Is Social Media Benifitting Your Business?
Social Media Business pages are becoming more and more common. But how often do you see businesses finding success using social media? The potential value of social media to your business is exponential IF you know what you should be doing to get the most out of it. One of the key mistakes you can make when using social media for your business is spamming. Social media is designed as a communication tool. Using it other wise can cost you valuable viewers and cause people to miss out on your important information. It is like a TV commercial that is never heard or seen. Social media services like Facebook and Google+ actually have volume controls and a way for your viewers to ignore your posts. People have the option to stop following your pages, obviously, but they also have the ability to keep posts from showing in their feed or limit the amount of information they are seeing from your post. Because of features like this you may be losing viewers without ever knowing it. On average only about sixteen percent of your posts will be seen by the followers of your site. This is vital information to remember and I will tell you why later in this post. Knowing this small percentage of seen posts, some people assume they should post with greater frequency. When this happens the things we say tend to be increasingly pointless and be viewed even more as spam. So what exactly dictates the rules of a good post? It is not as simple as you think and can be even harder to execute. A good post is like a good conversation. It needs to engage the reader and create a need for them to respond. Pictures are a great way to engage but still need a comment that will drive thoughts from the viewers. You have to ask yourself “What about my posts makes people want to respond to what I am saying?” What will generate a push of the “Like” button, a +1 or retweet? Is your post just pushing some sale or special you are running? Don’t get me wrong there is a place and time for posts that highlight your products but the point is to get people to see it when you need them to and give it value. Value to what you are saying carries wait in social media and can create a boost to the previously mentioned sixteen percent of people who see the original comment. Let me explain how this works, all social media uses programs called algorithms. These algorithms create value to what you post. For example, if you were to go back and view a post you have on Facebook, you will see that it shows how many people have seen your post. You will additionally notice that the post receiving the most “Like”s or comments also have the largest number of viewers. This is because every time someone likes your post, it becomes more valuable. The more valuable it becomes the more a social media site like Facebook will share it with others. As the popularity of the post increases, it starts to break away from being seen only by the people who follow you but becomes viral and can be seen by the friends of your followers who have commented and liked your post. This is important particularly if your are trying to increase the number of people who “Like” your page. When other people see your post outside of your direct followers you will start picking up new followers. This grows and increases the number of people who are seeing your post. If you save the spam for when you have something of value that you wish to offer and you desire great visibility, you will get it. I hope this information has been beneficial to you and I will be writing more about social media and sharing more tips in the future.