APU Careers Careers & Learning

Make an Impact on Social Media

make-an-impact-on-social-mediaBy Jill Kurtz
Online Career Tips Contributor

Every day thousands of new users join social media. With so many people posting content, how do you get attention? Here are some tips:

Be strategic

Know your goal for being on social media. Your goal could be to create awareness, generate registrations, or to get readers to take a specific action. Understand who you want to connect to—who they are and their characteristics. Are they customers or prospects, young or old; tease out as many specifics as you can.

Understand that social media platform you are using. Know the rules of what you can post and also know the norms of how people interact in that platform.

Make every message count

Establish a voice and tone in your messaging. Let people know who is posting and be personable. Make the purpose of each post clear by being focused and brief. Make every word pull its weight, and ruthlessly edit out unneeded words. Mention others as appropriate, linking to their social channels or posts.

Be Buzzworthy

Tapping into a current event that is relevant to you can be a way to get attention to your posts. Here are some more:

  • Use pictures and video, especially unique, offbeat  images
  • Include links
  • Explicitly ask people to share your content

Never Stop Learning

Finally, part of being heard is keeping up with the latest best practices in the use of social media. You need to stay on top of what your followers are doing and also developments in the social platforms themselves. New tools are added all the time and sometimes the rules on what is allowed change too.

There are many places that keep you up to date, including blogs run by the social platforms themselves. Other great options include Social Media Today, Social Media Examiner, and Mashable. If you have another favorite resource, post it as a comment here so that we can all continue to learn.

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