Quick Tips to Augment Your Social Media Efforts

We developed this summary of quick tips and information to help you maximize your social media efforts.  Remember to keep these things in mind when developing your content and posting.

Use Hashtags to Double Your Engagement Rate

Using hashtags on Twitter can double your engagement rate. On other networks like Pinterest, they work well for categorizing your content. And on Instagram… well… you can use a lot of them to help your followers find your content.

Find trending hashtags with:

• Twitonomy
• me
• What The Trend
• RiteTag

Use Images, Memes, And Animated GIFs to Increase Shares and Clickthroughs

Tweets with images get 18% more click-throughs than those without. And tweets with animated GIFs get 167% more click-throughs than tweets with images. Memes bring humor to busy news feeds (and let’s just remember that half of all people share entertaining content).

Social media messages with visuals get more engagement.

Find inspiration for visual content:

• Look to GIPHY, PopKey, and reddit’s top GIFs sub-reddit for animated GIFs. GIPHY also has a GIF maker to help you make your own GIFs.
• You can also check reddit’s home page for memes and more or try a site like memes.com to make your own.
• There are also dozens of tools to help you make your own engaging images and graphics for your social media messages.

Post Standalone Social Media Messages to Increase Shares

It’s easy to want to share content that contains links back to your content (after all, clickthroughs are an element of social media engagement, right?)

However, a growing trend is emerging for brands to share standalone social media messages. By that, I mean posting a message with a graphic—something with a funny, inspirational, or encouraging message.

Anytime Fitness has found this tactic (as one element in their very robust strategy) has helped grow their Facebook reach by 275%, going from 1 million to 40 million monthly reach.

Recycle Your Evergreen Content to Share Timelessly Amazing Content

Evergreen content is SEO content that continually stays relevant and “fresh” for readers.   The term “evergreen” sounds familiar even to the non-marketing ear because evergreen trees (usually the pine or fir variety) are often used to decorate homes at Christmas. The evergreen tree is a symbol of perpetual life because they retain their leaves throughout the seasons, rather than shedding. Like the trees, evergreen content is considered sustainable and lasting.

What Evergreen Content is Not:

• News articles
• Statistics or numerical reports that are likely to change and go out of date
• Pieces about a specific holiday or season
• Articles focused on a current trend or pop culture fad
• Latest clothing and fashion trends

Evergreen web content has (virtually) no expiration date and ideally will retain its value over the long-term. Anything written about this year’s presidential election, for example, is not evergreen content because it will become obsolete six months from now and many keywords associated with that topic will end up in the Google graveyard, never to be searched again.

Below are some common evergreen formats you might consider in generating lasting content.

• Lists
• Top Tips
• Instructional “How To” Tutorials
• Encyclopedia-esque Entries
• Product Reviews
• Videos

Writing in these formats does not automatically make your piece evergreen, but these structures tend to work well with evergreen writing. Videos are especially effective when you need to illustrate how to do something, like how to frost a cupcake or how to grout a tub. If videos aren’t possible, consider using a series of images (photos or illustrations, diagrams, etc.) to your advantage.

Creating, sharing, and repurposing evergreen content increases content’s results at least by 100% and above.

Evergreen content is perfect for engaging your social media following because you’ll have relevant content to mix into your posting schedule that’s always relevant.

These sites are major producers of evergreen content:

• about.com
• wikipedia.com
• answers.com
• imdb.com
• ehow.com

Tips for Writing Evergreen Content

Don’t Write for the Experts – Sometimes you may feel the urge to write a piece showing off your expertise of a certain subject, but this can be a big mistake. Experts are less likely to be searching for help—your audience is primarily beginners, and you want to generate content aimed at them.

Avoid Overly Technical Language – Because most of your content is for beginners, complicated, technical language could scare them off, so stick with more simple rhetoric.

Narrow Your Topic – If you write about too broad a topic, your piece will be much longer, and more likely to lose the interest of beginner readers. Broad topics tend to be shorter keywords, or head terms, with more competition. Writing a broader piece also is more difficult for the writer. Simple, specific topics like “How to Throw a Roundhouse Kick” vs. “Guide to Powerful Kick Techniques” are more grabbing.

Link Posts Together – If you’re doing a complete guide on a topic such as “Guide to Bike Care,” divide that broad topic into narrow, specific pieces such as “How to Oil Your Bike Brakes” and “How to Replace a Bike Tire,” and then link those articles together. This is great for SEO, and lets readers solve a specific need while also guiding them to additional relevant articles.

Repurpose Your Best Content – When you create a great piece of evergreen content, look for ways to “spin” or repurpose it into other formats. Here are some great ideas for repurposing content.

Sources:
https://coschedule.com/blog/social-media-engagement-tactics/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-evergreen-content-and-why-should-you-care/56811/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-curation-tools
http://www.curata.com/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-content-curation/
https://blog.chartmogul.com/is-your-content-marketing-making-brand-withdrawals/