There’s no denying that social media can be a powerful tool for your brand.
Showing up consistently with helpful and unique content for social platforms helps you generate awareness for your brand. It also attracts leads and sales. But this can be tricky as you navigate social media algorithms to get your content noticed.
That’s where optimizing social media content comes into play. By being strategic with the kind of content you’re creating, you stand a better chance of boosting visibility and engagement.
If you’re concerned about catching up on social media optimization, have no fear. We’re covering all of the basics of optimizing content. You’ll learn what it means and how to optimize based on each separate platform. Let’s dive in!
Optimizing Social Media Content: What Does This Mean?
Since social media generates awareness for your brand through exposure to a wider audience, optimization lets you capitalize on that. You use various social platforms to spread your brand’s message and establish your online presence.
You spend time analyzing and auditing your strategy, factoring in social media best practices, and what’s performing well with your audience. Meaning you develop the most effective strategy possible.
But what does it mean when you’re optimizing social media content? It comes down to being strategic about the content you publish. When using social media as a brand, you don’t want to post just anything.
Your content should still center the interests of your target audience. In addition to considering what your audience is into, you will also want to align your content with what performs best for each separate platform to get better results.
Doing social media optimization properly can help you reap a ton of rewards. The benefits speak for themselves about the value of optimizing your content:
You’ll Develop an Effective Social Media Strategy: When you know how to create strong content for each social media platform, you can effortlessly craft a strategy that will help you be more consistent with posting. You’ll always know what kind of content to share, where to share, and when. It takes all the guesswork out of managing your social media presence.
Your Engagement Will Increase: When your content is optimized properly, there’s a good chance it’ll see a greater reach, therefore, increasing your visibility. This means your brand could get discovered by tons of new people. And you boost engagement (such as comments, shares, and website traffic) to attract new followers.
You’ll See a Greater ROI Across Platforms: Odds are, you use social media as a tool to help you achieve some of your larger business goals. Generating sales is a common one, for instance. Another is increasing brand visibility. With successfully optimized content, you increase your chances of reaching those goals and boost your ROI. Plus, seeing those analytics is a great way to see your hard work pay off.
At the end of the day, the social media accounts that end up being successful are those that understand trends, the types of people on the platform, and how to take advantage of their existing content library to optimize it across accounts. They become masters at their platforms and create content their audience can’t get enough of. As a result, they’ve built engaged, loyal followings.
Which Social Media Platforms Are Best to Optimize?
It’s easier than ever to find a social media platform that’s an ideal fit for your brand because there many are available. You want to ensure you invest time and energy into the platforms that showcase your strengths while putting you in front of your target audience. Otherwise, you risk your content going unnoticed or getting seen by the wrong people.
If you’re going to be creating content for several platforms, you want to make sure you enhance that content for the different goals of that platform so it stands a better chance of performing well. Once you become a master at social media best practices, this will become second nature to you.
To get started, you should make sure that you have defined your business goals for social media. This means choosing strategies that align with those goals. For example, if you want to improve SEO for a B2B business, you might choose LinkedIn because over 50% of companies in the B2B arena find clients on the platform.
Alternatively, if you want to increase visibility for your brand, you might go with Facebook. Their ad features make it easy to target the right segments while making sure people still see your content and posts.
What are the Best Tactics for Social Media Optimization?
Broadly, there are a ton of things you can do to optimize your social channels. By using some of these simple strategies, you can make a big dent in getting your business out there and noticed by the right people.
But what are the best ways to optimize your social media? We’ve chosen a few general fixes and high-level improvements you can make to help your business’s pages.
Never Stop Thinking About Your Audience
Your audience is the most important part of your social media presence. They drive your engagement. This means their interests and pain points should always be top of mind.
And the demographics for your audience could be different across your different social channels. That’s why you should regularly take the time to check out the types of followers you have in your analytics.
Write Snappy Bios
Your bio is one of the earliest things someone will see when they check out your profile. It sets the tone and establishes who you are. So, make sure your bio covers what you do, your industry, and nails your brand tone quickly.
Having a great bio can encourage a potential client to reach out to you, so you want to ensure you make a good impression while being aware of their attention span.
Consider the Time You Post
Tons of hours have gone into studying the best times to post on social media over the years. While it’s not an exact science, you can make educated guesses based on when most of your audience is online.
If you’re just starting, you might choose a time to post social media based on the research others have done. Or try out a few times and see which gets the most engagement over a couple of weeks. From there, you’d post at the time that received the most regular interaction.
Avoid Posting Too Much
There’s also not a magic number of times that you should post in a week, but you don’t want to under-post to the point where people don’t see anything you have to say. It’s also important not to overwhelm your audience because they could get annoyed with your content and unfollow you.
That’s why you should find a sweet spot and stick to that whenever you write and post content for social. For example, best practices note that you should post on Instagram between 3 and 7 times a week, but you’re encouraged to post more than once a day on Twitter. That’s due, in part, to the lifespan of posts on these different platforms. A tweet is only relevant for 18 minutes, but on Instagram, you can get a lifecycle of a couple of days.
Make Your Content Searchable
If no one can find your content, they can’t engage with it. They also won’t know that your brand is what they need to solve a problem they have. While you won’t need to use this tactic all the time (sometimes you might just be talking to your existing customers), it’s a good thing to keep in mind.
One way to do this is through hashtags so that searchers can find your posts based on a couple of relevant words that trend on a platform. If you have an SEO team, you can also get keyword research from them to help boost organic performance.
Create Engaging Visuals
You cannot ignore the importance of visuals in social media content. You’re more likely to attract an audience if your content is visually engaging. In fact, you’re 65% more likely to retain information if a visual is attached to it. If you’re trying to up your visual game, here are a few tips:
Avoid images that are too dark. More light usually means more likes and shares.
Multiple colors get more attention in posts than images with only one color.
Your header text should be larger than the body text on a graphic.
Be aware of the color wheel.
Add images to your quotes. This could be anything from inspirational quotes or memes.
When you put thought into your images, your audience will appreciate the hard work you’ve put in and be delighted by the images and graphics you create.
How to Optimize Your Social Media Posts
Knowing and understanding your audience is essential for all content. You don’t want to overlook it with social media posts. You should create content that interests your audience so your posts will resonate with them. Consider what they’re interested in seeing from you and how you can provide solutions to their biggest pain points.
From there, you can tweak your content according to what performs best on each platform. To help you get started, we’re breaking down what works best on four top social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn). Here’s what you need to know:
1. Optimizing Your Facebook Posts
Facebook can be a great place to build an audience, but many brands find the platform frustrating because of low impressions and engagement. And considering the organic reach of a Facebook Page post is only 5.2%, the frustration makes sense. But you can do a few things to improve your posts and boost engagement rates:
Copy: A regular Facebook post can be up to 63,206 characters in length, which means it’s a great platform for posting long-form content. But should you? According to BuzzSumo research, shorter Facebook posts perform better, specifically those under 50 characters. Additionally, longer posts get cut off by Facebook’s “see more” option, so it’s important to stay snappy and avoid that.
Hashtags: With the ability to write longer posts, it can be tempting to add tons of hashtags to generate more reach. However, it’s best to stick to just two or three relevant hashtags.
Visuals: Facebook recommends uploading images that are 1,200 x 630 pixels in size, so consider that when creating graphics. It doesn’t matter if you post in landscape, portrait, or square, Facebook will automatically resize it to 500 pixels wide. The height will be scaled accordingly for the best quality.
2. Optimizing Your Instagram Posts
When viewing the standard Instagram feed, a user sees posts from the accounts they engage with the most first. So, if you want your content to be at the top of someone’s feed, you’ll want to encourage them to engage with you as much as possible. You can also suggest they add your account as one of their favorites to secure you a top spot. Other than that, here are some more tips:
Copy: Your Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters in length, giving you plenty of room to write captivating content for your followers to consume. However, research that analyzed 5.9 million Instagram posts shows posts between 1-50 characters appear to drive more interactions. Short and sweet is the way to go on this platform.
Hashtags: When writing your Instagram caption, you can include up to 30 hashtags. If you try to add more than that, you can’t post the caption. But avoid cramming in as many as possible. Studies show that 11 is the magic number for Instagram hashtags. It also doesn’t matter if you place the hashtags in the caption or a separate comment.
Visuals: When posting to your Instagram feed, you have three options. You can share a square image (1,080 x 1,080 pixels), a horizontal image (1,080 x 566 pixels), or a vertical image (1,080 x 1,350 pixels). Sticking to these specifications will ensure your image doesn’t get pixelated.
3. Optimizing Your Twitter Posts
Twitter has become the go-to platform for those seeking real-time updates. You can always count on its users to be discussing breaking news stories or live tweeting events (such as conferences or TV shows). But Twitter is also a great place to share educational tips with your community. To ensure your tweets get plenty of engagement, keep these tips in mind:
Copy: There was a lot of excitement when Twitter increased its character limit from 140 to 280 characters in 2017. And it’s safe to say users appreciate having a little more room for sharing their thoughts. Now the ideal tweet length is between 240 and 259 characters.
Hashtags: Although you can use as many hashtags as you’d like on Twitter, the platform recommends using no more than two per tweet. In fact, tweets that have one or two hashtags reportedly see 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags.
Visuals: Adding an image to your tweets is a fantastic way to stand out and grab attention in a busy feed. Just make sure you’re uploading horizontal images that are 1,200 x 675 pixels for best results.
4. Optimizing Your Pinterest Posts
There’s no denying that Pinterest is one powerful visual search engine. Users across the globe turn to Pinterest to look for recipes, DIYs, and fashion inspiration. It can also be a great place to search for business and marketing tips. Odds are, Pinterest has something to offer no matter what type of content you’re on the hunt for. And here’s how to ensure your content stands out:
Copy: Your pin description on Pinterest can be up to 500 characters in length. However, it’s worth noting that only the first 30-60 characters appear in the feed without clicking on the post. For that reason, you want to make sure that the first snippet is the most attention-grabbing.
Hashtags: You can include more than 20 hashtags per pin, although this can look spammy to users and be a turn-off. Instead, stick to between two to eight hashtags for the best results. Simply choose the most relevant, and you’re on your way to optimized content.
Visuals: Long, vertical images are what truly thrive on Pinterest. That’s why you want to stick with their ideal image size of 1,000 x 1,500 pixels with an aspect ratio of 2:3. Any other than that and Pinterest says your pin’s performance could be negatively impacted. If your brand creates infographics, you’ll want to make sure you post them to Pinterest!
5. Optimizing Your LinkedIn Posts
LinkedIn has become the preeminent platform for professionals. Companies looking to hire new employees can post job listings, while eager job hunters can apply for their dream positions. And brands can use this social platform to share their latest content, promote offerings, and generate new leads. You just need to know how to use it effectively. Here’s how you can start optimizing social media content on LinkedIn:
Copy: When crafting your LinkedIn post, you’ll have a maximum of 700 characters available to use. But it’s important to note that, at the 140-character mark, you’ll get a “see more” cut off. For that reason, research suggests keeping your posts on the shorter side. The recommendation is 25 words or less, so you’ll want to make your point quickly. Though it’s worth mentioning that some of the most viral posts are those that personalized stories.
Hashtags: Although there isn’t a limit to how many hashtags you can add to a LinkedIn post, the platform recommends using only three hashtags per post. This is preferable to avoid looking spammy or cluttered when your followers are reading them.
Visuals: When adding images to your LinkedIn posts, horizontal is best. Create images at 1,104 x 736 pixels to ensure everything you upload looks high-quality, never pixelated.
Optimize Your Social Media Platforms with Expert Help
The team of social media experts at Express Writers has years of experience crafting incredible social media content. These writers understand how to pull in SEO while optimizing for each platform. If you need social media posts, there’s no need to look at other content writing agencies. Our passionate social media writers are here to help.
Writing a social media post doesn’t seem overly complicated. Should be pretty straightforward and simple to do, right?
Actually, copywriting to attract the right audience from a business standpoint is a little more methodical than you might expect compared to writing social media posts as an individual.
There’s a lot more at stake for the business, including a meaningful impact on the brand’s perceived authority, its reach to potential new consumers, engagement rates, and more.
Globally, as of July 2021, there are an estimated 4.48 billion social media users (almost 57% of the world’s population). Facebook still reigns supreme with an estimated 2.853 million users, followed by YouTube in second place.
Here’s where it gets tricky – each social media platform has its own tips, tricks, algorithms, and best practices. Content that performs well on LinkedIn isn’t likely to see that same success on Twitter or Pinterest if posts are simply copied and pasted uniformly across every channel.
Not to worry… we’re here to share the best advice for each social outlet so your content performs no matter where it’s posted.
When done correctly, a marketing strategy on social media can reach a lot of people to bring in leads, raise brand awareness, and create conversion opportunities.
[bctt tweet=”Copywriting to attract the right audience from a business standpoint is a little more methodical than writing social media posts as an individual. (There’s a lot more at stake! ?) Learn how to write posts that won’t fail ?” username=”ExpWriters”]
The good news is, you don’t have to rely on too much trial and error to nail down the best methods for the various social media channels.
Why?
Because a lot of other people have already done it for you!
You can (and should) still monitor your social media analytics to see which posts engage with your unique audience the most, but as far as coming up with a tried-and-true formula, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.
Follow these tips to rule your social media campaigns.
1. How to Write Facebook Posts That Get Liked and Shared
The #1 social media platform isn’t exactly a one-and-done content formula because it handles multiple types of media, and different posting techniques can work well depending on the goal you’re hoping to accomplish.
To find success on Facebook, you need to “read the room” and respond to your audience. These guidelines with help you do just that:
Video is the best performing content. However, Facebook campaigns are most effective when you vary your types of posts, so mix it up with photos, infographics, text, gifs, memes, blog posts, press releases, links, et cetera.
The ideal length for a post is around 40-80 characters. As a general rule, short posts on social media perform better than long ones.
End with a question. People are more likely to engage when you reach out to them for their opinions or feedback.
Post interesting content, even if it doesn’t pertain directly to your brand. Facebook’s audience has a limited tolerance for self-promotion, which means if you want to keep your followers engaged, it doesn’t hurt to post about more than just your business. Be sure to keep your topics related to your niche, though.
Make it visual. Text is easy to scroll past, but graphics help to make people pause while they’re skimming through their newsfeed. Even if you’re publishing a post that’s strictly text, Facebook makes it easy to transform it into a visual graphic.
2. How to Write Effective Tweets on Twitter
Posting on Twitter requires smart, concise word choices to convey your message within a limited space. It can take a little extra practice, but once you get the hang of it, your tweets will take off.
When posting on Twitter, take this advice into account:
Front-load your tweet. Most people on Twitter are skimming through a massive amount of content. Put the most important information at the beginning of your tweet to catch their attention.
The ideal length for a tweet is 240+ characters. Twitter increased its character limit from 140 to 280 in 2017, and users seem to appreciate the extra room to express themselves. If you need more than 280 characters, create a thread or add a link to a blog post. Tip: Use a free tool like Bitly to shorten your url and maximize your space.
Don’t go overboard with hashtags. Real estate for your tweet is limited – you can’t afford to spend it all on hashtags rather than your actual message. Limit yourself to 1-3 relevant hashtags.
Tweet shareable content. Twitter’s audience loves to retweet breaking news, statistics, quotes, jokes, and gifs. Timing is important on Twitter – you don’t want to be the last one to share yesterday’s news.
3. How to Write Engaging Instagram Captions
Instagram is all about visual content, but that doesn’t mean you can skate by with insufficient captions. If you want your audience to interact with your content, your words do matter.
Start with a bang. Instagram allows up to 2,200 characters. However, it’s important to keep in mind that no more than 125 characters will show beneath your photo. If you want your audience to read your full post, you need to entice them to click “more.”
Use emojis. Instagram + emojis = ? For real, though, emojis have proven to be incredibly effective on Instagram.
Use relevant hashtags. You’re allowed up to 30 hashtags, but don’t just pick the ones that are currently trending (especially if they don’t really pertain to your media). Instead, try to vary your hashtag use. Select a few broad, popular ones but also mix in some niche-specific hashtags, plus one or two branded ones. For example, Coca-Cola created the branded hashtag #ShareACoke for an Instagram campaign.
Break up long text into paragraphs. Instagram is still a bit tricky about this. If you want to have paragraphs with white space in between them, you have to hit Enter, then add a space on the blank line before you tap Enter again. But the extra step is worth it, because big blocks of text are difficult to read.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is treating LinkedIn like a clone of Facebook.
While the two do share some similarities, even a blue logo, the type of content is very different.
LinkedIn is primarily a networking platform where business professionals and brands share industry insights, news, and updates. The latest “epic fail” video going viral on Facebook isn’t going to fit in with what LinkedIn’s audience expects.
When posting on LinkedIn, keep in mind that:
Long-form content works well. Don’t hesitate to share articles and blog posts on LinkedIn. This audience is more likely to take their time and read what you have to say, so you can also type longer posts than you normally would on other platforms that are meant to be skimmed. Just be sure to stay organized and professional.
Add a handful of hashtags. While hashtags dominate Instagram and Twitter, they fell flat when it came to Facebook. LinkedIn falls somewhere in between. Relevant hashtags are good to include, but in moderation and preferably tucked at the end of your post.
Brand your content and graphics. Professionals are likely to share studies, research, infographics, statistics, and industry updates. If you’re posting content, make sure it’s branded so you get the credit when it’s shared. For example, Gary Vaynerchuk always includes his signature and Instagram/Twitter handle on his content.
[bctt tweet=”Paragraph breaks in IG captions? Hashtags on Pinterest? Long-form LinkedIn posts? ? These are just some of the current ways to optimize your social media writing ? in the 2020s. More on the @ExpWriters Write Blog:” username=””]
5. How to Post Great Pins on Pinterest
Much like Instagram, the focus on Pinterest will be on the picture rather than the text.
That being said, the right description can give your post a major boost! Try these tips the next time you post a pin:
The ideal length for a post is around 150-300 characters. You’re allowed up to 500 characters, but try not to go overboard. It’s a good idea to be detailed and use relevant keywords in the description.
Have a professional tone. Slang and acronyms don’t give a great impression on Pinterest. Be mindful of your grammar and punctuation. Try to keep your tone informal but professional.
Hashtags are optional (but useful). A few years ago, hashtags were a big NO on Pinterest. But now, hashtags are searchable and will appear in chronological order. However, Pinterest is still primarily driven by keywords, not hashtags, which means the feed will display results that have the keyword even without the hashtag. Since a hashtag usually doubles as a keyword, it doesn’t hurt to use them on your pins.
Tackle Social Media with a Can-Do Attitude!
The most important piece of advice when it comes to social media is to BE AUTHETIC.
That, more than anything else, is what will help your content connect with your audience. When in doubt, remember that short and sweet tends to perform better than long-form content on most platforms.
Experiment with your posts to find what you audience responds to best. Try posting different lengths and forms of content at different times of the day.
Whatever you do, don’t give up! Social media can be difficult to navigate, but with persistence and a methodical approach, you’ll find what works.
Need some help? Our expert writers are here for any content-related project from social media and beyond. Visit our Content Shop to see what types of custom content we can create for you.
Social media is awesome, isn’t it? You can reach out to your clients via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and even meet new people, bringing them in and turning them into customers. There are so many excellent social channels out there that you might start to feel a bit overwhelmed and wonder just what else, outside of the social media trinity you should use.
Well, I am here to tell you about an incredible social channel that you might just be overlooking – Pinterest. That’s right! I am going to show you why you need to add this channel to your mix, as well as how you can use it successfully for your business.
Pinterest For Your Business: How To Succeed In Your Pinterest Social Media Marketing
Pinterest is a great resource for businesses, and can give you a wider reach and range for your audience. Here are some great reasons why you should be using it.
1. Over 70 Million People Use It, & 93% of Those People Are Buyers. That’s right. The 70 million users is a stat from Wikipedia a few years ago, so it’s safe to say this may have even doubled by now. And Shopify is saying that 2 million people pin product pins daily, while 93% of all Pinterest users actually use Pinterest to plan purchases. If this isn’t your main reason to be on Pinterest, I don’t know what is.
2. You Can Use Pinterest to Help Increase Traffic.According to Jessica Meher from Hubspot, a great reason to use Pinterest is to help increase traffic. Research on the amount of traffic Pinterest provides shows that it can actually bring in more people than Facebook or Twitter, which is great for all websites. This is definitely amazing if your site is new or you rely on your site to help drive sales and bring in new customers.
3. You Will See High Amounts of User Engagement. Pinterest is amazingly addictive for anyone who uses it, and many people love to engage on it. In the article mentioned above, Jessica Meher points out that you will see more engagement on Pinterest simply because many people are on it and addicted to it. This means that they are very likely to pin, favorite, and comment on your pins while they spend their time browsing through the channel.
4. It Will Help Strengthen Your Brand. You can use Pinterest to strengthen your brand and drive trust among your client base. According to Nicole Kohler from Shareaholic, a great way to use Pinterest to strengthen your brand is to bookmark mentions of your brand and products. This will help you keep track when someone mentions your brand, giving you the chance to interact with them. This can help promote engagement, trust, and, as I’ve mentioned, strengthen your brand. It will also help you stand out from your competitors if you are regularly seeking out and engaging with your customers.
5. You Have Easy Access to Market Research. One of the great things about Pinterest is that you get the chance to do excellent market research easily. Pinterest gives you the ability to see what your users want to see while keeping you updated on the latest trends. You can follow your clients back and easily watch what they post and see just how they use social media, helping you create and curate excellent content for them.
And Here Are 9 Top Ways To Successfully Use Pinterest for Your Business
Now that you know a few excellent reasons as to why you should use Pinterest for your business, let’s take a look at just how you can use it successfully.
1. Integrate Pinterest With Your Website, Twitter, and Facebook. A great way to use Pinterest is to integrate it with your website, as well as your other social channels such as Twitter and Facebook. You can set it up to where Pinterest updates your Facebook and Twitter pages when you make a new pin, helping to drive your existing social media followers to your account. To integrate it with your website, you can include “Pin It” buttons to encourage visitors to pin product images to their own Pinterest accounts.
2. Learn What Your Audience Wants to See. You need to do some basic client research to be sure that when you use Pinterest, you are sharing what your clients want to see. You can create personas, but simply following your clients and taking a look at their boards can help you figure out what they pin and like to see. When you understand your Pinterest audience more, you can then start to develop things that are interesting to them, helping bring about engagement and driving more people to your website.
3. Focus On the Quality of Your pins and Not When You Post. Trying to find the best time to post to social media is something many people look for to help bring about more clicks and views. However, according to Kevan Lee from Buffer, when it comes to Pinterest, you need to focus on the quality of your pins and not when you post. High-quality pins are more important to Pinterest users and many people are on Pinterest at varying times. When you post something that is high quality, you have a higher chance having more people pin your pins and click on the links.
4. Create Excellent Captions With Each Pin. Just like with your blogs and other social media posts, the headlines and captions on Pinterest are vital. When you go to create a pin, make sure you have an amazing caption that can capture a user’s attention, convincing them to click. Focus your attention on making something that is engaging that gives clients enough information to be curious but not too much information that keeps them from looking further at your website.
5. Make Sure You are Driving Traffic to Your Site. You might be sharing a lot of interesting pins, but when using Pinterest, you need to make sure that you drive traffic to your site. For example, when you share a product image or an image from your blog, make sure to “Pin It” directly for your website. This will link back to your site visibly on Pinterest and will make it easy for a user to click on the image, taking them to the product or blog you are linking to. The only way to see the amazing traffic that Pinterest provides is to make sure you link back to your site.
6. Add a “Pin it” Button On Your Landing Pages and Blogs. As I mentioned earlier, adding a “Pin It” button to your website is a great way to integrate your account with your site. Make sure that the button is on each of your landing pages and product pages, as well as your blog. This will help make it easier for your clients when they want to share something from your site that they find interesting.
7. Have Proper Pinterest Etiquette. Just as in normal life and on other social media channels, having proper etiquette is great when approaching Pinterest. This can help you be more successful when using the social channel. Some good ideas for etiquette are to be nice, give credit to any sources you use, and don’t be overly self-promotional. You can also comment on your clients’ pins when they pin something from your website, and just maintain a fun, great client-business relationship.
8. Add Your Keywords and Use Hashtags. When you go to create your awesome captions, make sure that you include your keywords in the description. This will help someone locate your pins when they are searching through Pinterest for those keywords, just like when they are searching Google.
You can also include hashtags in your Pinterest post. This will help categorize your pin with a specific hashtag such as #weightloss or #shorthair. In addition, Anna Bennett from Business 2 Community says that it will help if you have your Twitter and Pinterest linked up. This means that once you make a pin and it gets sent out over Twitter, you already have the hashtags in place.
9. Use Secret Pinterest Boards to Curate Content. You don’t want to overwhelm your Pinterest followers with several pins all at once, but you also don’t want to lose the great content you’ve found. A great idea from Cynthia Sanchez at Social Media Examiner is to create secret boards that only you can see and curate excellent content.
This can help you with your whole social media strategy, as well as a blogging strategy. But it can also help you keep all of the excellent content youfind in an easy-to-access location. Once you set up these boards, you can always go through the pins and begin pinning them throughout the week.
Pin Away, My Fine Friends!
As you can see, Pinterest for your business really can happen. It is a great social media resource and there are many ways you can use it for the betterment of your business. If you don’t have a Pinterest account, go ahead and set one up and start pinning. If you are looking for help with your social media strategy, look no further than Express Writers. Our social media services can help your business have a brilliant, shiny social media presence that you are sure to enjoy.
This June, our little ol’ team at Express Writers is becoming bigger and better than ever before.
We’ve spent some serious time and resources (might add, blood and sweat to that) to update our major content products and launch some brand new things.
One thing you can say about us—we are not your typical content writers. We’re a firm that’s dynamic, ever updating, and developing new things internally that are ahead of the curve. Our staff is passionate and involved, and we all love what we do! Ready to hear about all our new changes?
Express Writers Re-Launch This June: What Are Our Major Changes & Updates?
For about three months now, our CTO Josh McCoy has led his team of developers in creating an ultra-custom Membership system that will be accessible to our ongoing clients. As our CEO, I’ve sat down and recreated our major Content Strategy training and written tests for all our Strategists, as well as wrote and launched content standard quality tests for every single one of our writers and editors. Our team is better than ever before, and we’re staffing more people almost every week to keep up with our growth.
1. Membership Platform
The long-awaited Membership platform and program is finally here! Custom designed on a platform built from scratch by our development team, the Membership system replicates our Content Shop with an online ordering platform only accessible to clients who deposit and spend a minimum of $1,000 a month. When the deposit is placed, it activates the platform and clients will be able to see and order with their ongoing membership rates on every product. Besides the discounted rate access, membership clients will have easier input forms that allow them to simply upload monthly project specs: and we’ll also dedicate a project Editor to each membership client account that comes in with a style guide.
Membership Benefits:
Membership platform, allowing clients to access and order all the discounted products.
Dedicated Staff Editors, exclusive to Membership accounts only: we train one of our staff Editors on your style guide and requirements for long-term, specific editorial attention. This is an optional add-on, starting at $85 for 20 pages.
No contracts, ever. Just deposit and spend $1,000 per month.
Consistently lower rates on all our products – up to 20% off!
We’ve completed training and testing our entire staff of writers and editors on the proper use of high quality citations, checked with the MozBar, in all our blog content. We’ve also updated our content formatting rules to include high quality headlines and sub-headers that will better attract and engage readers. These fundamental quality updates will ensure your blog content meets and exceeds Google’s content standards. See our Content Shop Blog Prices.
3. Content Blogging Plans Update
We’ve done a thorough audit of how our blog plans work, and found that a word span within 1,500 words works best for the average blog. (Longer words are always favorable for Google rankings, as long as it’s quality: we recommend buying or creating single blogs over 2,000 words a few times a month for posting on your blog.) We’ve also created an additional plan for more versatility. All blogs will include high quality citations and text formatting. Lastly, we’ve introduced add-ons for blogging that include the revamped Content Planning service (a full monthly Editorial Calendar and more); as well as optional premium designed images that we can create for every blog. View our Blog Packages in the Content Shop.
4. Content Planning Replaces Content Curation
Formerly called Content Curation, our Content Planning is an entirely re-vamped product in our Content Strategy lineup, available as an add-on for all of our blog plans, single website pages content planning (research and title creation), and fundamentals package for clients with new websites or blogs.
Our revamped product, Content Planning, adds a new section to the Editorial Calendar we deliver monthly, as well as overview reports, called BuzzSumo Analysis. In this analysis we conduct research on your industry influencers and what is currently trending on the web (the people who are succeeding at content in your niche) and using BuzzSumo, we’ll look at what content they are writing, how many shares it gets on what platform, and prepare a topic analysis report. Finally, our Content Strategists will identify any competitor and influencers shortcomings and notate how you can do it better with a few top suggestions and takeaways.
Tools we used: BuzzSumo, SEMRush, WordTracker, Hubspot/Portent title helpers, Quora, human eye of our Content Strategist.
Content Planning Package: This is where you’ll experience the most out of our content planning products. Our ongoing Content Planning packages are for those who have our blogging plans and are looking for total content planning, organization, and creation. We’ll analyze what content is currently trending in your niche using BuzzSumo, research keywords and topics, and create an Editorial Calendar mapped out for best monthly content. Clients also get to talk to their Content Strategist in a 30-minute monthly strategizing meeting.
Content Planning Fundamentals: This is a packaged plan for those who do not have an existing content plan, blog, or web content going: or are looking to re-vamp their current content. Our Content Strategists will deliver a Content Planning Overview excel report with page or blog suggestions, full keyword analysis report, and a BuzzSumo Content Analysis. Clients can (optionally) meet with their Content Strategist for a 30-minute discussion.
Content Planning For Websites: Perfect for the new (or revamping) website owner who doesn’t know what pages to plan for and add to their website. We’ll conduct keyword research, deliver a BuzzSumo Content Analysis, and create an overview report that suggests categories and specific pages to add for successful web content. Clients can (optionally) hold a 30-minute meeting with their Content Strategist to share input.
5. Social Media Improvements
We’re now creating custom, branded & designed images with Canva, using our stock image subscription from Getty Images/iStock. These custom images will be created for and included in all of our re-vamped social media packages. Our social media managers have been fully trained on how to use Canva to create and post your branded images. Premium designed images have been proven to boost re-tweets and social engagement by 35%. (SocialMediaExaminer).
Here’s an example of a tweet with an image we created:
— Express Writers | Your Content Writing Partner (@ExpWriters) June 11, 2015
If your business isn’t taking advantage of this engagement tool, you are missing out. That’s why we’re integrating it into our products.
Why Canva?
Canva is quickly growing to be the #1 premium designed image creation tool and is used by millions of people! It allows the user to create beautiful, engaging visual elements that will attract and convert readers much better than a standard image. (Also, they are rocking out on their content marketing, we love these guys: see their blog.) We compared this tool to PicMonkey, the other leading one, and Canva has far more features (more templates that are social media and blog friendly, more options).
Besides premium-designed imagery, we’ve also trained our social media managers on using Pinterest. Every plan now includes Pinterest. This social platform is becoming more and more crucial for businesses to be present on: more than 72 million users exist here, a whopping 93% of which usually shop online while they pin. And pins with prices get 36% more likes (SproutSocial). Read more about why you should be on Pinterest on our blog The Rise of Pinterest: 5 Reasons It Should Be Part of Your Social Media Mix.
Our content auditing has undergone an improvement with the addition of BuzzSumo as a tool our Content Strategists will use to research and discover clients’ best competitors and influencers. We’ll put these findings on a new tab in the content audit report, with notes on what the competitor is doing for their blogs and social presence. These discoveries can help clients replicate the strategies of successful businesses in their niche in creating and sharing content, with actionable takeaways listed. We’ve also added Wordtracker, a Moz recommended keyword tool, as an additional tool besides SEMRush for even more powerful keyword strategy and research; and we’ve included PDF guide overviews that will explain the audit process and reports. View Content Auditing in the Content Shop.
7. Keyword Strategy
We’ve entirely revamped our research process for clients’ best keywords. Our former two products, keyword research and topic research, are replaced with one all-inclusive, comprehensive and powerful product: Keyword Strategy. For this new product, we now partner with and have a paid subscription to these three tools:
BuzzSumo, a leading content insight analytic platform
SEMRush, one of the best SEO software programs online
Wordtracker, a MOZ-recommend, high-performance Keyword Tool
BuzzSumo and Wordtracker are brand new to our team, we’ve just finished training our Content Strategists on how to use them. Our Content Strategists are fully trained and ready put to full use the power of our new tools to create a thorough keyword and content strategy. We put together clients’ best keyword findings in an Excel according to competition, CPC, search volume per month, and more; send a full content analysis from BuzzSumo that shows how hot a keyword or topic is currently trending online, and our Content Strategists will write full content topics using the keyword findings.
Deliverables: a full keyword research report, with top 10 keywords and over 200 full cut findings; topic research, where we’ll write 10 optimized, ready-to-go, topics using the top keywords in our findings for blogs and content pieces that you can create (or have us write): and a content analysis report generated by BuzzSumo to show you what content is currently trending on the Web for your keywords.
We’ve fielded for a great designer to fulfill the marketing, infographic, and formatting areas of our content. Our new premium designer resource is an award-winning consultancy designer who currently creates visual content for Johnson & Johnson, ESPN, US Government, and many more worldwide companies. See an infographic example.
Our new design capabilities include:
Bespoke infographics
Illustrated print and e-book covers
Premium formatting and visual elements for e-books, brochures, whitepapers, and presentations
Storytelling character elements & more!
That’s It, Folks.. For Now!
We’re excited to introduce this new and re-vamped lineup to launch off our summer, this 2015! And we’re grateful to each and every one of our valued clients that make it possible for us to keep growing and getting better.
Are you looking for a great, new way to help leverage your social media campaign? Of course you are, that’s why you’re reading this blog!
There currently exists on the web an excellent social media channel that has been around for a while now, yet is starting to become a very vital aspect of any social media campaign – Pinterest. That’s right, the channel that gives people recipes and DIY tips is the next element in an impressive social media campaign. Let’s take a look at why this channel will be important for you, the various advantages of it, and how you can use Pinterest to generate revenue.
Why is Pinterest Such an Important Channel?
Pinterest hasn’t always been on the social media radar as an important channel for businesses. However, it is an incredible channel that can help bring about engagement and revenue for your company. According to Suzanne Delzio at Social Media Examiner, Pinterest currently has 47 million users, and this number is expected to grow exponentially in 2016. Researchers believe this growth will happen going off of past analytics that show users doubling in 2014, and more people are signing up for the social site each day. This means that your clients are likely to be on this channel already, and if they aren’t, they soon will be. While Pinterest has been a site mainly populated by women, the social media channel has attempted to grow the demographic, and reports are showing that the amount of men signing up is growing quick.
As you can see, the platform is growing by leaps and bounds in many different areas and demographics, making it an important channel. You need to make sure you are on this channel soon and well before 2016 starts.
Who Uses Pinterest the Most?
I briefly mentioned above that women use this site the most, but that the amount of male users is growing quickly. However, I am going to give a bit more detail into the users to help you craft an excellent campaign. According to Carly Stec at HubSpot, one-third of users are women, and that number is up by 25 percent. In addition, 8 percent of men inside the United States use the social channel, which is a growth from 5 percent. These numbers are expected to rise, and this means that there will be more shoppers will to buy your products or services. For now, women are still dominating over at Pinterest, and should be a target audience. However, don’t neglect the men who are starting to use this channel, as well.
The Anatomy of a Pinterest Brain
When it comes to Pinterest, you need to know and understand the anatomy of a user’s brain. Just why do they go to the platform and how do they become a shopper instead of a browser? Let’s take a look!
“I’m Just Looking at Various Things.” When someone opens their Pinterest app or goes on the desktop site, they simply start out looking and browsing what is being shared. Many times, they don’t go in with the intention of buying, but, by following a few steps, many do end up doing so.
“Well, This is Interesting.” The next part of the anatomy of a Pinterest brain is that someone has to think the image, idea, or product looks interesting. The more interesting the pin, the more likely that person will be to click on the image and then the link attached, directing them to a site. This can then lead them to purchase the item from the picture.
“I Need to Narrow This Down.” Many times, people who are browsing Pinterest will see a multitude of interesting things, but they want to make sure they narrow things down. This helps them decide which pins to share or which products to buy.
“This is Exactly What I Need.” After narrowing things down, users will end up buying what they find to be exactly what they need. This is why it is important to make your pins stand out. You want it to be the winning pin for the Pinterest brain. Don’t worry; I am going to look at how you can achieve this later in the blog.
5 Incredible Advantages to Using Pinterest for Your Business
Before I get into how you can make incredible revenue with a Pinterest account, I want to look at the advantages of joining. Some people might not be sure that it is a site they can use, but there are some incredible benefits to it.
You Can Reach a Younger Demographic. Pinterest gives you access to a younger demographic, and while you might want to reach an older one, young people can really help your business. You shouldn’t ignore this demographic because you might be surprised just how much revenue you can bring in when you advertise to them. Pinterest is a great starting place for this.
You Can Use it as a Marketing Tool on Your Site or in Your Store. If you have product images or blogs, you can add a Pinterest social share button to your site. This will encourage users and readers to pin anything they find interesting on their own account, therefore sharing it with their friend group. If their friends find it interesting, they will share that pin and so on. This can bring in more people to that product, blog, or landing page, and once there, you can convert them to leads.
You Can Share More Than Just Your Products. When it comes to Pinterest, you aren’t limited to only sharing product images. In fact, you can share your blogs, other landing pages, and also share helpful information from industry leaders. You can create boards for each and every idea you have, helping to keep them all organized, and allowing people to follow the boards they find interesting.
You Can Create a Board that Links to Your Blogs. Do you want to drive more traffic to your blogs? Then create a board and link directly to each post as you share it. Make sure to use your keywords in the pin description and use hashtags, as well.
Pinterest Gives You the Chance to Make Your Brand More Human. This gives you a chance to show your brand in a more human light, which can help people trust you. You can create a board that shows the “daily life” of your company and share images or create an “event” board to show your events. Whatever shows a personal side to your business will help make your brand more human.
10 Ways to Use Pinterest to Generate Revenue
Now that you can see some of the benefits of using Pinterest, I am going to look at how you can use it to generate revenue. I will be referencing a few points from the HubSpot article by Carly Stec I shared towards the beginning of this blog.
Here are some things you can do on your Pinterest account to have a successful presence.
Use Several Dominant Colors in Your Pin. Carly points out that images with dominant colors tend to receive more than three times the amount of shares and re-pins as those that don’t. Make sure you use more than one dominant color, as one won’t be as likely to get as many shares. This will help you stand out and make people look at your pins, and then, as I said, they will share. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Stay Away from Sharing a Human Face. Pinterest is an artsy social channel, which means that people like to see more artistic images than regular. One of the things that people seem not to like as much on the platform is seeing the human face in their images. You can show a person, but consider photos that have the person looking away, with a focus elsewhere like on a book or a cup of tea.
Get Artsy With Your Pins. As I said, Pinterest is artsy, which means that artsy pins are going to be shared more than plain looking ones. There are many ways you can make an image look artsy by adding filters and focusing on different things in the image. If you are sharing a photo of a field, consider one that focuses on a flower with the field behind; just something that looks pretty and artistic.
Bring Down Your Image’s Saturation. Carly also gives another tip for creating a good image to share on the channel, which is to bring down the image saturation. This gives it that Instagram filter feel, which can make people especially younger individuals look at it more. This is something you can easily do with the editing software that comes with your computer or by locating different online places that can help.
Create Infographics that Provide Your Clients With Value. Pinterest is a very visual platform, as you can see, which means you need to have great visual content ready. However, your business might not be one with many visuals. A great way to utilize the channel is to create and share valuable infographics for your user base, encouraging them to read and share with others.
Have a Decent Amount of Pins Already Pinned. In order for people to consider following your Pinterest account or boards, you need to have pins already pinned. This can attract more people because you will look active on the account. If you have nothing pinned, users won’t know if you are a valuable brand to follow. Create a few boards and pin different things to them to start out, and you will begin to see more people willing to either follow you or one or two of your boards.
Promote Your Brand on Pinterest. Promoting on Pinterest is one of the best ways to get noticed. It is rare for people to stumble on someone’s account if it isn’t being promoted. Social Media Examiner points out that Pinterest says that promoted pins can get just as much traffic as regular ones, which helps with organic traffic. While it is still new, this is still a great idea for different businesses. You can join the list to become one of the businesses able to use it by signing up to be chosen to be in the beta program.
Set Up a Collaboration with Other Popular Pinners. You can set up collaborative boards that allow others that aren’t from your business to pin to it. You don’t want to leave it open for just anyone, but you can invite other popular pinners or select people from your business who are also on Pinterest. This can help curate a lot of content from all over and different viewpoints, giving users the ability to get unique, great content from all over.
Create Contests and Have People Create Their Own Boards. Pinterest creates a great opportunity to have contests for your clients. You’ll need to make sure that you follow the rules when it comes to contests, but it can be a great way to bring in more followers and eventual new clients. A great example of Pinterest content is Adagio Teas’ contest that encouraged clients to create a board of their top ten favorite items from the store. Once a user created the board, Adagio said to email the board and be entered into the contest, and everyone who did, received a small gift certificate in return.
Share Your Pins in Your Weekly or Monthly Email Newsletter. When you share your newsletter with your clients, you can start to gain followers by including your pins in your emails. This can help your email marketing and also drive engagement and revenue. You can take a screenshot of your top or best pins from the week or month and then create a link for people to click on. This will take them directly to your pins and account, and get them looking at your other content, as well.
Enrich Your Business and Use Pinterest
Pinterest can really help enrich your business and make your social media campaign impactful. You will find that after you have established a presence that you can start driving excellent revenue. If you need help creating infographics or content for your Pinterest campaign, then contact Express Writers. We can help you create an excellent campaign and give your clients access to great infographics.
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