Four Secrets to Maximize Your Impact on Social

Setting a specific goal and working towards it will help you save time and money. With so many possible metrics, how do you know which ones to measure? And, how can you pick metrics that will be understood by your executive leadership? We recommend organizing results by asking three key questions:

• What Did People See? Measuring the reach and impressions of your outreach will help you measure how well you are doing at growing your brand visibility. This is an important metric because each impression is an opportunity to connect with a new target. 
• What Did People Say? Measuring engagement—shares, comments, and likes—will help you measure what content works best with your audience. This knowledge can help you fine-tune your campaign to ensure it resonates with the people you are trying to reach.
• What Did People Do? Measuring the conversion rate can help inform planning and goal-setting. For most campaigns, getting people talking isn’t enough. We need them to do something. Whether it’s buying a ticket to an event or downloading a policy report, identifying the right conversion metrics shows success.

Each social media platform has its distinct benefits. Choose the ones that best align with your audience and campaign objectives.

• Facebook: Facebook is the destination for those who combine business and pleasure. Content on this platform should be entertaining as to not interrupt the user, but professional enough where people want to share it with their “work friends.” Facebook is perhaps the most versatile platform, where you have many choices on the types of posts you can use, plus the ability to write longer-form content than Twitter or reach an older demographic than Instagram.
• Twitter: Twitter would be an ideal strategy for a project that can devote time to engaging immediately with users about hot topics or breaking news. The platform is excellent for growing awareness and driving website traffic and is often the choice for advocacy campaigns trying to build a following around an issue.
• Instagram: As a visual-based platform, Instagram is ideal for increasing awareness, especially among a young audience. Think of Instagram as a person’s OOO platform. Content should be entertaining and focused more on fun content like events, tech, and food. Additionally, this is a great platform to begin building relationships with younger professionals and future business leaders, who are increasingly using Stories more than posts.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn’s career-focused users makes it a good match for business-to-business interactions. A great LinkedIn campaign would use thought-leadership to help gain visibility around content including business trends, how to drive revenue, filling the talent pipeline and connecting owners.
• ‍Other platforms to consider: YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok.

Each social media platform has its distinct benefits. Choose the ones that best align with your audience and campaign objectives.

• Facebook: Facebook is the destination for those who combine business and pleasure. Content on this platform should be entertaining as to not interrupt the user, but professional enough where people want to share it with their “work friends.” Facebook is perhaps the most versatile platform, where you have many choices on the types of posts you can use, plus the ability to write longer-form content than Twitter or reach an older demographic than Instagram.
• Twitter: Twitter would be an ideal strategy for a project that can devote time to engaging immediately with users about hot topics or breaking news. The platform is excellent for growing awareness and driving website traffic and is often the choice for advocacy campaigns trying to build a following around an issue.
• Instagram: As a visual-based platform, Instagram is ideal for increasing awareness, especially among a young audience. Think of Instagram as a person’s OOO platform. Content should be entertaining and focused more on fun content like events, tech, and food. Additionally, this is a great platform to begin building relationships with younger professionals and future business leaders, who are increasingly using Stories more than posts.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn’s career-focused users makes it a good match for business-to-business interactions. A great LinkedIn campaign would use thought-leadership to help gain visibility around content including business trends, how to drive revenue, filling the talent pipeline and connecting owners.
• ‍Other platforms to consider: YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok.

When starting to write social posts, consider content that will mesh organically not only with a user's feed but with the desired platform as a whole. Posts that are too promotional are easily ignored, but the same can be said for posts that aren’t aggressive enough. One way to grab attention is with bold visuals⁠. On visual-based platforms like Instagram, for example, a text-heavy graphic would be less impactful than a video or well-designed graphic that plays to the platform’s strengths. Instagram’s feed takes up the majority of mobile screens, so there’s greater opportunity to drive engagement with eye-catching graphics. However, that same sentiment may not fit the style of a Twitter or LinkedIn post, therefore it’s important to keep these in mind when creating social media content. For example, Johns Hopkins Medicine increased engagement by more than 50% with new visual content.