Maximizing Your Exposure

Maximizing Your Exposure

Your content might as well not even exist if it doesn’t get exposure. This means you need to post it at the right time (when your target market is online), it needs to grab your followers’ attention, and it needs to be the ideal length to hold their attention.

Basically, your content needs to be like super glue that bonds your prospects to your content instantly to create maximum exposure. Here’s how to stir up a vat of content super glue…

Post Content That’s the Ideal Length

Ultimately, you need to test your own content with your audience to see what they respond to the best. However, you can start with this research from DigitalWebRocket 

(https://digitalwebrocket.com/the-ideal-length-of-everything/), which outlines the ideal length for a wide variety of content.

Specifically:

• Twitter, 100 characters. Tweets can’t be longer than 140 characters, so they’re short no matter what. But 100 characters seems to be the sweet spot, as it produces 17% more engagement than other posts.

• Facebook, 40 characters. Research shows posts with a mere 40 characters get 86% more engagement than longer posts. Need an example? This sentence is about 37 characters.

• Google+, 60 characters. Your headlines needs to fit on one line, and it needs to grab your readers’ attention. (More on that just a bit later.)

• LinkedIn posts, 25 words. Consumer-oriented posts get better engagement right around 21 to 25 words, while 16-25 words is the sweet spot for business-to-business posts.

• YouTube videos, just under three minutes. Analysts have looked at the length of the most popular videos on YouTube, and they’ve determined they’re short: about two minutes and fifty-four seconds on average. You can use this guideline when you’re posting videos on other social media too, such as Google+ or Facebook.

• Hashtags, six characters. If you’re using hashtags (and you should be), then keep them short: just six characters per tag. #short #catchy

You can see a pattern here: keep it short. People’s attention spans are short. And when they’re accessing content from their mobile phones, they’re more likely to engage if they don’t need to do a lot of scrolling. That’s why you’ll want to hone your copywriting skills, so that every word counts.

Which brings us to the next point…

Practice Good Copywriting

Attention spans are short, and there are a lot of other people competing for your followers’ attention.  That’s why you need to grab it quick and hold on hard using the power of good copywriting. 

Here are two tips to get you started:

Put your biggest benefits front and center. If you have a snippet of text you’re using to get someone to click on a link, then you better darn well give them a good reason to click on that link. Or if you’re posting a headline to an article, then that headline ought to put the biggest benefits upfront.

Don’t make your readers click a link or start reading to figure out the benefits, because they just won’t do it. Instead, deliver the biggest benefits to them on a silver platter so that they feel compelled to take action.

For example: 

• Melt Fat Fast Using This Weird Trick…
• Double Your Conversion Rates In Five Minutes…

Arouse curiosity whenever possible. If you visit a site like UpWorthy.com (which crates viral content), you’ll see that their content is mainly propelled by curiosity-fueled headlines.

For example:

• The Incredible Golfing Secret of The One-Armed Golfer…
• The Shocking Truth About Your Metabolism

Keep in mind that people are looking for solutions to their problems. They basically want to read about themselves. Yes, they’re a little self-centered. Once you start writing headlines and copy that appeals to this self-centeredness, you’re likely to see your conversion rates shoot up.

Next up…

Post At The Right Time

The key to getting interaction (which further increases exposure) and kick starting a viral effect is to post at the right time. What you need to do is figure out when your audience is most likely to be online and able to interact, and then post accordingly.

Now, you’ve probably seen some of the studies others have conducted to figure out the best time to post. For example, BuzzSumo.com analyzed 500 million blog posts published on Facebook, and found that the best results were achieved between 10am and 1pm (Eastern) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Those that went viral were usually posted on Tuesdays.

So, does this mean you’ll be golden if you post about 10:00am Eastern on a Tuesday?

Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on your audience.

For example, if you’re targeting those from the Land Down Under (e.g., Australians and New Zealand folks), then they’re probably sleeping at that time. Or partying hard and dancing on a table with a lampshade on their head. But either way, they’re not on social media. So unless you plan on doing some sort of electronic osmosis for those who sleep with their phones under their pillows, posting at that time wouldn’t be a good idea.

So what you need to do is really think about your audience, figure out when they’ll be online, and then start testing different times for yourself. Yes, you can toss in a Tuesday at 10:00am into the mix too, but be sure to test other days and times as well.

Consider these factors:

• According to IDC.com research, the vast majority of young people (teens to 20s) check their phone as soon as they get up in the morning. (They also check it regularly all through the day, though they may not always have time to engage.)

• Many people with smart phones report looking at their phones while they’re watching TV (which is typically done in the evening).

• People who have children are probably rushing in the morning between the time they get up and the time they arrive at work. The exception? Those who use public transport, as they’ll have downtime on the train or bus to check their phones.

• Some people do have down-time soon after they arrive at work. They arrive a few minutes early and then do a little online browsing before starting their tasks for the day.

• Some people may have more free time to engage on weekend mornings. But that depends on your audience, as some people use their weekend mornings for family time, hobbies, exercise, etc. Some people even choose to “go dark” on the weekend (meaning they unplug from social media).

Take those factors into consideration, think about your own audience, and start testing times and dates.

TIP: Start tracking when your audience starts following your social media pages, or even engages on your website such as commenting on your blog posts or joining your newsletter. If you see definite patterns as to when the vast majority of your audience is active, these are good days and times to test your social media postings.

Once you’ve determined the best time to post for your audience, then you can develop a regular publishing schedule to post your best content on those specific days and times.

For example, if you find that your audience tends to respond best at 8:00pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, then you can set up your automation tools to automatically post content during those times. Naturally, you can post content at other times as well, but you’ll want to save your best content (and/or the content you want to go viral) for the times when your audience has time to engage.

Next…

Post Popular Content

Spend a few minutes browsing popular social media pages, and you’ll quickly notice that certain types of content seem to get more shares and interaction than other types of content.

Specifically:

• Images are shared more than text.
• Videos are shared more than images.

For example, post a really good tip or a quote in text form, and you’ll get a low to moderate amount of engagement.

Now make this tip or quote into a graphic, and watch engagement shoot up… for the exact same content!  

Try it for yourself—you won’t believe the difference!

TIP: Sometimes people don’t hit the “share” button to share an image. Instead, they save it to their hard drives, and then share it on other platforms and locations. That’s why it’s very important for you to brand every image you create, which includes putting your URL on the image.

Quick Recap

So, that’s how you maximize exposure by grabbing attention and engaging your audience. Now let’s look at the last goal, which is to maximize results…

Maximizing Your Results

When people “like” your posts, that’s cool. But these likes don’t create a viral storm, and likes don’t pay the mortgage bill. So ultimately, your goal is to get your followers to take some specific action.

Depending on what type of content you’re posting and the purpose of this content, your goal action might be:

• Sharing your post (so it goes viral).
• Clicking on a link.
• Picking up the phone to call you.
• Purchasing a product.
• Joining your newsletter list.
• Requesting information from you.
• Following you on a different social media channel.

Those are just a few of the top examples. You may have other ideas about what you want your followers to do.

Before you post a piece of content, you need to decide its purpose. Generally, each piece of content should have one primary purpose. Everything about the content should be geared towards achieving this purpose.

We talked about some of these possible goals at the beginning of this book, such as increasing branding awareness, driving traffic, boosting conversions, generating sales, raising awareness about a related social issue and more. These aren’t just goals for your entire social media strategy. They’re also goals for EACH piece of content you create.

Point is, if you don’t have a goal in mind when you post a piece of content, then you need to ask yourself why you’re even posting it.

Now, here’s the key to getting people to take action: you need to post a call to action (CTA). This is where you specifically tell people what you want them to do next.

For example:

• Click here now to claim your free report!
• Like this if you agree.
• Give your friends a smile by sharing this with them right now…
• Activate your coupon by clicking here…

Here’s something important to keep in mind…

Merely telling people what to do (e.g., “click here”) isn’t going to create a whole flurry of action. In most cases, it helps to give people a good reason to take the action you’re suggesting. If you can stir up a sense of urgency, that’s even better.

For example: “Click here to get your free report—but hurry, this offer ends soon…”

Quick Recap

So now you just learned about the three parts of increasing your ROI:

Maximizing Your Content Strategy

Maximizing Your Exposure

Maximizing Your Results

These aren’t steps to take in isolation. Instead, use them together to create the best return on your investment of time (and/or money). And then use the tips in the next section to really set your social media strategy on fire…