Many businesses struggle with social media: coming up with content ideas regularly, and then getting those posts seen by as many people as possible.
Recently I was teaching an "exploding your social media visibility" topic to a group and they were mystified that the powerpoint was so short, and that the list of strategies was so clear. They were also struck with fear… but more on that in a moment….
Most small business or nonprofit heroes have a limited amount of time and energy to put into the digital marketing game. So again, the question I get often is “are there simple things I can do right now that will guarantee an increase in my visibility on social media?”
The answer is yes - there are a number of things you can do right now.
The first thing we have to understand is that the algorithm in most social platforms takes biggest cues from two triggers. The first trigger is the one we all hear over and over: user engagement. That means it watches what end users engage with and gives them more of that. So if your content is engaged you are improving your chance of getting it seen again.
But the second, lesser-considered trigger is incredibly powerful, and simple.
It’s format.
So for the moment, let’s leaving the question to the side of how good your content is instead examine what format is it in?
For example, doing stories on a regular basis on Facebook and Instagram automatically positions your content at the top of everyone's feeds on both desktop and mobile. Stories are highly engaged on a regular basis. They can be their own unique snippets, or you can share your main content into your stories feed as well, getting extra value out of the effort you put inot those posts.
I'm amazed at the number of businesses who aren't doing stories when it's free and the easiest way to appear at the top of everyone's feed.
Moving on with regards to format, we have to understand just how dominant video is. It's the most engaged format of content on the internet, and the algorithms on social channels give heavy weighting and heavy preference to content in the format of video over other formats like links or text.
In fact, you could approach your entire digital marketing strategy as simply as to decide you are going to develop ideas for videos and have that be my main source of content, period. When new videos are created, they are published to your individual channels as a unique posts to that channel (this allows each individual algorithm to give it direct attention versus trying to just share a YouTube link across channels, which actually gets down ranked a lot of the time).
So, sometimes, after a lengthy consult, clients and I land on an amazingly simple approach that says: develop content ideas, make videos, post those videos on each of the channels as an individual upload, and then share those videos into the stories feed.
And of course email the video to your subscribers list, which is the most valuable marketing asset you have. It has the highest visibility rate of all channels, easily lapping social media many times.
Now, let me address the fear I mentioned earlier. It all sounds simple enough to just focus on video and post it in the right places, but that doesn’t make it easy. Most of us do not want to make videos, much less be in them. But good news - you do not have to be on camera to have success with your video content! You can be the “camera person” with the camera pointing outwards in filming mode. You can develop the idea and hand it to someone else on your team who is better suited to be on camera. You can do a number of things that do not require you to be on actual camera, so you can exhale now… and have some fun!
Speaking of fun… it’s critical.
Don’t approach your new video strategy stiff and worrying. Relax, be authentic, be yourself, and know that all those out there watching seemingly endless video content are watching it because they connect with it and it grabs their attention - not based on the production quality or everything being perfect.
