So, I've got great content...now what?!
Most businesses are cottoning on to the fact that the strength of their social media is dependent on the strength of their content, but not everyone knows how to best leverage that high quality content.
A well-written article, blog or opinion piece adds substance to your social media presence and helps you stand out from your competitors.
Publishing high quality content on your website, and linking to it through social media, can showcase your thought leadership within the industry, build exposure with potential clients, find potential customers and, crucially, help potential clients find you. It raises your profile, educates your market and leads people back to your website.
There are three main social media platforms where this type of content is well received by consumers with a strong appetite for good quality content.
We’ll look at each of them in upcoming blogs (so feel free to bookmark and come back again over the coming weeks) but for now here are our Top 15 Tips on how to leverage your content on Twitter.
Got content – now what?
Twitter as a social media platform is absolutely huge and it’s vital for your business to be seen here. Twitter has hundreds of millions of users and over 500 million Tweets are sent each day which makes it a vibrant and engaged audience to connect with.
69% of customers have purchased from a business because of something they saw on Twitter.
A common mis-conception is that Twitter is purely for light-hearted social banter, but 66% of users have discovered a new business on Twitter, 94% of customers plan to purchase from the businesses they follow and 69% have purchased from a business because of something they saw on Twitter.
Twitter has become part of the daily routine for many of your customers so posting high-quality content here is a great way to develop your brand and get your content read by the people you need to see it.
Once you’ve written, or commissioned a quality piece of content, with information your customers will be interested in, here’s what to do next:
Once you have uploaded the content either to your website or your LinkedIn profile, you can use that link to tweet about it and drive traffic either to your LinkedIn or your website – whichever you prefer.
Copy the link and use a link shortener like www.bitly.com to reduce the amount of characters the link takes up.
Create a tweet of no more than 115 characters to allow room for the link as well.
Upload a strong image to make the tweet more eye catching. Try www.pixabay.com for free images or shutterstock or istock for paid images.
To build followers, make sure your Twitter handle is included on all your promotional material and is prominent on your website.
If you have an extensive mailing list, consider directing them to your Twitter account.
Post regularly to attract more followers – evidence suggests the ratio of 1:4 works best for your own content publicity vs other tweets that would interest your audience.
To find other content, consider setting up a Google News alert using keywords relevant to your industry to find interesting articles to Tweet about.
Remember to get involved – join in conversations, retweet other relevant content and ‘favourite’ other interesting tweets. Other people will usually reciprocate.
Consider using an automated service like HootSuite or Buffer to schedule your social media posts in advance (but remember to log on regularly to interact in real-time too)
Think about the best times to Tweet for your audience – are they likely to check Twitter before work? In their lunchbreak? Sitting in their car on the school run? At weekends? In the evenings? Consider your audience’s daily habits and schedule your tweets to appear in their Timeline at the right time.
B2C brands report 16% more engagement on weekends, B2B see better engagement Monday to Friday.
Tweet about Twitter itself – it’s the one guaranteed common interest if everyone on there!
Ask your customers or clients for their Twitter (and other social media) usernames as part of your client feedback form and start following them.
Promote your own Twitter feed in as many places as possible - your business card, e-mail signatures, web page, blog, and on Facebook to make it easy for people to follow you.
Building a Twitter following, and taking the time to talk about and promote the longer form content you publish on your website does take time but these tips will help you do it efficiently.
With 94% of customers planning to purchase from businesses they follow on Twitter, it makes sense to invest the effort. Use Google Analytics to keep track of how your audience is responding to your high-quality content and when you see the results, you’ll know its worthwhile.
If you’re interested in publishing/promoting your high-quality content on LinkedIn and Facebook, keep your eyes peeled – I’ll be exploring them in the next few articles.
In the meantime, feel free to follow @humantohumanuk
We’d love to have you on board!
About the Author:
Polly Berrido is MD of Human to Human, bringing 15 years of Journalism and PR experience to offer high-quality content for businesses, written to journalistic standards.
Check out www.humantohuman.uk for more information, articles and tips.
Feel free to connect on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook @humantohumanuk
