Increasing Online Visibility : How to Make Your Brand Popular on Social Media?

Business today is unthinkable without social media. Indeed, the number of internet users keeps growing and so does the number of companies present on the web. Over 51% of the world’s population use social media on a daily basis. That represents billions of users around the world and a market worth several billions of dollars.

In this article, we will review key practices that will help you or your company to become known on social media. Whether you are an individual or a corporation, these tips can help. 

Online Visibility: Why Develop Your Presence Online?

Be present wherever your customers are. Nowadays, almost everyone is present on social networks; some are there for personal reasons but many for business. According to « DIGITAL 2020 » a study published by Hootsuite and We Are Social,  the use of the Internet, social media and mobile telephony has sharply increased in 2020. The figures are impressive: 4.5 billion Internet users and 3.8 billion social media users around the world, with an average time of 6 hours and 43 minutes spent online by each user every day. This makes social media an excellent place to meet your public effectively and inexpensively.

Being present online is therefore an absolute necessity to prospect, attract and maintain new customers. However, creating profile accounts does not mean users will buy your services or products. To be efficient on social media, it is essential to set up a digital communication strategy that can promote your activities and increase your visibility online. That is called “Social Media Optimization” (SMO). It’s a system that combines social media techniques in order to optimize website visibility on search engines and generate traffic.  

Create a Professional Account (on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)

Take good care of your professional profile on social media. Take time to add as much detail as necessary to it. Profile information such as your field of activity, legal information, contact details and website URL, should be correctly entered and well-edited. It is equally important to add reliable and professionally made content. Always try to optimize your content for SEO referencing, for example by using the right keywords in your profile descriptions and in your contents. 

Remember that your profile is your showcase on social networks. Use the right profile picture and cover photo to increase traffic. The purpose is to encourage your profile visitors to stay on your page, explore your contents and react by subscribing, liking, commenting and sharing.

Are you starting a business? Dou you need a logo? Use Izeelogo to create a logo for your social media profiles. Our platform proposes several offers that you can consult on our custom logo design page. Otherwise, you may prefer to make a logo directly via our logo templates catalog. Our offer includes ducument formats adapted to all social media. 

Create Visual Content

Increase your offer of visual content. Abundance of publication over social media makes it hard for publications to be visible. Posts often ‘drown’ in the huge and continuous flux of information over the networks. How does one make it out in these conditions? A solution is the use of visual content: it is a key to attracting the attention of Internet users and to maximizing their engagement. Experts in social marketing assert that visual content allows the best return on investment (ROI).

Indeed visual content is 40 times more likely to be consulted and shared on social media than textual material. In fact, the brain has a much better capacity to identify an image than a text. It processes visual data 60,000 times faster than text. That explains why visual platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest are so popular. For the new generations, in particular, the video and the images are by far the most popular and most consumed media.

In short, we clearly have a preference for dynamic and interactive contents. It is essential to create quality visual content that is useful, pleasing and shareable. Companies that are remiss on creating visual content will hardly be noticed by the online community. 

Moreover, to capture the Internet user, your visual content should respect certain rules. One of these is video duration. The latter varies depending on the purpose, the targeted audience, and the social media used. For example, it is quite in order that a tutorial video lasts longer than a promotional one.

Use hashtags

You certainly came across one of those words preceded by the sign “#”, called hashtags. Hashtags, or clickable keywords, are used to facilitate and maximize the sharing of content related to them. Very trendy, they will help you to generate traffic on your page and, by the same token, to increase your audience on social media.

For the user, hashtags are an easy way to find posts on a given topic, and to discover the latest related material.

How often to Post on Social Media? Define a Frequency of Publication 

Animate your pages by interacting regularly with your followers. Your presence online should not be limited to creation of professional accounts. You should manage your pages by supplying and energizing them daily. The purpose is to maintain and enhance your visibility online by interacting with the digital public and, in particular, your followers.

You’re wondering how often to post on social media? The answer may be simple: publish as much as you wish as long as your followers react to your publications; the more content you add the better for the size and quality of your audience. Nevertheless, things can be a bit more complex. The ‘rules of the game’ can change unpredictably, and they are not the same for all the social media.

In fact, to determine the best frequency for your publication on social media you should consider a set of factors, including your objectives, your dedication, the nature of your public, the number of your followers, and the type of social network.

Use an Editorial Calendar 

Optimize your publication schedule on social media. Choose the right timing for publication on your pages, but which time is best? The answer is not obvious. A working technique is to do several tests and study the returns. Each company establishes its own editorial schedule according to its digital marketing strategy, its target audience, the type of social media and other such factors.

Some times are more suitable for publication than others, but each social media has its own specificities. As a rule, the best time to post is when your followers are online. You have then more chances to reach your audience and increase your visibility. However, the flow of publication and competition increase drastically at peak hours. Thus, it can be preferable to post during off-peak hours. That may seem a sterile timing but in fact it allows your statuses to stay for longer on your followers' news feed. In all cases, always keep an eye on competition, test your publishing strategy, carefully measure its impact and adapt your editorial calendar accordingly.

Using Unmetric data, Hoostsuit  collected information from 300 brands on social media, and organised the results into two categories, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) industries. On the whole, the study shows that the best time to post on social media is between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. at the beginning of the week (Monday through Wednesday). The table below provides detail on the best times to post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

From Digital Listening to Digital Communication

Be responsive and participative. Social media are an opportunity for communicating exchanging and interacting with Internet users. Try to be and stay close to your audience by readily listening to them. Do not hesitate to answer your followers’ messages and comments and to show your gratitude for their loyalty. The more your posts are liked, commented and shared the longer they will stay active in your followers’ news feed. 

Be creative. Use your creative skills to stand out from your competitors on social media. Millions of posts are published daily. To make a difference, you can diversify the style and content of your posts. In order to attract your subscribers’ attention, don't hesitate to demarcate yourself from your competitors by using unusual content that makes sense for your brand.

Like your website, your professional page is your showcase on the web. Stay genuine and faithful to your identity. It is important to build a relationship of trust with your followers. Take care of your business image and give special importance to the management of your reputation online.

Use the Performance Monitoring Tools

Analyse your statistics on social media. All social media platforms put performance monitoring tools at the disposal of professional accounts. Analysing the data collected from your posts (the number of clicks, of impressions, of interactions, etc.) allows you to understand the users’ reception of your statuses. Thus you will have the opportunity to adjust your social media strategy and adapt it to current trends and to the needs and preferences of your customers.

Managing a company's social media is an extremely time-consuming activity. Several tools available on the web can help you to optimize your presence on social media. Here are some of them: Agorapulse, Buffer, BuzzSumo, Eclincher, Hootsuite, Metricool, SocialPIlot, Sprout Social, Sendible, TweetDeck, Zapier.