Social media is home to about 4.8 billion active users around the globe. Now you can imagine the type of competition that brands and businesses might face in such a hectic crowd, not only because of the high presence of the people but also businesses.
Whenever an online platform is introduced, a lot of people, brands, and businesses swarm on it like bees. Thread is a recent example where more than 10 million people had signed up within seven hours of its launch. It’s been like that for years now on social media networks. That’s why finding ways to stand out in social media networks for a business, brand, influencer, etc. is important.
So, how do you go about doing it? What are some of the key practices to make the most of social media networks? Let’s find out.
1: Understanding Your Audience
The first and perhaps one of the most important things in any business or marketing strategy is understanding the audience. It’s no different for standing out on social media networks. To make an impact, it’s important to understand a few things, such as:
- Demographics, including age, gender, hobbies, etc.
- Psychographics, including preferences, classifying according to attitudes, values, and personality.
- And common pain or interest points among those audiences.
This helps one understand exactly what sort of social media following they can expect. It will also help with other elements like content creation.
2: Personalizing Your Profile
The next thing a lot of businesses do is set up their profile, but they miss out on a few key essentials. People follow visual cues like attractive colors, design patterns, fonts, typography, etc. If a brand or business’ social media page is barren off the bat, then it won’t garner as much attention as they hope for.
As a result, it’ll cause disinterest among target audiences. That’s why it’s important to ensure a few things right away when setting up social media profiles:
- Choose an attractive profile picture and cover photo.
- Write a unique bio with a unique touch like a different font or typing style.
- Fill in the About section to keep audiences hooked.
- And be consistent with theme, font, tone, voice, colors, etc.
It’s also important to remember that social media networks aren’t websites or blogs. That’s why the about us and Bio sections should be concise and easy to read. After the profile picture, Bio is the second thing that people notice. And if it is attractive, people get impressed and follow you.
To make the bio catchy, you can add some unique touches, like adding some inspiring quotes, adding unique fonts or emoji. Playing with fonts and typo graphics is a good idea. You can add mirror text in your social media Bio.
Mirror text is vertically or horizontally flipped text which can be read easily if you view it in the mirror. For some reason, people find it a challenge to their abilities, and they often try to read what’s that secret written in such a mysterious way. There are online tools that can generate mirror text as you input some text there.
3: Content Creation
The next, and perhaps the most essential, factor of social media is creating unique content. So, what makes content unique on social media? Some factors remain constant throughout all of the internet content.
For instance, any content that wishes to make an impact should be informative and actionable. However, above all those, social media content should be high-quality and fun. So, how do you go about doing that? Here are some tips:
- Be creative with content types and categories.
- Be informative and actionable.
- Be unique and plagiarism free.
- And Make sure you focus on visuals more than written content.
Businesses can try various content types, such as unique and informative videos, animations, behind-the-scenes content, user-generated content, giveaways, collaborations, etc.
However, it is important to remember that visual content makes the most on social media, with around 0.8% engagement rate for photos, around 0.6% for videos, and around 1.1% for carousels.
4: Engagement with the Audience
Speaking of engaging with the audience, there are other effective ways of engaging with the audience on social media as well. Now, posting content is a one-way deal, as the brands post it, and their followers/target audience can choose to react/like the stuff and comment if they choose to.
However, engaging directly yields other benefits as well, such as responding to messages, encouraging direct contact, setting up chatbots/representatives, or encouraging participation. There is also a way of using polls and Q&As to generate direct responses from a target audience.
This sort of direct engagement will not only improve the brand’s image but also improve followers on social media.
5: Optimizing Your Social Media Posts
Optimization is the key to improving social media outreach, just as it’s important in SEO content like blogs or websites. It’s essential that you focus on optimizing your social media content using the right methods, such as:
- Using relevant hashtags and keywords.
- Schedule posts at times when engagement is most likely.
- Ensuring that caption content is relevant to images/videos.
- And writing concise but descriptive captions.
This allows social media pages to improve their outreach by using relevant or trending hashtags. Then, it’s important to schedule posts when target audiences are most likely to be online—which is around and after 5-6 PM for most cases.
Conclusion
To excel on social media personally and professionally, it’s crucial to understand your audience, personalize your profile, create unique and high-quality content, engage with your audience directly, and optimize your posts. These strategies will help you stand out in the competitive digital landscape, capture attention, foster engagement, and maximize your social media presence.
FAQs
1. Q: How can I boost my social media presence?
To boost your personal social media presence, try creating authentic, valuable, and engaging content with consistency. Try to interact with your audience. Showcase to them your interests and personality through posts and stories.
2. Q: How can social media do good for my professional career?
It is a fact that social media can do miracles in your professional life. You can use it as a platform to build your personal brand. Here you can network with industry professionals. It allows you to share your expertise and discover new career opportunities.
3. Q: How can I grow my social media following?
There are some easy yet effective strategies to boost social media following:
- Consistently posting quality content.
- Using relevant hashtags.
- Engaging with your audience.
- Collaborating with influencers or industry peers.
- And promoting your social media profiles through other channels.
4. Q: How to maintain a healthy balance between work-life and social media usage?
Setting boundaries and allocating specific time for social media activities is very important to maintain a healthy balance. Social media can be addictive and a time-waster activity. You should use tasking scheduling apps with reminders. It will bring you back from social media to your workspace if you are lost in social media activities.
Your smartphones can tell how much time you spent on different apps, keep an eye on that and keep social media app usage limited.
Dushyant is an enthusiastic and quick learner in all fields who likes to gain experience, loves to write, and works on his creativity. He loves to explore new things and information and has the potential to spread knowledge across the world. He believes in teamwork and helping others and has a strong belief in learning from our own life experiences and exploring more through our mistakes as everyone has a story to create. His hobbies include sports, drawing, learning new things, and a deep interest in geopolitics.
