I wanted to use this blog to finish up talking about the 5 Social Media Best Practices according to the website Sprout Social. I really found this article extremely helpful and I hope you guys find it helpful to. When talking about best practices four and five the article went on to say….
4. Research Competitive Analysis
Competitor data provides insights into smarter decision-making and better strategizing. There’s no need for copycats, but researching and analyzing competitive analysis keeps you one step ahead.
What Competitive Analysis Teaches You
Having the right tools makes all the difference. With Sprout Social, we provide in-depth competitor analysis tools for your most essential networks. Competitive analysis is essential to understanding your industry, who’s talking about you and who has the most engaged audience.
What to see who’s taking over the market for a specific Instagram hashtag? Use Sprout’s Instagram competitor report to stay informed and ahead of the competition’s branded and non-branded keywords. Tracking this data can teach you insights into your brand such as:
- Who’s Talking About You: Is it influencers, competitors or industry leaders? Monitor your brand and conversations involving you on social.
- Industry & Breaking News: What’s happening in your industry this second? Are you mentioned? Are your competitors?
- Content Driving Engagement: Is there a trend in your competitor’s most successful content? Is there a subject your industry can’t get enough of on social?
- Leaders in Shared Voice: Who leads the industry with the highest shared voice among your competitors?
Stats to Track for Competitive Analysis
Tracking the appropriate metrics helps you measure and monitor content performance for better campaigns in the future. Here are some of the most essential stats you can track through Sprout Social:
- Media Sent: Total amount of content sent.
- Most Used Hashtags: Hashtags your brand has used the most.
- Likes: Total number of likes from all content.
- Comments: Total number of comments from all content.
- Engagements per Media: Total amount of engagements on average per post.
- Followers Gained: Total amount of new followers over a selected time frame.
- Follower Growth: Total growth of followers between a selected time frame.
- New Users Followed: Total amount of new users your brand has followed in a time frame.
5. Engage, Interact & Humanize
Last but not least, the most essential social media best practice is your willingness to engage. No one wants to talk to a robot or receive an automated message on social media. Engage with your audience and send real responses to interact and humanize your brand.
Our Sprout Social Q1 2017 Index discovered 30% of millennials engage with brands on social on a monthly basis. Younger generations are becoming savvy to the idea of directly reaching out on social to connect with brands. And it’s up to you to ensure people get a response.
If you don’t respond, you lose money. Roughly 30% of social media users go to a competitor if you ignore their message. That’s important to know because 34.5% of people say social media is their top choice for customer care communication.
That means you have to focus your attention on Tweets and Facebook messages to ensure your audience can interact and engage.
How to Improve Engagement
Not sure how to put more effort into your social media engagement strategy? Follow these simple five steps to improve interactions and humanize your brand:
- Step 1: Give more to conversations than what’s asked from users.
- Step 2: Be entertaining with engagement but not over the top.
- Step 3: Inspire your audience to talk, engage and converse.
- Step 4: Listen more to those talking about you.
- Step 5: Provide resourceful information to your audience.
While all of the points that were mentioned are extremely important and can help someone build and maintain their social media pages. I personally feel that the fifth and last best practice is the most important. Unless a person engages with their audience, they will not grow or maintain their social media pages. Unfortunately, this is something that I had to learn the hard way through personal experience. Anyway, I hope you all find this three part blog that I did as helpful as I have found it. I want to leave you with this quote that I stumbled on recently. The quote was said by David Alston and it says…
“Social media is not a media. The key is to listen, engage, and build relationships.” – David Alston
Stay tuned for more blogs on the topics of social media and Social Media best practices throughout the course of this upcoming week. I hope that you all Have a great week and a wonderful Easter spent with your loved ones!
Website Source: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-best-practices/
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