Two of the common mantras echoed on this site are “Don’t have AAA dreams on a 0 dollar budget” and “Work smarter, not harder”. I’d feel remiss if, after all this talk on how to set up your platform, I didn’t give some tools to help creatives on their campaigns and journeys.
Below you’ll find some tools to help with promoting on social media and digital marketing as well as hubs that can be utilized to more efficiently post content.
Critical Hit your Social Media Posts
In 1975 the table-top role-playing game Empire of the Petal Throne introduced the concept that is very common in today’s video games, the critical hit. For the non-gamers out there, a critical-hit is when an attack lands and does bonus damage (the severity and effects differ based on what game you play) and was purposefully designed to be a rarity – could only happen if the player rolled a 20 on a 20 sided dice – so that it was a strongly desired and sought after act. In today’s games, the rare device roll is mimicked with split-second calculations and percentages done off-screen – the same is true with social media with a phenomena known as “Going Viral”.
Going Viral is a blanket term for a social media post receiving a lot of interaction, more than what was ever expected by the poster. This can be the result of content being related to a current trend or the content itself starting a trend (which is unpredictable), regardless, these are the modern day critical hits of social interaction. While one can never truly plan for landing a critical hit, one can tailor their posts to put themselves in positions to be successful and still get the most return off each post rather than waste their time creating ineffective posts with little to no engagement.
This blog will go over what goes into a quality social media post, how to position it so that it has the opportunity to land critically, and tools to post effectively and efficiently.
Optimize Your Attacks
First things first, understand Analytics. As defined by Oxford Languages, analytics is “information gathered from the systematic analysis of data or statistics.” In today’s social media, analytics are often used to determine the most efficient and effective strategy for marketing and social media campaigns. The data illustrates the picture and state of your platform and tells you exactly who is interacting with your content and what they’re interested in. Knowing this gives you the advantage and will let you leverage the material that actively grows your platform as opposed to spending time and resources on material that will get you nowhere.
So now that you’re aware of what analytics are, it’s important to understand that interaction with your posts are based upon what others are already actively talking about or searching for. If this is an A and B conversation, not many will care about how quality your C conversation is unless you go Viral (in which case you’ve become the A and B conversation and someone else is C). Tailor your posts based upon what is trending/current to your target audience. While it’s great to be interacted with in volume, always remember that your core audience will yield the most efficient and effective ROI (return on investment).
Be Part of Your Crowd
So how can you find your core audience and know what they’re talking about? Assuming you’ve followed the instructions of Part I and Part II, there are a few ways you can go about learning your analytics.
- You can utilize free resources such as keywordseverywhere.com to check keyword success and if users are searching for your keywords.
- You can utilize answerthepublic.com to see if the public is really searching for your term or phrase that you’re campaigning for, whether that’s your brand, product, or platform.
- You can also utilize isigraph.com to search for words and phrases that are being searched for.
Once you’ve figured out what’s trending, it’s time to create posts geared towards that topic/trend. But wait? How can you possibly make multiple quality posts in such a short time? Do you need to hire a graphic designer? A social media specialist perhaps? Absolutely not. With today’s tools and technology it’s never been easier to create posts that match the quality of the major companies and platforms.
Utilize the free service of canva.com to create quality posts for different kinds of platforms.
Batch Your Process
As discussed in Timothy Ferris’s best seller, “The 4-Hour Workweek”, spreading one act out across multiple days is largely inefficient and causes more problems than it solves. With social media, not many wish to spend 30 minutes to an hour every single day trying to come up with quality content to post. Instead, consider using a social media hub to schedule your posts ahead of time.
These hubs are mostly oriented towards social media marketing teams but that doesn’t mean you have to pay big money to use them. Given the fact that you should only be on 1-2 platforms to start out, it’s better to hyperfocus on growing what you have as opposed to spreading yourself thin and struggling to grow on all accounts (no pun intended).
Here you’ll find social media hubs to help you with scheduling your posts for your social media marketing campaign(s): https://bloggingwizard.com/hootsuite-alternatives/
In conclusion, in order to put your posts in positions to be successful and yield the most interaction, it’s best to work smarter, not harder. Find what your core audience is already discussing and tailor content specifically for them. Keep track of your analytics and, of course, adjust your content and campaign accordingly. Finally, be sure you’re posting efficiently as well so you’re not wasting your time each day. Utilize canva.com and schedule your posts using a social media hub.
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