A Quintessential quintet of steps to dominate social media

Promoting your brand is more than a task; it’s our passion. We believe in the power of every business, every idea, and every dream. So, let’s blend your passion with our expertise and create a digital symphony that resonates with your audience like never before… 5 steps to dominate social media.

1. Consistency, consistency, consistency

2. Include Advertising in your plan

3. Be Authentic

4. Get employees to be your advocates

5. Don’t cheap out on the aesthetics

Be consistent in your organic posting

We know … you’ve heard this before! But, interestingly, it’s something people let slide A LOT.

Organic posting (vs. paid/boosted posts which you pay a platform to increase your reach) refers to the posts you create for your brand and post on an ongoing basis. The sweet spot is about 1 post per day, but that can be different for some businesses. The key is to watch, record and test what’s happening on your social media. Do more posting if your audience will tolerate it, and less if you think they’re getting super annoyed. But if the audience is getting annoyed, find out why. It could be that you’re not serving them the content they want to see from you.

You don’t need to be on every single social media platform, but do the research and know where your ‘people’ are. Here are a few key demographics you should know:

• Facebook has about 2.9 billion active monthly users and the largest age group (at almost 30%) is aged 25-34 with 44% being female and 56% being male
• Instagram has almost 2 billion active users, with the largest age group at 18-24 years old. 48.2% are female and 51.8% are male
• LinkedIn has over 930 million users, with the largest age group at 30-39 and primarily male at 57%. LinkedIn is a B2B platform.
• Twitter has recently changed to X and has been declining for a long time. It was at 237.8 million active users, with the 18-29 year olds primarily hanging out there, but it’s future is anyone’s guess. 
• The new ‘Threads’ by Meta is going to give Twitter a run for its money, and currently has about 122 million users since its inception in July 2023. We’re still on the fence about jumping into this new platform.

*These statistics were gathered from sproutsocial.com, April 2023. (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/)

Include Advertising in your plan

If you’re running a promotion, event, or just need to increase your exposure, social media advertising can be efficient and cost effective. They all offer advertising opportunities, but that does not mean you should advertise on all of them. 

When you’re choosing where you want to place an ad, you need to know which networks your ‘peeps’ are hanging out on. If you’re a B2B, you might want to try LinkedIn, but if you’re focused on moms, Facebook would be a better choice.

If you’re just not sure where your people are, Pewresearch has a social media fact sheet you can download. 

Be authentic

Don’t be afraid to show ‘behind the scenes’ of how things ‘tick’ in the manager’s office, or what it takes to keep the facility clean, or even the goofy faces some staff might make at the water cooler. In fact, it’s those types of posts that usually see some of the best reach!

Being imperfect on social media allows people to truly connect with your brand. Posts that have personal images (staff members, the dog you work with) are more likely to be shared, and shared content is successful content!

Get your employees to be your advocates

According to Hootsuite, an official employee advocacy program can help take that organic influence to the next level. Studies show that advocacy from your team can help shorten the sales cycle, attract and develop new business, and recruit top-tier talent. Plus, you can extend your organic reach by 200%  and increase profitability by 23%.

Ninety-eight percent of employees are on social media anyway for personal use. Why not tap into their personal networks and benefit from their personal influence?

And that about says it all 🙂

Don’t cheap out on the aesthetics

Invest in the design of everything you do. Images should match your brand and include your logo. If you’re going to do a video, consider the difference and when you would use a less professional video vs. a more professional video.

Research proves that visuals are far more powerful drivers of engagement and conversions.  Our brains were built for visual information:

1. 90% of the information processed by the brain is visual.
2. It takes only 13 milliseconds for the human brain to process an image.
3. The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text.
4. People remember 65% of what they see, compared to 10% of what they hear.
5. In responses to a recent survey, 95% of B2B buyers said they wanted video content.
6. Publishers that feature visual content grow traffic 12 times faster than those who don’t.

If you’re a Canadian Business, CLICK HERE to learn more about the CDAP Program. You could be eligible for a $2400 grant!

Drum Roll … Bonus tip!

Make sure whoever is in charge of your social media has more in their curriculum vitae than “uses social media lots personally” (yes, that’s taken from a resume). They should have an understanding of how the platforms work, the demographics and a solid understanding of advertising. Graphic design skills are right up there with an education in marketing as well.

From what people tell us, they actually save money by contracting our services vs. having a full time employee, especially one that is not qualified.