When it comes to social sharing, the 5:3:2 rule is a ratio to follow for a well-rounded social strategy that will keep your fan-based community-engaged and help you build more followers for your brand.
Let’s break the rule down.
If you publish 10 posts per week then:
5: Curation — Should be content from other sources, that is relevant to your audience.
3: Creation — Should be content created by you, that adds value and relevant to your audience, but not sales focused.
2: Humanization — Should be personal, fun content that gives character to your brand and adds a human touch so your audience can relate to you.
Content that is curated, created and humanized all have one end goal in common; to fulfill the needs of the audience.
Understand this rule then put it into practice.
Every time you publish on social media for your business, your audience needs to be highly prioritized. If a social feed does not deliver any valuable content to the audience, the fan base will disappear over time, decreasing media engagement.
When it comes to managing social media pages for businesses, big or small, it is always wise to have a balance. In traditional marketing, print advertising, TV and radio, it has been all about the “Me” and “I” in the business. This no longer applies in the digital age of marketing, and consumer product information. Social Media now plays a significant role in drawing in your audience to your products, and the brand. Businesses now focus on the “We” and “Us”.
Talking too much about business can drive people away from you. Similar to when someone talks too much about themselves without listening to the other person engaged in the conversation.
Tony Gaskins once said: “You attract what you are, not what you want. If you want great, then be great.”
The best thing about this rule is that all these posts would be focused on your audience and not about you. It surely does take a little bit more thought, a bit more time, if this is the first time you would be planning to use this rule. But once practiced deliberately, you will start to see an increase in media engagement with your audience and getting more conversation on social media.
Social media keeps changing; so fast and furious. Stay connected with the soul of your audience; know what they want and respond with valuable. Listen to the conversations and opinions about your brand, products and your industry. Avoid being sales-orientated, show off your human side, and post quality content.
Now that you understand the 5:3:2 Rule, how can you apply the rule to successfully increase your social media engagement with your audience?
Here is a list of effective strategies and tactics to help grow your social media engagement.
1. Mention your super-fans.
Another name for super-fans is “Brand enthusiasts.” These people are not only following you on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, but they are also committed fans. Mentioning them by simply using the “@” feature shows you recognize them. The feeling of being recognized by a brand or an individual you follow on social media is amazing. Make your followers feel this amazing feeling too, and watch your engagement go up to. Indeed, you won’t be able to mention all your followers, but by recognizing the dedicated ones, you can increase engagement.
2. Connect Content with Current Events
Your followers are real people like you. They keep up with the current events. When Toronto Raptors were in the finals for the NBA Championship, Axe Canada, used this opportunity to create a shampoo conditioner called “We the North”. There were so many Canadian businesses that took advantage of this marketing opportunity. Try to connect current events with the content you share.
3. Ask Specific, Pointed Questions
Asking straightforward questions is the fastest way to get people talking on social media. It’s not hard to do. Just ask followers about something they care deeply about. You’ll be amazed by the amount of response you will receive.
4. Do AMAs (Ask Me Anything)
Over the past few years, Reddit has remained an authority in the social media space. Reddit may not be as big as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But trust me, the site has a loyal and dedicated following and users. Lots of small and medium-sized businesses have sprung up from Reddit. The site receives high engagement. One of the cool features that have kept Reddit going in the face of tough competition is their AMA sessions.
In an AMA, you can ask the person hosting the session any question. For example, President Barack Obama did a Reddit AMA when he was running for re-election in 2012. I can’t say this helped him won re-election. But what I can say is that the AMA helped Obama connect with a lot of voters on a personal level.
Another great example of an AMA leader is Gary Vaynerchuk. He built an amazing business just by hosting AMAs on Youtube. No wonder he has a high engagement on social media.
5. Promote User-Generated Content to Your Fans
What are the good things customers are saying about you on social media? Don’t repeat what they said. Instead, promote it. How do you do that? You can share or retweet what a happy customer said. Others will jump in the conversation and take it further.
6. Respond to Mentions
Nobody likes being ignored. When someone mentions you, and you fail to respond, they may stop mentioning you and caring about your content because you don’t care about theirs. Respond to people by mentioning them. That shows you care. If you receive a lot of mentions and don’t have time to respond, at least show some response by clicking the “like” or “love” button depending on the social channel.
7. Curate and Promote Other People’s Content
Other people care about their content as much as you care about yours. When you promote other people’s content through content curation, they are likely to return the favour by tweeting or sharing the post with their followers. Content curation gets more eyeballs on your content.
It also drives engagement to your social accounts, as more and more people you mentioned are talking about the post with their followers — that kind of creates a buzz in the social world.
8. Write Captivating Headlines for Social Media
People don’t click boring headlines on social media. Writing interesting headlines is the only way to catch people’s attention on social media. Headlines are worth 90% of the advertising dollar. It’s the first thing social media users see.
You’ve got to make it so tempting that people can’t wait to click. Spend more time writing the best headlines for content you create. Good headlines receive more engagement.
9. Use Animated GIFs
GIFs are the fastest ways to arrest anyone’s attention on social media. They contain no sound, yet, you see some movements. It’s another way to be humorous. Humour has always been a core part of what people do on social media.
After a busy workday, people want to spend some time away worrying about work and social media is just the right place to do that. It’s good to include some jokes or humour into your content. And when you do that, make sure you include GIFs too.
10. Do Surveys and Polls
Polls let you learn about your social media followers. Keep in mind that the more you learn about your followers, the more you know about them. And the more you know about them, the better your posts will resonate with them.
Your engagement increase when your posts resonate better with your social media followers. For example, Walmart is constantly polling its followers on social media. Social media users like participating in polls.
11. Share Customers Reviews and Emails
If you have a happy customer who shared something positive about your company on a review site or email, you can capture the testimonial and share it with your fans on social media. This increases trust in your business and gets people talking.
12. Regularly Follow Relevant and Active People in Your Industry
Matthew Woodward gained 2,790 followers in just 4 months. His engagement and traffic increased too. What he did was very simple: He followed relevant and active people in his industry. That’s it.
You can do it too. Start following active people in your industry and be active. Tools like Tweepi, ManageFilter and Social Quant can help you with this.
13. Use Emojis to Show Humanity
You have a short time to say what you have to say on social media. There isn’t enough space, and you’ve got to say it real quick without losing meaning behind the message.
Gary Vaynerchuk is a social media KING. He has mastered how to use emojis. Emojis help you say less and increase engagement.
14. Show Gratitude to Fans
Find ways to thank fans. The real social media masters do this a lot. Show fans that they mean a lot to you. The more you connect with people on social media, the more they are likely to do the same in return.
15. Use A Call-To-Action
Tell people the next step to take in a social update. At least, give them clues of what to do next if you can’t say it. People are likely to engage when you ask.
16. Share Photo Posts
Visuals are making the biggest impact on social media right now.
Take this finding, for example:
“When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.”
Web-users love visuals. Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.
17. Shout Out to Amazing Content Creators
Some people regularly produce high-quality content in your niche. Who are these people? Except you don’t know your niche very well, you should be able to mention them.
You should be developing a strong relationship with these people because they’ve built a massive and active following through their good work. By developing strong bonds with them, you’ll get noticed and be able to get a share of their following. You’ll tap into their engagement too.
18. Cross-Promote Your Social Profiles
We live in a very small world. The people who are on Facebook are also on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and so on. Though, one platform will always be bigger than the other. Also, each social channel has its own distinct demographics.
Cross-promoting your profiles help followers quickly recognize you on other social channels and start engaging with you there.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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The post Media Content Doesn’t Win. Optimized Content Wins. appeared first on The Good Men Project.