Social Media Resolutions for the New Year

The New Year brings with it an opportunity to grow and change. People resolve to kick bad habits or adopt healthier ones. Individuals may decide to stop smoking or start exercising. Others may develop a self-care regimen or determine to spend more time with loved ones. On a professional level, the new year may mean looking for ways to tighten up a household or business budget. And if you’re running your own company, you may decide that January marks the time when you and your team are going to make changes that will be impactful all year long. For some companies, changes include amping up your efforts in marketing and advertising. And if your business’ social media platforms are part of that overhaul, you may want to start by looking at 10 Instagram tools to consider in 2019.

If you’re looking for new ways to garner brand awareness or increase your website’s traffic, there are some resolutions you and your team should make in the New Year.

Resolution #1: Adopt a content-first mentality.

Marketing isn’t easy, even if you believe it is just a matter of telling people why your product or service is the best and worth purchasing over the competition. In this digital age, every company looking to drive its marketing campaign forward needs to ask itself how to capture its audience’s attention and where that audience will be most likely to engage. To complicate the answers to these questions, businesses must consider the different audiences across the many different social media channels that are currently available. How do we do this? By providing relevant and meaningful content that is appropriate for distribution across platforms.

Content includes a full range of written copy and relevant images. This may mean blogs, shared user-generated content, images, how-to videos, vlogs, and any downloadables that are worth sharing. Content is the real reason users visit websites. Adopting a content-first mentality means that you can establish yourself as a knowledgeable resource and an industry influencer without sounding overly self-promotional or arrogant. The goal is to introduce your customers to your brand, your mission, and even yourself before you attempt to sell them your product or service.

Post meaningful and relevant stories and links that provide your potential consumers with a reason to engage with you on social media. Whether you write the copy yourself or hire someone to do it, content you post across your social media channels should be both well researched and well written. A content-first approach means that you are committed to content as the cornerstone of your marketing campaign. You will use it to provide your potential consumers with information to make informed decisions and knowledge that will improve their personal or professional life.

Resolution #2: Add one or two “bells and whistles” to your established social media networks.

Most businesses understand that consistency is key in posting content to social media channels. One or two posts per day would be the minimum number that represents engagement with a community of followers you’re looking to convert into consumers or subscribers. But changing things up now and again may inspire the disengaged follower to recommit to your social media platform and to take a second look at your product or service, and it will delight your loyal consumers who check in with you on a regular basis.

What are we suggesting?

Try developing a YouTube channel. As a secondary video option to social media platforms that may allow for smaller 60-second video clips, a YouTube channel will allow you to feature longer, meatier responses to thoughts, opinions, or ideas that you have. Post the YouTube videos to your Instagram account as an innovative and different tool that can help improve upon your usual video or video advertising posting schedule. If you’re not sure where to start, think about some of the questions on the FAQ section of your website, and start responding comprehensively to the topics to which you may have provided short answers. YouTube also allows you to consider subscriptions and memberships as a means to monetizing another facet of your social media marketing campaign if that’s an option you want to explore somewhere down the road.  

Run a contest. There are easy steps to take if you want to run a social media contest on your established business channels. There are many types of contests, too, including photo contests, video contests, caption contests, sweepstakes, like/share/reply, and vote to win. Entering a content can be as simple as sharing or retweeting a post to encourage more entries and increase brand awareness. Consumers can follow certain social media accounts, or maybe you prefer that your entrants fill out forms so that you can learn more about them. Remember that each type of contest has a particular purpose and its own considerations for the amount of time you want to invest in it.

If you’re not sure what to post to keep your readers engaged, you can always explore the many content challenges that offer suggestions for intermittent “spicing up” of your regularly-scheduled posts. What are other social media resolutions companies should make for the New Year? Share your ideas here.