By Jessica Davis
Source: Search Engine Journal
Whether you’re building a brand on social media, marketing a business event, or campaigning for a cause, you’re fighting everyone else for space — not just your immediate competitors.
In today’s market, social media noise is a serious problem, hindering a company’s reach on the powerful marketing medium.
What’s more, today’s audience is constantly interrupted and have begun to show signs of ad aversion.
Why Social Media Noise Poses a Serious Marketing Threat
Social networks have grown more crowded, and users’ attention spans have dramatically dropped. About three years ago, Ogilvy predicted that reach for brand content on social would eventually drop to zero
You could rely on social media ads if it wasn’t for the surge in usage of ad blockers, or your audience telling you they hate ads.
Despite these drawbacks, several brands are managing to engage communities and drive business through social networks.
Here are six organic strategies that will help you beat the social media noise.
1. Optimize Your Social Media Posts
This may seem basic, but it can’t be said enough. Every post you publish should have the right sized images, clear and compelling text, the right link, and social tags.
- Use the right image sizes for social posts on each platform.
- Add @mentions/tags and #hashtags wherever it makes sense.
- Steer clear of zero value posts. Only share what has substance.
- Use a mix of different types of social media content known to invite engagement.
Your first task should be replacing wordy and cluttered writing with the bare essentials. I barely read these days, to be honest, and long social media posts from brands? Almost never.
Remember that you’re speaking to an audience who has no real reason to listen to you and can easily scroll past your post for the next, more interesting one.
What is your message? What do you want your audience to do? Keep it straightforward and simple.
Substitute long stringing sentences for phrases that convey exclusivity, urgency, and benefits. You could also use storytelling to build a powerful brand, and it doesn’t even have to be your story. It could be a story told by one of your customers
It’s a good idea to test your copy where stakes are low — on teammates or old customers/clients — before you publish it publicly. You can also set up A/B tests and measure them using social media analytics tools.
2. Discover What Drives Your Audience
Disciplines like SEO and content have deep-seated benefits when you understand the audience well — not at the demographics level, but at the behavioral and intent level.
On a general note, today’s audience is tough to captivate. They have an attention span of seconds. They have options, and the ability to switch between them easily.
You need powerful storytelling and content that connects with your audience to make an impact on them. To do that, you need to answer these questions about your target groups.
What is their most urgent concern?
To persuade someone to buy, you need to know what drives their purchase decisions.
- What concerns them?
- What problem will they pay you to solve?
These insights can tilt the scales in your favor and give you an advantage when creating your design and copy.
How do they consume their content?
If you use content marketing to connect with your audience, then you need to understand how they consume content.
- Are they primarily mobile readers?
- Do they rely on blogs for information or do they follow industry experts on social media?
- Which publications do they follow?
Once you have that information, you can build your content marketing resources and plan your distribution.
What are their interests and passions?
You can go a long way with people if you can make them laugh, tell them an inside joke, entertain them, or initiate deep discussions about their passions.