How to: Fishing on Social Media

Melissa Cassol
Aug 27, 2017 · 5 min read

Every day we exposed to as many as 5,000 ads a day — It’s no wonder our attention span has decreased to a second less than a goldfish! It has become increasingly challenging for many individuals and businesses to gain and keep an audience on social media due to oversaturated marketing and the fleeting attention of their customers.

So how do you stand out?!

Going Fishing

Catching your ideal audience’s attention online has never been so important in this day in age!

Marketing experts Terry Daughery and Ernest Hoffman at the University of Akron studied the importance of word of mouth online. They found that gaining your customers attention online helps leverage messages faster and farther than ever before through various social media platforms. Without the customers attention, messages get drowned out and inevitably your business goes nowhere.

But how do we catch their attention?

I narrowed it down to 3 key areas — Visual, Audience, and Mobility.

Be Visual

Whether you are posting on Facebook, Twitter, or writing a blog post — pictures will increase your reach by 35 to up to 87%!

  • Use faces — even babies love them!
  • Fun Meme images
  • Stick to wider images — it looks better on browsers and mobile
  • Diagrams or Info-graphics — more bang for your readers time
  • Quote images — great for sharing and re-sharing to spread your message

Know Your Audience

If you want to market to Mom’s who have a home business you’re not going to try to sell them a fishing rod. Unless it’s a figurative one on fishing for customers!

Knowing who you want to grab the attention of allows you to cater your message and marketing to. Know what they like, what their problems are that you have solutions to and what tugs at their heart strings. People will give you their attention if what you have to offer aligns with their life goals or interests — so get to know them!

Mobility

Think of how much time you spend on your phone. Are you reading this on your phone?!

Then your message needs to be mobile friendly!

Doesn’t matter if you’re posting to your blog, vlog or a social media site — make sure it looks good mobile! If you are offering a service and have a cool add, make sure the ‘fine print’ is readable on your phone. Thinking outside the landscape of your browser puts you into the same visual space as your audience! Be mobile!

So you caught your fish — now what?!

Managing Engagement

Congratulations — you have achieved what we all strive for…an audience’s attention! But the only thing harder than catching their attention — is keeping it!

Engaging with your audience is key to raising brand awareness, creating leads, and driving revenue. Sproutsocial found there was 110% increase of customers reaching out to brands via social media either for sales or customer support. Connecting with your audience is the key to keeping them engaged!

However — how do you manage and maintain it all? Goals. Community. Listening.

Know Your Goals

Not only should your message align with your larger goals, you should also align HOW you deliver your content with your goals.

Know where to focus:

  • Generating traffic — social media campaigns
  • Create a following — subscribers/followers
  • Generate interaction — posts, comments and replies or mentions on platforms
  • Generate revenue — dollar value of every lead posts generates

Having a bigger picture of your ideal outcome will help narrow down energies (and money) spent and increase your ability to create the quality engagement you are looking for with your audience.

Create Community

Know your audience…check. Know your goals…check. Now it’s time to go to your customers and create a community.

It’s natural for us to want to ban together around things we like…or don’t like. Creating a space for people to come together who love your product multiplies the impact of your brand. Allows people to feel like they are part of something greater than themselves, or even what your product initially offers. Think of spartan races and other fun runs. People create a culture around a brand and the brand explodes!

Go TO your audience, be a part of their lives, bring them together and create a community for them to be a part of.

Listen to Your Audience

Once you’ve got your audience and maybe even a community, it’s time to listen!

What do they want to hear? What problems do they have that you can solve? How do they think you can grow as a brand?

Providing quality content and offers for your audience that they are looking for or want or need will boost your engagement and in the end your business!

Happy Fishing!

Now that you have some insight into how to effectively fish and keep that fish, it’s time to get out there!

Sources:

Crestodina, A. (2015). 15 Blog images: best practices for adding great pictures to every post. Retrieved from https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/blog-image-best-practices/

Daugherty, Terry (01/01/2014). “eWOM and the importance of capturing consumer attention within social media”. Journal of marketing communications (1352–7266), 20 (1–2), p. 82.

G. (2016, June 07). Decreasing attention spans and your website, social media strategy. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/digital/john-stevens-guest-post-decreasing-attention-spans/

Hemley, D. (2013, June 25). 26 tactics, tools and tips to create a strong social media content strategy. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-to-create-a-strong-social-media-content-strategy/

Johnson, C. (2006, September 17). Cutting through advertising clutter. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cutting-through-advertising-clutter/

Patterson, M. (2017, July 18). 7 ways to better your social media engagement. Retrieved from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-engagement/

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade