Whether you have a team of social media editors, an entire marketing department or you are just doing it yourself, getting the most value for time spent on social media is critical to your media business.
But do you wonder if your social media efforts (blog posts, tweets, etc) are shouting into the void? Is your niche audience engaged with you enough to convert?
Mana Ionescu (President of Lightspan Digital) knows your pain. She knows how to manage social media channels and create the right frequency and timing to fuel social audience growth. We asked her to share some of her expert tips on understanding audience engagement, what to avoid, and future tech trends to watch.
“Start by looking at engagement rates and click to follower rates. In other words, what percentages of your followers are engaging with your content and what percentage of your followers are generating clicks on links that go to your website, or a place of conversion.
Additionally, you can use a tool like FanpageKarma.com to see who your most engaged followers on Facebook are. Click on their names and see if you can gain any insights into them. Copy their names, and do Twitter and LinkedIn searches to see who they are. These folks could be your ambassadors, so put some effort into finding out who they are and how you can collaborate with them to reach even more people.
But, ultimately, what you want is visitors to a place of conversion. Or other interactions that will move them closer to subscribe, buy, or contact you. “Visitors” as a metric, trumps everything else. You can have a million followers and get zero traction if they don’t feel compelled to do more than just like or share.”
“Demand for tailored content will grow, and it will be fed by new segmentation technologies and more affordable AI engine solutions. In other words, people will continue to want search engines, and social network algorithms to guess their minds and give them the content they want when they want it and where they’re at.
Some of that is predictable: mobile, video, fast content, immersive visual experiences. But the more intricate audience demands will only be satisfied with new technologies (do look into installing AMP on your sites, for fast mobile content delivery), paying close attention to trends and audience moods (if everyone is in a somber mood on Facebook, be sensitive to that and don’t post content that may offend).”
Editor’s note: Learn more from Mana in person! She will be leading the session, “Social Media Success: Growing Audience for Reach & Conversion!” at the 2017 Niche Digital Summit in Chicago, Sept. 25-27.
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More about Mana: Mana Ionescu is the founder and president of Chicago digital marketing agency, Lightspan Digital. The outspoken Romanian loves busting digital marketing myths and teaching how to do social media marketing right. A true data nerd, Mana serves on the Masters in Analytics Advisory Committee at the Illinois Institute of Technology. A sought-after speaker, she has shared knowledge as a Kellogg Executive Education faculty and at high-profile conferences around the country, such as Techweek, SES, MPI TechCon, Conversion Conference, Content Jam, Marketing Profs University, Pubcon and many more.
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