While you might have a fantastic organic social marketing strategy, there’s always room for improvement. By optimizing your pages, your brand gains credibility and, subsequently, enjoys increased user engagement. Additionally, optimizing your social media strategy creates more opportunities to drive traffic to your site.
We all know that social media platforms are unique. They have their own rulesets and mechanics. In which case, they need to be optimized differently. But how?
Welcome to your guide on how to optimize your organic social marketing strategy. By following these steps, you can make it easier for your audience to learn about, engage with, and deepen their relationship with your brand.
Facebook: Optimizing the Right Way
With over two billion users, Facebook is a necessary component of any social media marketing campaign. Below, we’ll explain a few Facebook-focused tips on how to engage your audience and hold user retention.
#1 Optimize Your Profile Photo, Cover Photo, and Utilizing Video
With so many users engaging with Facebook on mobile, your content needs to be optimized for smartphones. The mobile trend is increasing to the point that, by 2025, experts project 72.6% of the world’s population will only use their phones to access the internet.
In which case, start now and format your content for mobile. This includes your:
- Profile picture
- Cover photo
- Videos
#2 Maximize Your Facebook Story
Facebook’s Story feature is a great way to push new content and provide additional opportunities for follower engagement. When using Facebook Story, you want to optimize your Facebook Story image for both preview mode and full mode.
With creativity and a clever narrative, you can use a series of Facebook Stories to keep viewers engaged. When it comes to your content, you’ll want to (tastefully) include:
- Photos
- Product links
- Product Images
- Testimonials
Of course, use the above only when they’re applicable. First and foremost, you need to harness your brand voice and compel your audience. But with the right positioning, this is a great place to optimize your Facebook strategy.
#3 Use Facebook’s Tabs to Highlight Information and Direct Viewers
On your Facebook page, tabs are found right underneath the cover photo. Use this feature to organize the important information about your company—the hot stuff you want front and center.
For example, you can add a “reviews” tab. When someone clicks on that tab, they could read through customer reviews, living vicariously through those who have experienced your brand. Additionally, you can add an “about” tab, where your flagship mission statement is spotlighted.
Why is this important? Once optimized, all it takes is one click for your audience to gain a deeper understanding of and connection with your brand.
Lastly, keep it clean. Cohesive. Structured. Avoid clutter by remembering to remove unused tabs. This helps draw the eye of your audience, reducing the noise and guiding them to the content you want to showcase.
#4 Change Your Facebook Cover Photo Button to “Shop Now”
If you’re an e-commerce company, change your cover photo button to a CTA (call to action) “Shop Now” button. That way, if someone likes a product on your Facebook page, they can make a quick and easy purchase. Additionally, tracking these Shop Now clicks can help determine how customers are responding to your content.
A note on Facebook optimization: Is it starting to click? The goal here is to create a better user experience and help them get places quicker. Whether it’s ensuring your platform is optimized for mobile, enhancing your Facebook Story, organizing your Tabs, or putting a CTA at the forefront (thank you, Shop Now), you’re effectively guiding your reader through your roadmap, driving them to the right destination.
Instagram: Do It For The Gram’
With the advent of Instagram and the rise of influencer marketing, it should be no surprise that this platform is on our list. Given the recent changes in their “like” structure and their massive push for authentic content, there’s no doubt about it—the Instagram landscape is changing.
And what do marketers say to change? Thanks for new opportunities!
Below are a few easy and tested methods that will help you optimize your organic social marketing strategy on Instagram:
#1 Instagram Personal to Instagram Business, Make The Switch
By switching from Instagram personal to Instagram business, you access a number of business features. These features include control over the reach of your boosted Instagram posts and accessing Instagram analytics (Instagram calls this “Instagram Insights”).
Why is this important? It helps you better understand your follower and potential customer base, all the while providing insights on your contents’ engagement metrics.
#2 Update Your Instagram Bio and Link
After switching to a business profile, revisit your Instagram bio and link. Does your bio place your customer first? You only have a limited number of characters, so make the bio memorable, sharp, and inviting.
With a limited character count, brevity is paramount. Yet, you don’t want to sacrifice your brand voice. Try to imagine the first word written to the last character (even if it’s an emoji) as one cohesive story.
Think: As your reader’s eyes move from top to bottom, what have you expressed to them?
Now let’s talk about your link. Technically, Instagram only lets you list one link in your bio, but there are a few workarounds. By using third-party tools, you can generate a custom link that directs users to a page with multiple links. This way, you can share a variety of content with your users through a single click. For example, you can include links to a product page, a blog post, a different social media campaign, and your website.
These third-party tools include:
- Linktree
- Shorby
- Linkin.bio
#3 Take Advantage of Instagram Shopping
Think of your Instagram business profile as a digital storefront. In both your organic posts and Instagram Stories, you can mark items in photos with a product tag.
Tapping the product tag takes you to a product description page, which, according to Instagram, contains all the information about the product. This includes its:
- Image
- Description
- Price
- Purchase portal
By utilizing the power of a product tag, should your content compel your audience, they can make a purchase right then and there.
#4 Make Your Profile Photo Easy to Read
While this may seem obvious, you want to keep your profile clean, consistent, and on-brand.
If you have a logo, try making that your profile photo.
Whatever you choose, your profile photo should immediately communicate who you are. And, as a small tip, be careful of the fine line that exists between mystery and confusion. If your photo is mysterious and engaging, people will click through. If it’s confusing, they might not opt-in.
Pinterest: It’s Actually Not Just About Pictures
Being that Pinterest users often use the platform to influence their shopping decisions, Pinterest is created in a way that brings new customers to businesses. But how?
Below, we’ll give you a few tips on how to optimize your organic Pinterest strategy.
#1 Use Search Terms and Keywords in Descriptions
Each time you pin something, you can also add a brief description of the image. In this description, use the most of relevant keywords and search terms. This way, when someone searches Pinterest or Google, your pin will have a higher ranking. Image data (alt text and titles) are a fantastic place to enforce SEO best practices—Pinterest is no different.
#2 Use Keywords in Board Names and Board Titles
Since Pinterest uses board titles and pins as a part of its ranking strategy, keep your target keywords in mind when creating them. By implementing the appropriate keywords, you have a better chance of ranking.
#3 Customize Pinterest Board Covers
Creating custom board covers is both a branding opportunity and a way to make your Pinterest more uniform, cohesive, and attractive to the viewer.
#4 Cross-link Your Website and Social Channels
Use your Pinterest to promote your website and other social media channels. Since Pinterest is an image-driven platform, you can pin images posted on your Facebook, Instagram, or website and drive your Pinterest viewers to your other platforms. It’s widely known that creating cohesion between all your channels is a great marketing tactic.
Let Pinterest be your traffic controller.
Your Website: Optimizing Your Digital Store
With all the effort put towards your social media strategies, you can’t forget about your website. Below, we’ll discuss a few great practices on how to best optimize your organic social marketing strategy specifically for your digital storefront.
#1 Add Sharing Buttons
Sharing buttons encourage your audience to engage with your work. It allows people to market your content for you, and it’s a direct measurement of how engaged they are. For instance, adding “share” buttons to your blogs or products would allow someone to promote your brand on their own profile—all with the click of a button.
#2 Link Your Social Channels In Your Website Footer
Make sure your social channels are linked (and easily located) in your website’s footer. This easily directs your viewers to engage with and follow you on social media. Additionally, there’s a big difference between a website and an Instagram. Sometimes, your viewer is going to want to see how you gram’. In which case, by having it linked, they can click right through, rather than having to search for it.
#3 Use High-Quality Imagery to Make Your Blogs Appealing to Share
Much like with Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, using high-quality imagery on your website and blogs encourage your viewers and followers to share your posts on their social channels. While the text is important, sometimes a picture alone can be the reason why people share a blog.
Focus on Quality in Content, Followers, and Interactions
At the end of the day, your focus needs to be on the quality of your content. While you can use every strategy in the book to guide an audience towards your platform, if the content isn’t engaging, what’s going to keep them there?
With well-positioned, compelling, and engaging content, your viewers enjoy your interaction… then become your followers.
Create Quality Content
Key tips to creating quality content:
- Use high-quality pictures and avoid blurry, confusing, or inappropriate images.
- Create logo cohesiveness but don’t spam it across every post (people will grow tired).
- Your content needs to be a balance between engagement-based and lifestyle. You can throw promotional in there, but don’t overwhelm your audience.
- Craft authentic, relatable captions for your target audience. What drives people to relate? Emotion.
- Make a content plan and post consistently. Create a flow with how you’re publishing your content, rather than leaving it to entropy.
Find Quality Followers
With the difficulty that comes with amassing a powerful following, sometimes it’s tempting to buy followers. But while it may be an immediate reward, it won’t set you up for success. The key is to put the time and effort into growing your following organically.
In fact, the number of followers an account has doesn’t correlate with its engagement. Instead, engagement metrics are becoming more important than the size of a given following. In which cause, fake or inauthentic followers are only going to hurt your page results.
You want quality followers. You want them to interact with your brand and decide to trust you. To bring them through the door, you need to do so organically and with authentic content.
Initiate Quality Interactions
One of the most important facets of a social market strategy is relationship building. Here, you have a direct in. A line. You can engage with the person on the end of the keyboard or smartphone.
Keep note of your top engagements. Use Facebook’s messenger, reply to comments, and build authentic relationships with those that are supporting your brand. It will only further their support and foster more engagement.
By focusing on “Return on Relationship,” you’ll be able to identify where your social media campaign is succeeding.
In a World Filled With Noise, People Crave Authenticity
By following the steps to optimize your Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and website, you’ll make it easier for your audience and followers to engage with your brand. Despite any tactic you lead with, remember that quality-content and an authentic narrative are what’s going to capture the hearts of your audience, ultimately inspiring them to act.
The action is a decision. That decision is investing in you.
