up in posting, that they never make sure that their "house" or profile is clean and engaging. This step may seem way to simple to really care about, but everyone now has a social media account, so it's important to stand out with a clean and professional account.

Hashtags

Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and many other platforms pretty much run on hashtags. Make sure to use hashtags that are relevant to your profile and the post itself. It is also important to remember that not all social media platforms behave the same way when it comes to hashtags. Here is a breakdown of how many you should use.

- Instagram = 25-30 hashtags in the first comment sections (very important)

- Twitter = 2-3 hashtags

- Tumblr = 5 tags

Conclusion

We all want to improve the level of impact we have on social media, but we also need to make sure to go about it the right way. There are many online programs and API's that promise drastic rises in followers or engagement, but the fact is that only organic social media work will result in authentic impact. While it may take more time to personally engage with others, optimize your profile, create great content, and utilize hashtags, it is well worth it in the end.

Can you think of more tips for improving social media brand awareness? Comment below or email us today.