Social media is undeniably good at promoting brand content. Whether it’s fashion, food, tech, or travel, any business can be promoted online with great results. However, since social media is saturated with posts of all kinds, the competition for relevance is fierce. If you want to improve engagement with your target audience, you’ll need to study what works. Here are a few ways to hack into the algorithms of the most popular social networks and improve your social media brand content.
1. Instagram
Instagram has over 1 billion users and has become a hub for influencers. Most of the content on Instagram is for the visually oriented. Musicians and fashion designers have leveraged Instagram with great success. Kylie Jenner has become the first Instagram billionaire by marketing her line of makeup.
However, there are some niches like Poetry and Photography and fitness that are still unexplored. There is a lot of room for budding influencers to establish their place.
Here are a few tips to help you get better at Instagram.
Focus on visual quality
Quality is not dictated by the megapixels of your camera or the filter you use. You need to consistently up your image quality game. You should go for more striking shots and better-lit images. Get a better camera if the current one is not hacking it. It pays for itself.
If that’s not an option, focus on your photography skills to produce better images. Some photo editing can’t hurt.
You also need to establish a theme of what you’re going to post online in terms of pictures. Remember, having a consistent brand voice and message is crucial to improve engagement.
Post consistently
Remember to stick to a schedule. This means that you shouldn’t post too much in a day, but you should stick to a weekly schedule. If you’re posting Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then you shouldn’t post out of the blue unless necessary. If you’re posting in the mornings, make sure you do that like clockwork.
Remember that people tend to check their feeds for signs of their favourite influencers at times of the day they are most active. You don’t want to miss out on that window of opportunity.
Don’t forget the stories
Instagram is perhaps the biggest platform for stories on the Internet. While YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp have all embraced story-telling, the engagement with Instagram is just greater.
You need to capitalise on that and post regular updates. Make sure to not make the updates too wordy; people tend to generally scroll through the stories quickly. Post little tidbits of information that is palatable.
Optimise video content
Many make the mistake of uploading the same video on every social network. This is a rookie mistake. For Instagram, you need to input video that is cropped and fully immersive. This will require a little video editing, but it’s necessary. People will usually scroll through their feed without giving your video a second look if it’s too hard to fully see.
Make your video content as specific to the Instagram audience as possible.
Don’t forget the hashtags
Too many people underestimate the value of hashtags. Yes, they’re annoying, but they’re how the internet decides what trends.
Even if you can put in 20-30 relevant hashtags on a post, don’t hesitate. Also, make sure to go for the hashtags that will have high engagement but low competition. For instance, if you’re posting an image of a coffee cup, don’t just write #coffee. That’s too general of a word. Make sure that you group your brand and the object together. That will trend better with your niche audience.
2. Facebook
Facebook is the largest social network in the world. There are over 2.7 billion users online, which makes it a market that is too large to ignore.
Post videos more often
Native video on Facebook has become a major traffic driver for the website. The platform has invested quite a lot of money into making itself as popular as a video posting site like YouTube.
Facebook has been pushing creators and businesses to post live video and optimised video on its site by making the process seamless. They’ve even made deals with media giants and celebrities for it.
So, post some native videos on Facebook to drive your content. Facebook wants to push it on to its users.
Prioritise photos and tags
Make sure that you prioritise photos and tags instead of external links. When you post external links on Facebook, the algorithm doesn’t treat it with the same importance as native content.
Just like how Facebook doesn’t like YouTube video being re-posted there, it doesn’t like external links of any kind.
Hence, you need to put in the work to post photos and tags on Facebook which are optimised for the platform. Don’t link photographs to Facebook that you’ve already put on Instagram or Pinterest or any other websites.
Make unique Facebook posts
Make sure that you don’t repeat yourself on Facebook. It’s frustrating to run out of fresh content, but you can change things up rather than resort to re-posting.
First, you can change the description of your posts to make it rank differently. You can also add different hashtags based on the current trends. You can also make slight edits to pictures or posts to add more value.
If you just repurpose old posts without any value addition, your engagement may decline.
General guidelines for social media brand content optimisation
Whether you’re working on building a brand on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, there are guidelines that will work for all.
For instance, if you want to build a professional brand on say a platform like LinkedIn, you should work on building a network. You should focus on joining groups and creating connections with like-minded people.
You should also engage with posts that are trending to get more traction. Of course, you should also focus on building your resume by optimizing it for engagement. If you’re not well-versed in optimising your resume for keywords, you can always hire LinkedIn bio writing services.
Other guidelines include staying true to your brand. Make sure that all your social media posts are consistent. Even if you’re making changes to your brand, you should make them as subtle and gradual as possible. Shifting from your core message drastically may alienate your audience.
Navigating social media for brand engagement is a challenge for sure. Staying up-to-date with changes in the search algorithms and latest trends are half the battle.
Continue Reading: 5 Effective Social Media Marketing Tips That Can Impact Your Brand Sales
Author bio:
Dave is a senior content manager at Content Development Pros. He is a passionate blogger and wants to help people struggling to make a mark online by their content writing services. Loves tennis and considers himself to be somewhat of a green thumb.
marketing-copywriter-collective 
