More than ever, search engines are monitoring your performance on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (to name a few). I want to touch on these basics and what will help you succeed in your social media marketing efforts.
As you know, social media is a platform where people can interact with each other. You might not know that search engines are now using social media to help them understand what people say about your brand. This means that if you’re not active on social media, you’re missing out on an opportunity to improve your content visibility online.
After you post a piece of content on Facebook, your fans “engage” with that post by commenting, liking, or sharing your creation, right? Well, this “engagement” (AKA social signals) is what matters. It’s not the number of posts you nor the amount of words you write… It’s the number of likes, shares, comments, re-tweets, thumbs-ups, views, subscribers, Facebook reactions, and any other behavior in which a person publicly interacts with your pages, posts, or business profiles. Sending a lot of traffic via strong engagement is just about one of the clearest measures of content “popularity” from an analytics standpoint.
Importance of Social Media Engagement for Your Brand
The social interactions that move the needle are those in which people spend the most time. These are called “long-form content,” including blog posts, infographics, eBooks, and whitepapers.
While short-form content (status updates, tweets, etc.) is still important, long-form content is what will help you succeed in social media marketing. The reason long-form content is so important is because it demonstrates your ability to create something of value. It shows that you’re not just a one-hit wonder but consistently producing high-quality content. This type of content also allows you to build trust with your audience. Trust is essential if you want people to buy from you or listen to your words.
How Often Should You Post on Social Media?
Although posting more frequently leads to more opportunities for fan or follower engagement, if you overdo it, you may also annoy your loyal subscribers to the point where they see your efforts as spam. This will likely earn you an “unfollow.”
It’s a delicate balancing act to post often enough to attract the right amount of attention while avoiding going overboard to the point of overstaying your welcome on your users’ newsfeeds.
A general rule of thumb for one industry could be to post 1-3 times per day on Facebook, 3-5 times on Twitter, and 1-2 times on LinkedIn. These are just guidelines for a general business, and you should experiment to see what works best for your brand and audience.
