As we continue to discuss the importance of a robust social media optimization (SMO) campaign and the best practices for implementing one, we turn our attention to the actual content you are posting and sharing.

You have likely heard the phrase “content is king” regarding digital marketing and search engine optimization. This is just as true for social media profiles as it is for websites and blogs.

You simply will not be able to succeed with your social media marketing if you are not creating and/or sharing high-quality content.

The two types of content

Typically, your social media profiles will have a good mix of the two types of social media content: original content and curated content.

Original content is, as the name suggests, content you have created yourself specifically for use on social media. This content is usually part of a strategic social media marketing campaign you have already discussed with your company, using company hashtags or linking to other content that fits within that campaign.

Curated content is content you have shared from other sources across the internet. A good content curation strategy involves more than just tweeting out or sharing links. Any content you share should be relevant and interesting to your audience. You should be just as focused on the quality of the content you share as the quality of the content you create. Any content you share reflects on your brand in that you thought it interesting or informative, so you want your audience to know you have discerning, trustworthy taste.

With each type of content, you can determine what your audience finds most relevant or interesting by the amount of engagement those posts get. Pay attention to retweets, shares, favorites, likes comments and other metrics, and see if you can spot trends in terms of which types of content drive the most engagement.

Fine-tuning your post headlines

Whenever you send out a Facebook post or Tweet, you should avoid using the exact same headline that’s listed along with the link. For example, if you are posting a link to your most recent blog, the copy of the tweet or Facebook post should not simply be the headline of the blog post. You should instead come up with a different tagline, or a summary of what’s included in that blog post.

Another great strategy for blogs in particular can be to come up with two headlines for every blog post you create. One of them can be the title of the post as published on the blog, and the other can be the headline you use when sharing the blog on your social media accounts.

Use images when sharing content

Another way to get more attention with your original or curated links is to include an image along with every link you send out. Numerous studies have found that images are the form of content that draws the most engagement across platforms, which makes them an extremely important strategy for optimizing any type of content you share on social media.

You should use high-quality images along with your links whenever possible. Typically when you paste a link into your status updater, an image that shows up on the webpage you are linking to will be displayed on your Facebook or Twitter along with the link. On Facebook, you can also remove this suggested image and upload one of your own. But to make this easier, you should include a featured image on all of your blog posts, which will automatically show up whenever the post is shared.

Regardless of how you get the image to be displayed, you should always make sure that it is a high-quality, high-resolution image. Having images that are overly fuzzy or pixelated, or are simply low-quality compositions, will not do anything to get people more interested in clicking on the link you share.

Use these strategies to better optimize the links you share on social media. Next week, we discuss one of the key tools associated with social media optimization: the hashtag.

Copyright Viral Solutions 2017

Marisa Fritzemeier

Angel of Innovative Artistry and Design for Viral Solutions LLC