Blog

Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Your Website

Written by Alexandria Yarbrough

Did you know that 48% of internet users say web design is their number one way of determining the credibility of a business? Furthermore, it only takes users 50 milliseconds to form an opinion of your website, meaning you have less than a second to leave a good first impression.

This might seem like a lot of pressure, but don’t be intimidated. Building a website is an exciting opportunity to showcase your brand to the world and grow your business. To help you get started, we’re reviewing some of the top mistakes you should avoid when building your website.

1. Poor Navigation

User-friendly navigation is a key component of any successful website. Yet, many websites end up with over-complex navigation menus and hidden links, making it a pain to scroll through and ultimately driving users away. It’s best to focus on clear and concise navigation during the brainstorming and site mapping stage of building your website. Organize your content into categories and subcategories with descriptive labels to guide users to where they want to be. For larger websites or those with hierarchically arranged pages such as e-commerce websites, consider using breadcrumb navigation as a way for users to effectively navigate your website and alternate between desired pages. In any case, a logical and consistent menu layout across all pages will help enhance the overall user experience.

2. Misuse of Keywords

While SEO is essential for driving traffic, there are many cases where websites end up either overstuffing keywords or trying to target the same keyword on multiple pages. This harms a website’s readability and lowers its ranking in search engine results. Your main priority should be providing valuable content for your audience and, in doing so, try to naturally incorporate relevant keywords. Conduct keyword research to find the best keywords that align with your content and user intent. From there, you can start incorporating those keywords into your page titles, headings, meta descriptions, and alt tags for images to enhance your content’s overall quality and relevance.

3. Excessive Ads

Monetizing your website through advertisements is a common practice, but excessive ads can make your site look cluttered and unprofessional. Strike a balance between generating revenue and maintaining a clean, user-friendly design. Consider the placement and size of ads to ensure they do not interrupt the flow of content or negatively impact user experience. Additionally, opt for relevant and non-intrusive ad formats that align with your audience’s interests, avoiding annoying pop-ups and auto-playing videos.

4. Ignoring Analytics

One of the top mistakes to avoid, not just on your website but also in life, is failing to utilize the tools and resources readily available to you. Many fall into the trap of thinking their work is done once their website is up and running, but that’s far from the case. Skipping analytics tools such as Google Analytics leads to missed opportunities for improvement and growth. You should make it a habit to regularly analyze data to better understand how users interact with your site. Data on your most visited pages, bounce rates, and conversion rates will all prove useful to you when it comes to improving and refining your website.

5. Too Much Going On

When clicking on your website, you don’t want the first thing users to feel is overwhelmed. We know you have a lot to say, and it all feels important, but you must resist the urge to cram every bit of information on your home page. A crammed and overcrowded website is a quick way to deter visitors and increase bounce rates. On top of that, having too much text may hurt your site’s ranking, as search engines have a more difficult time extracting relevant text.

6. Improper Use of White Space

White space, or negative space, is the empty space on your website. Understanding how to properly utilize your whitespace is essential in building a balanced, visually appealing website. Too much whitespace makes your website look lazy and bland, while not adding enough will make your content look cluttered. Be sure you are strategically placing whitespace to improve readability and direct the user’s attention to the important elements of your website. Having a nicely balanced layout will enhance user engagement and promote a sense of professionalism on your website.

7. Not Optimizing for Mobile

With most users accessing websites on mobile devices, failing to optimize for mobile is one of the leading causes of poor user experience. Make sure your website is responsive and can function across different screen sizes. You can test your site on mobile devices to identify and resolve image scaling, navigation, and touch interaction issues. You may even want to consider implementing a mobile-first design approach where you prioritize the mobile user’s experience and then adapt it to larger screens.

8. Lack of Contact Info

One of the simplest mistakes to avoid when building your website is making your contact information difficult for users to find. If users decide to purchase or use your services, transparency and accessibility are crucial. You should have a clear, easy-to-find contact page with all relevant information, such as an email address, phone number, and possibly a contact form for them to reach you. If your business has a physical location, you should also include a map and directions for customers to find you.

9. Visually Unappealing

Don’t make the mistake of ignoring visuals. A professional design that aligns with your brand and appeals to your audience is crucial in drawing users in and standing out from competitors. Your website should include high-quality images, complementary colors, and consistency. Again, your website is often a customer’s first impression of your brand. You want to avoid looking sloppy or outdated. A well-designed website will give users a positive impression and encourage them to stay and explore your content further.

10. Inconsistent

In terms of design, consistency is key to creating a cohesive, followable brand experience. Ensure your website’s design, content, messaging, and tone are consistent throughout all pages and align with what you want for your brand identity. Make sure you’re using the same color palette, fonts, and logo across your website to reinforce your brand image. Creating this sense of cohesiveness and reliability will enhance user experience and improve brand recognition.

7 Steps to Create an Effective Social Media Content Strategy

By Alexandria Yarbrough

Social media has become a powerful tool for businesses and individuals to connect, engage, and grow their online presence. However, without proper planning and strategizing, your efforts are going to feel scattered and ultimately ineffective. But fear not! We’re here to walk you through the steps you’ll need to take in order to create an effective social media content strategy for your business.

What is a Social Media Content Strategy?

Your social media content strategy is a map of your social media marketing objectives and approaches for creating, publishing, and managing content across various social media platforms. But why do you need one? Just like most things in life, having a solid strategy in place when tackling a project can make a world of difference. While you could get by with just posting content sporadically and hoping for the best, having a social media content strategy is necessary for growth. Having a social media content strategy enables you to:

Set and track your objectives
Establish metrics to measure your progress
Drive targeted engagement and build stronger relationships
Save time by planning and scheduling content in advance
Stay consistent with a clear brand identity across platforms
Enhance brand awareness and have a competitive advantage

7 Steps to Create Your Content Strategy

1. Define Your Goals

It’s hard to measure your progress when you’re not even sure what it is that you’re trying to achieve. Having set goals in place will help you shape your content strategy and determine what steps you need to take in order to accomplish what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Examples of goals you might set for yourself include building brand awareness, growing your audience, driving sales, boosting engagement, or driving website traffic. Once you figure out your goals, picking the right metrics to measure progress will become that much easier. Keep in mind, when setting your goals, it’s important to make sure the goals you choose align with your overall marketing objectives. You want your goals to be effectively contributing to the bigger picture.

2. Research Your Target Audience

None of the other steps mentioned are going to do you much good if you’re not sure who you’re selling to. Understanding your buyer persona will help you tailor your content to appeal to those who have the most interest in what you’re offering. Do your research to define your target demographics, preferences, interests, and pain points. Understanding buyer personas will help you better empathize with your audience and create content tailored to them.

3. Choose Your Channels

Once you determine who your target audience is, you’ll then need to determine where you might find them. There are many social media channels to choose from, each with their own characteristics and demographics. For example, LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B businesses, whereas visually-driven industries such as fashion and interior design might do better on a platform like Instagram. Pick a few channels that you feel are best suited to your audience and goals, then you can go from there. For more info on how to pick the right channels, check out our blog, Which Social Media Platform is Best for Marketing.

4. Plan Your Content

Now it’s time for the hard part — creating engaging and valuable content. Diversify the format of your content by using a blend of images, videos, infographics, blogs, etc. You’ll want to ensure your content is a good mix of educational, promotional, inspirational, and entertaining content. Educational content provides value to your audience by teaching and informing them about your product, promotional content provides your audience with calls to action. inspirational content uses emotional appeal to reach your audience, and entertaining content helps you intrigue and relate to your audience.

5. Create a Content Calendar

To do well on social media, consistency is key, and the easiest way to keep consistent is by making and sticking to a content calendar. A content calendar (also known as a editorial calendar) is a schedule of when, where, and what you plan to publish on socials. There are many social media management tools at your disposal to help you schedule and publish your content at optimal times for maximum reach and engagement. As you monitor your performance, you can always tweak or adjust your posting schedule.

6. Engage with Your Audience

Engaging with your audience means setting up two-way communication. You don’t want to just talk at your audience, you have to take time to listen and respond to them while addressing their questions and acknowledging feedback. Part of engaging with your audience is also encouraging user-generated content. User-generated content is content created by your audience that features your brand. By promoting this, you help create a sense of community and loyalty amongst your audience while also providing you with social proof. The most important thing to remember is that effective audience engagement isn’t about likes or comments but about building genuine connections with your followers.

7. Analyze and Optimize Performance

Make sure that you are regularly monitoring the performance of your content. You can use analytics tools to measure key performance indicators like reach, engagement, click-through rates, and conversions. You can then analyze this data to identify what’s working and what’s not. Use this information to consistently optimize your social media content strategy.

There is quite a bit of careful planning that goes into creating an effective social media content strategy and delivering valuable content to your audience. By setting clear goals, choosing the right platforms, and fostering audience engagement, your brand can be successful on social media. Keep in mind that success is an ongoing journey where you will have to continuously research, experiment, and adapt.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Most of us are used to using social media for personal purposes, like sharing fun moments or staying connected with family and friends. However, when it comes to leveraging social media for marketing your brand, a different approach is necessary.

Transitioning from a personal to a professional account requires understanding and following a new set of rules to avoid harming your business’ reputation. To help you out, we’ve provided you with some basic dos and don’ts of social media marketing.

DO: Create Engaging Content

Social media gives you an incredible opportunity to connect and build relationships with your audience. You want to be sure you’re putting out content that genuinely interests them and encourages interaction. Otherwise, they may start to see you as one big ad.

Some examples of engaging content include polls, Q&A sessions, stories, tutorials, blogs, etc.—anything that sparks interaction. Once you become more comfortable with social media, generating creative and engaging content will become more natural.

DON’T: Ghost Your Audience

A lot of brands make the mistake of thinking they’re done for the day once they’ve scheduled their posts. However, posting is only half the battle. If you’re doing a good job of creating engaging content, people will want to interact with you.

Once you begin receiving mentions or comments on your posts, don’t ignore them. You need to make sure you are encouraging your audience to interact with you by replying to them in a timely manner. If you don’t, they’re going to begin losing interest. Imagine if you were trying to talk to someone, but they never responded; you’d probably give up and move on. The same applies to your audience, so make sure you’re giving them proper attention.

DO: Show Personality

Social media provides businesses with a unique opportunity to humanize their brand and give it its own voice. Take advantage of this opportunity to show your audience that there’s a real person behind the posts rather than coming across as a faceless entity. Do you want your brand to come off as funny and relatable? Professional and informative? However you choose to personify your brand, consistency is key; just try to stray from anything that could potentially offend your audience.

DON’T: Engage with Trolls

The internet is an incredible resource that has provided us with countless benefits to enrich our daily lives; however, it’s also known to harbor some less-than-pleasant characters. While some of the negativity you receive will come from customers with genuine complaints, there are also quite a few users out there who just enjoy causing trouble. Those individuals are commonly referred to as “internet trolls”. Trolls are people who go out of their way to provoke and annoy others online, often through hateful comments or even fabricating stories to defame others.

Trolls feed off attention, so denying them a response is key. Engaging with them only gives them what they want and reflects poorly on your brand. If you’re certain you’re dealing with a troll, consider ignoring, muting, blocking, or, in cases of inappropriate/threatening behavior, reporting them.

DO: Diversify Your Content

Simply posting a few pictures and calling it a day won’t cut it. Diversifying your content is essential for reaching new audiences and keeping the interest of your existing audience. The more varied your content, the more opportunities you’ll have to attract and engage different users.

You should diversify not only the topics of your posts but also diversify the format of your content. For example, there are multiple ways for you to put out an educational post. You could use an infographic, an informative video, a blog post, etc. Experiment with various formats to see what resonates best with your audience. Just be sure you’re not limiting yourself with repetitive content.

DON’T: Look Desperate

Witnessing accounts beg for likes and shares is always an upsetting sight to see. It comes off as desperate and needy, which are two words you don’t want to come to mind when your audience thinks of you. You want users to interact with your content because they genuinely enjoy it, not because you told them to.

Superficial interactions can give you inaccurate data and cause you to believe users are enjoying certain content more than they really are. It can also hurt your reputation by leading users to believe you’re incapable of generating engagement organically. While including a call to action is always a smart move, it’s also smart to make sure you aren’t coming across as pushy.

DO: Study Trends

Trends seem to come and go faster than ever before as people spend more time online. Constantly having to figure out what’s “in” and what’s “out” can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, there are many trend reports out there that can help you understand what your audience is currently enjoying and engaging with.

Given how quickly trends can fade, it’s important to regularly update yourself on upcoming trends vs trends that have already died out. Posting outdated content will have a negative impact on your brand and will make you seem out of touch. To stay relevant and avoid falling victim to fleeting micro-trends, make sure you’re doing your research and staying updated on what’s popular with your audience.

DON’T: #Abuse #Hashtags

Hashtags can be a valuable tool in social media marketing, but they’re often misused. Far too often, we see posts painted with an excessive amount of hardly relevant hashtags. When using hashtags, keep the following in mind:

Understand the platform’s hashtag etiquette: Different platforms have different rules regarding hashtag use. For example, Instagram generally allows more hashtags than platforms like Facebook.
Use hashtags for relevant keywords: Using a hashtag before every word is #overkill and will make you seem #annoying.
Place hashtags appropriately: Where you place your hashtags is an unspoken rule on some platforms. For example, on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, hashtags should be placed at the end of posts and captions rather than scattered throughout.

DO: Maintain a Regular Posting Schedule

Finding a posting schedule that’s right for you can be challenging at first. Posting once every few days may seem reasonable enough to you at first, but that won’t work on every platform. Platforms like Twitter and Snapchat require more frequent posting than platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Posting more often on these platforms increases your chances of being seen by more of your audience.

However, be cautious not to overpost. Quantity should not come before quality. If you’re constantly posting less than engaging content, your audience is going to start seeing your content as spam. Experiment with different posting schedules to determine what works best and is sustainable for you in the long run.

DON’T: SlopPy PoST

At the end of the day, what you put out on social media is a reflection of you as a brand, so you want to make sure you’re maintaining a certain level of professionalism. The last thing you want is users questioning your competency after reading your posts.

Not knowing the difference between “there”, “their”, and “they’re” will not only irk viewers but also lead them to doubt your credibility. To avoid any silly mistakes, make sure you’re double-checking for any spelling or grammar mistakes before posting.

Which Social Media Platform is Best for Marketing?

Social media has transformed the way businesses market their products and services, allowing them to connect with customers, foster relationships, and increase brand visibility. With so many social media platforms available, it can be overwhelming to decide where to focus your efforts. That’s why it’s recommended to only invest in a few platforms and make the most of them.

However, each social media platform is unique and has its own set of features and benefits. To help you out, we’re going to give you a rundown of some of the most popular social media platforms out there for businesses. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to expand your social media presence, this guide will provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions about which platforms to use and how to use them effectively.

Facebook

With nearly 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook stands as the leading social media platform globally. It caters to a wide range of demographics, making it suitable for businesses targeting diverse audiences. Businesses that typically see the most success on Facebook are e-commerce, local, and service-based businesses.

Facebook provides businesses with a wide range of advertising options, including sponsored posts, video ads, carousel ads, and messenger ads, allowing you to customize campaigns in relation to your specific goals and target audience. The platform also has advanced targeting features that will help you find your target audience based on multiple factors such as age, location, interests, and behaviors, to help your ads reach your ideal customer. Facebook pages, groups, and events help businesses foster engagement and interact with customers. They also offer analytics and insights on key metrics to measure your campaign’s performance and adjust your strategies.

However, Facebook has been seeing a decline in organic reach, making it more difficult for businesses to gain visibility without paying for advertising. It’s also worth mentioning that with the amount of promotional content on the platform, users can become overwhelmed and may experience ad fatigue. To combat this, businesses must stay creative and be sure they are targeting their optimal audience.

Instagram

Despite being young, Instagram has quickly grown into one of the most popular social media platforms today. Instagram is a visually-driven platform with roughly 1.4 billion monthly active users, making it a useful platform to leverage in your SMM strategy. The industries that tend to have the highest success rate on Instagram are industries that have visual appeal such as fashion, beauty and cosmetics, travel, food and beverage, wellness, and design.

On this platform, businesses can showcase their brand through engaging visual content such as pictures, videos, stories, and reels. The general recommendation is about 2-3 posts a week on your main feed, though you should refrain from posting more than once a day. Stories, on the other hand, are a bit more flexible. You could post on your stories anywhere from 3 times a week to 5 times a day depending on what is most realistic for you.

While the platform already has strong targeting options to help you reach specific demographics, the use of hashtags will further help you improve your discoverability. Instagram also has shoppable posts that facilitate direct purchasing. If you decide to use this platform, building a visually appealing profile, engaging with your followers, and maintaining brand consistency is crucial.

On the downside, much like Facebook, paid advertising might be necessary due to the decline in the platform’s organic reach. Also, because it’s such a visually-driven platform, certain B2B businesses and other professional services may find it more challenging to create visually appealing and engaging content. However, if you have a well-planned strategy and continue to track your metrics to optimize your content, you can still leverage Instagram effectively for your SMM campaign.

Twitter

Twitter is a fast-paced, highly engaging platform that offers unique opportunities for social media marketing. With over 300 million monthly active users and over 6,000 tweets a second, the platform reduces the amount of “noise” on users’ feeds by having a 280 character limit on posts. This encourages businesses to get their messages out in a concise, yet impactful manner. Because of its real-time structure and emphasis on news and discussion, the industries that tend to have the best luck with Twitter are technology, news and media, entertainment, sports, and higher education.

Twitter’s key features include hashtags, retweets, and mentions, all of which enable businesses to amplify reach, spark conversations, and engage with their audience. Furthermore, the platform’s real-time nature allows you to provide quick customer support and address your audience’s concerns in a timely manner. Twitter ads allow you to target specific demographics, promote your products and services, and drive your website traffic. Their analytics will provide you with valuable data on your tweet performance, your demographics, and your engagement metrics. To perform well on Twitter, it’s essential that you’re keeping up to date on trending topics, actively managing your community, and consistently posting.

However, Twitter’s targeting options are more limited compared to other platforms, making it more challenging to reach your desired audience. In addition, you’re more likely to experience negative feedback and trolling on the platform, so it’s smart to have a strategy in place to handle these sorts of situations professionally as they come up. If you’re able to understand and overcome these challenges, Twitter remains a great platform to improve your SMM efforts.

Launched in 2003 with a focus on networking, career-building, and idea-sharing, LinkedIn is an essential social media platform for businesses. It’s especially useful for B2B lead generation and networking opportunities. The platform is recommended for businesses in industries such as legal, manufacturing, infrastructure, and IT.

LinkedIn is a great tool for building professional relationships, finding job opportunities that match your skills, and showcasing your professional expertise. Businesses can create company pages to showcase their brand, share updates, and engage with their followers. The platform features a wide variety of content, the most popular being blog posts, third-party content, and text-only listicles. To make the most of LinkedIn, it’s important to find a posting frequency that works for your business and audience. The platform’s algorithm prioritizes professional content, making it important to create valuable and informative posts. While recommended post frequency can vary depending on your goals, posting anywhere between twice a day to once a week is generally recommended.

LinkedIn’s paid advertising options like sponsored content and InMail help with targeted reach and lead generation. Additionally, the platform gives you the ability to track competitors and recruit talent. Their analytics provide you with insights into post performance, audience demographics, and engagement metrics. However, LinkedIn isn’t the best option for everyone. Because it is primarily used for B2B marketing, it involves longer sales cycles. This means that building a strong presence on LinkedIn requires a significant investment of time and effort to make connections and build brand awareness. So businesses should be prepared to use a more strategic and patient approach to see results. Additionally, LinkedIn has fewer active users compared to other social media platforms which may limit your reach, especially if you’re a B2C business.

Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Marketing

With over 4.7 billion users, social media has quickly emerged as a powerful tool for businesses to connect with their audience. However, while some have been able to quickly adapt to the rise of social media, others find themselves struggling to understand its nuances.

This beginner’s guide is designed to help you gain a solid understanding of the basics of social media marketing.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a way of promoting your company and engaging with consumers online through popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. The main objectives of social media marketing include enhancing brand awareness, connecting with your target audience, driving website traffic, and generating sales.

In today’s world, integrating SMM into your marketing strategy is crucial. Surveys have shown that around 68% of consumers believe social media enables them to interact with brands and companies. Furthermore, about 78% of consumers admitted that they are much more willing to buy from a company after having a positive experience with them on social media.

Popular SMM Platforms

With an overwhelming number of platforms, it may be difficult to decide which social media platforms are the right fit for you. Rather than creating a profile for every platform out there, we recommend only focusing on two or three starting out. Let’s take a quick look at some of the most popular social media platforms.

Facebook

With a staggering 2.94 billion monthly active users, Facebook is hands down the largest social media platform. Its extensive reach and user base make it a favorite amongst brands and businesses for advertising and building relationships, with 95% of marketers saying that Facebook gave them the best ROI. The type of content you can expect to see on Facebook includes pictures, videos, short updates, and curated content.

Instagram

Boasting 1.4 billion monthly active users, Instagram is most well known for its visually appealing content and unique designs. It is frequently used by influencers, high-status brands, and small businesses to enhance brand awareness and engage with their target audiences effectively. The content you’ll see on Instagram primarily consists of high-quality pictures and short videos.

LinkedIn serves as a professional networking platform primarily used for connecting with potential clients, employers, and employees. With 350 million monthly active users, it’s an excellent platform for B2B relationships and establishing yourself as a thought leader within your industry. You will mainly see long-form content, blogs, and product launches on this platform.

YouTube

With over 6 billion hours of videos viewed every month, YouTube holds the title of second largest search engine, right behind Google. Unlike other platforms, YouTube exclusively focuses on video content. Users primarily go to this here for entertainment and/or educational purposes.

Twitter

Twitter is a social platform that is centered around short posts known as “tweets” that encourage users to share their thoughts and engage with others. With roughly 350 million monthly active users, Twitter is often utilized for public relations, customer service, and SEO marketing.

Tips for Building Your SMM Strategy

Now it’s time to start planning. You’re going to want to build a social media marketing strategy that outlines what you’re hoping to accomplish, the steps you’re planning to take, and how you’re going to measure your progress. Here are a few tips that should help you get started in building an effective social media marketing strategy.

Understand your audience

The first thing you will want to do is to take the time to study the audience that you want to focus on. Narrow down your target audience by considering what it is you’re selling, who would likely show the most interest in it, and what sort of content would be most appealing to them. Understanding your audience’s preferences, interests, and motivations will help you identify the platforms they frequent and the type of content they’d enjoy.

Optimize your profile

It’s important to keep in mind that your social media profile reflects your brand’s identity. Think of it as your virtual resumé. A user’s initial opinion of you is formed within seconds of clicking on your profile, so you want to be sure you’re making a good first impression. Here are some things you should consider when creating an optimized profile.

Choosing the right profile picture

When selecting your profile picture, be sure to select a high-quality image that represents you accurately. It could be a logo or a professional photo of you or your team. Make sure that the picture is sized properly and will fit well on the platform. Having a poorly cropped profile picture is your audience’s first indication that you might not know what you’re doing. It’s also a good idea to use the same profile pic across all platforms you use to keep some level of consistency.

Perfecting your bio

Your bio is the small section of your profile where you get the chance to introduce yourself to users in just a few sentences. Since space is limited, focus on providing relevant information while incorporating keywords that can help users find you in searches. Remember to keep things natural and include some personality. Social media is an opportunity to showcase your character.

Offering other ways to connect

If possible, provide links or buttons that allow users to connect with you outside the platform. This can be directing them to your website or your other social media profiles. Some platforms will offer dedicated spaces for adding links while others will make you include them in your “about” section. Either way, it’s important to give users the means to further connect with you.

Being mindful of tags

Make sure you’re regularly reviewing posts that you’ve been tagged in to ensure they align with your brand and your values. You don’t want to be associated with inappropriate or undesirable content. Some platforms offer options to moderate your photo tag settings, making it so you first have to approve content before being tagged in it or even restricting who can tag you. Stay vigilant and make sure you’re protecting your online reputation.

Establish Metrics and KPIs

To measure your social media success, it’s important to track and analyze the metrics that provide valuable insights into your progress. These metrics will help you visualize your progress in relation to your goals. Here are some of the most common metrics used in social media marketing.

Engagement

Engagement measures the amount of interaction your content is receiving. It’s calculated by dividing total interactions by total impressions. This shows you how willing users are to interact with your content and is particularly important if your goal is to build stronger relationships.

Reach

Reach indicates the total number of users who saw your post. This metric helps you determine which types of content gain more visibility and which struggle to reach a larger audience. This is a great metric to pay attention to if your goal is to grow your brand and increase awareness.

Clicks

Clicks refer to the total number of times users click on your account or content. Analyzing clicks reveals which posts or content spark the most interest from your audience. If your focus is on increasing conversions and driving leads, then you should dedicate time to understanding this metric.

Sentiment

Sentiment measures how users feel about your content. Just because a lot of people are seeing your content doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of people are enjoying it. Sentiment helps shed light on whether your audience’s reaction is positive or negative. If your goal is to enhance customer retention, this is a great metric to look at.

Determine the right content mix

For newcomers, finding the right content mix can be challenging. You don’t want your account to feel like one big ad, but you still want to capture people’s interest in your products/services. It’s important to have a good spread of various types of content such as images, memes, quotes, blogs, videos, polls, and infographics to keep things interesting for your audience. This is where your creativity really comes into play.

If you’re unsure where to start, you can always turn to the 80-20 rule. That just means allocating 80% of your content to entertaining, educating, and informing your audience, then dedicating the remaining 20% to directly promoting your brand.

Create engaging posts

When it comes to social media marketing, it’s all about connecting with your audience. Focus on creating posts that encourage users to actively engage with you and your content. You can do this by incorporating location-based content, conducting Q&A sessions, and posing questions to your audience. Remember that responsiveness is crucial in curating engagement. Regularly check your comments and mentions so that your audience doesn’t feel ignored. If you get tagged in a light-hearted post or comments with questions, show them you’re listening by answering or leaving a light-hearted reply.

Conclusion

Social media marketing is a chance for you to humanize your brand and create meaningful connections with a larger audience. Remember to stay creative, persistent, and responsive. While achieving overnight success is unlikely, if you continue to listen to your audience and improve your strategies, you’re sure to see significant results over time.