5 Steps to Create Quality Social Media Content

Post submitted by Aprel Downey.

Maintaining an active presence on social media is, in most cases, vital to the success of your business.

Proof?

People ages 35-49 (dubbed Generation X) spend almost 7 hours per week on social media.

Millennials, who come in second, spend just over 6 hours per week on social media.

Dig these stats? There’s plenty more where that came from.

5 Steps to Create Quality Social Media Content

The simple fact is your target customers have their attention placed squarely on social media and other online platforms for a large percentage of the time they’re awake.

They’re looking for opinions, guidance, and expert knowledge when seeking solutions to their problems.

Social media presents an opportunity for your business to be that guide and expert, openly and transparently.

As you share information with your audience on social media, they begin to trust you and, if you’re approaching the medium sensibly, you’ll build genuine relationships with past, present, and future customers.

That trust works its way into future sales down the road.

For these reasons, you have to do more than just show up on social media, post something, and walk away thinking you’re ahead of the game.

That’s a losing strategy.

What you post, how and when you post it, how personable your presence is, and how dedicated you are to having conversations with your customers all play an essential role in your social media game.

Below are five steps that will ensure you’re creating social media content that adds value, instead of turning people away.

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26 Awesome Social Media Statistics to Back Up Your Strategy

Post submitted by Mandy Edwards.

“Social media is not just a spoke on the wheel of marketing. It’s becoming the way entire bicycles are built.” – Ryan Lilly

I came across the above quote and thought it to be a great illustration of how social media is becoming so deeply ingrained in marketing strategies across the board.

Of course, any effective social media strategy is founded in research, analytics, and statistics — consumer behaviors, interests, patterns, demographics, and so on.

26 Social Media Statistics to Back Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Being a fan of data and statistics, I love finding different bits of information among the common data we social media marketing professionals regularly use.

Some bits are eye-opening, some are really odd.

Some make you sit and really evaluate what your actual usage behavior is, while some just make you laugh.

Below are 26 social media marketing statistics I’ve found while doing client research and putting together my weekly Marketing Fact Friday series (you can follow on Instagram) that will help advise your social media strategy.

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Why Abandoning Facebook Is A Horrible Idea for Your Business

Over the past year or two, there’s been no shortage of marketers and brands complaining about “the ineffectiveness of Facebook”.

  • We’ve read post after post by marketers and business owners expressing the trouble they’re having with updates receiving less exposure (reach).
 Why Abandoning Facebook Is A Horrible Idea

The frustrations are understandable, as Facebook is perceived to have shifted from a platform that gave almost limitless access to your audience for no charge to a platform that gives limited access to your audience unless you pay.

So, what gives?

  • Is Facebook really pulling the rug out from underneath businesses and marketers?
  • Are there legitimate reasons for abandoning Facebook?

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You Have A Content and Branding Problem, Not An Algorithm Problem

How many times have you come across complaints about Facebook or, lately, Instagram changing their algorithm?

A lot of marketers get in an upheaval over the slightest change and start scurrying around trying to figure out the next tactic to “game” the algorithm.

Granted, I understand the frustrations…playing the guessing game with these guys isn’t the most fun, especially since creating unique content is so labor-intensive.

You Have A Content and Branding Problem Not An Algorithm Problem

Of course you want your investment to pay off and that’s more difficult if you’re not sure how the algorithm is treating content.

But take a step back and question whether the algorithm is genuinely the troublemaker in this scenario.

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How Often Should You Post on Instagram?

The age-old social media question…

“How often should I post to maximize engagement?”

With Instagram continuing to make its way into the mainstream portfolio of every marketer, I’ve seen this question popping up more and more.

How Often Should You Post on Instagram?

The answer for Instagram is the same as it was in the past, when people asked about how many times to post to Facebook and Twitter.

Finding the optimal post frequency and maximizing engagement has always come down to one simple behavior: Test. Test. Test.

And when you’ve had enough of testing, test again.

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