Users, from celebrities to entrepreneurs, have difficulty finding their voice on social media. Brands might be eager for likes, views, and shares, but people are more interested in finding pages and influencers that share similar interests. But even then, not everyone with popular interests makes it to the top of the ‘For You’ or ‘Suggested’ pages. A few common factors influence the impact of any user’s social media presence, so let’s take a quick look at some of them to figure out how you, too, can improve your social media presence.
1. Monitor the General Public
If you want to interact with people or try to hit posts, you need to keep up with the internet. That may sound straightforward, but the internet changes at breakneck speed and trend cycles are often gone within just a few days. Besides that, many of the memes that gain popularity would not make sense to a particular group but are reposted by hundreds of millions of people on the internet. So if you want to keep up with the crowd, then make a monitoring account for each social media platform under any random name, keep them linked using sites such as https://1password.com/username-generator/, and dedicate the entire account to keeping up with what’s hot on the internet to get as many interactions as you can.
2. Create a Persona
Consumers want to be entertained. They want to feel like they’re hearing from the real you and care about what you have to say. Therefore, you’ll need to craft a persona representing your brand and driving engagement. You can do this by being yourself (no matter how “unique” that may be) and engaging with others on sites where you have a following, or by simply brewing up the personification of your values and interacting with the masses from that perspective. Some of the best examples of such interactions lie on Twitter, where Wendy’s official account regularly garners hundreds of thousands of likes thanks to the snappy personality it showcases. However, do keep in mind that your internet persona should cater to and resonate with your target audience, as something beloved by young adults won’t find the same enthusiasm in older generations.
3. Find a Direction
You likely have dozens, if not hundreds, of ideas swimming in your head at any given time. However, it would be best if you didn’t confuse inspiration with direction. The former is what gets the juices flowing and spurs creativity (which may have started as a simple idea); the latter is going out there and making something happen. To figure out what you’re doing with your social media presence, you should ask yourself a few questions: Who are your competitors? What do they do right? What do they not do? And where are you most comfortable interacting with people or sharing your knowledge or skills? These will help you decide where to take yourself and focus on what needs to be done to accomplish your goals.
4. Make Your Posts Attractive
Humans are hard-wired to pay more attention to brightly colored and attractive things. This is why infographics have been proven to be viral. However, you don’t need to stay limited to text posts and follow the same pattern. Instead, switch it up and throw in animations or artworks that promote your brand value and attract consumers. You don’t need a professional graphic designer to come up with something eye-catching; you only need to know what will grab your followers’ attention and how to make it happen. Amateurs can use graphic designing apps such as Canva to create the most beautiful visual elements. Once you’ve found something that works, focus on it and make sure everything on your profile matches your brand’s or persona’s personality in some way or another.
5. Identify the Needs of the Platform
No social media platform is the same. Each has its own culture, and some have far more advanced features than others. For example, you can’t use Facebook to sell goods or services like you can on Twitter or Instagram. With that in mind, you must establish a presence on all social media platforms because each caters to a different audience. For example, Twitter audiences are known to be cutthroat and controversy driven, Tumblr audiences are fandom driven, Pinterest supports mood boards and fan art for casual scrolling rather than opinionated consumption, Instagram focuses on memes, and discussions and Facebook is home to either conservative demographics or older audiences. Each platform has a different consumer demographic, and each of them is priceless. Your primary job will be to either create generalized yet viral material that gets reposted across all platforms or take the more sensible route and handle all platforms individually.
The Bottom Line
In conclusion, figuring out how to make your social media presence work for you can be a bit of a challenge, but it’ll all be worth it once you find the formula for success. Whether you want to stay on brand and build your reputation with new offerings or want to spice things up a bit, the approach is simple: decide what direction you’re going in, focus on eye-catching visuals that reflect those interests, and identify the needs of each platform and keep up with trends that influence consumers to improve your social media presence.
Steps To Using Social Media Platforms To Improve Your Online Business