Best Practices for Social Media Marketers

I recently came across a few interesting reads suggesting dos and don'ts for digital media campaigns that are based on recent research done by marketing pros. Some of the findings seem obvious, such as the point in an infographic produced by marketing agency BlueGlass that much emphasis should be placed on the quality of headlines for web content. Apparently only 20% of people go on to read what's beneath headlines since online audiences tend to scan content quickly and have little patience. As such, it's imperative that headlines are kept succinct and eye-catching.


However, there are a fair amount of wisdom nuggets that marketers fail to appreciate. Twitter messages are powerful nowadays, but they can be augmented by coordinating them with properly executed email campaigns. A new report by YesMail reveals that sending out emails to promote a brand on the same day its Twitter campaign is launched drives engagement as much as 50% higher. Also, Facebook campaigns should be deployed between 10 pm and 12 am, the window with the highest level of interaction. However, most of them are deployed between 11 am and 1 pm. This makes sense since I would imagine people are more likely to be active on Facebook at night rather than while they're at their work desks (for the most part).


Marketers also aren't utilizing weekends as much as they should, according to a Twitter study by Buddy Media. Twitter engagement rates are higher on Saturdays and Sundays, but only 19% of tweets published by brands in the study took place on those days. Buddy Media also notes that tweets published during the "busy hours" between 8 am and 7 pm perform best, unlike Facebook campaigns which are optimal during the "after hours" period as noted above. As for how to craft Twitter messages, Buddy Media suggests that tweeters keep them fewer than 100 characters, include links, and incorporate those hashtags (but be careful of excessive linking and hashtagging since too many leads to diminishing returns).


Furthermore, it's always okay to ask for help. "If you ask followers to 'RT' you’ll get a 12X higher retweet rate than if you don’t," Buddy Media reports. "But if you spell out the word 'retweet' that figure jumps to 23X." I wonder if such results are consistent with what most people experience.