I was recently going through some photographs from my college days and the nostalgia was more overwhelming that what I can express in just a few words. I called up my best friend from college and we talked for hours, missing the good old days, the college bunking, the exam stress and how we used to keep blabbering in the class when our professor expected us to listen. Everything was so fresh that it seemed like it all happened yesterday. Me and my friend we don’t live in the same city anymore but we were talking exactly like we used to in the college basketball court. I was literally getting Déjà vuish as it seemed like everything was just the same! Memories indeed last forever and ever, and a bunch of pictures taken with friends and family are enough to get them flashing right back at you. Don’t you agree? I do.

I was then wondering if audiences of a business feel the same way too. Do they remember pictures/videos shared by brands on Social Media channels? Do they cherish communication messages from brands in times when so many of these messages are being sent out left, right and center?

As a brand marketer, you are out there to create fond memories through stories, that can actually become unforgettable for your audience.

Most businesses have a common question: Why should we invest more in Social media content if the lifetime value of a post is just a few hours?

Well, first off, the lifetime value of a social media post can be much more than a few hours or even days. It all depends what you post, on which social media channel, at what time, and finally how you promote it.

How to Extend the Lifetime Value of Social Media Posts?

The algorithm of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is designed to show the most relevant and helpful posts to their users. The platforms understand audience behavior and content consumption patterns to customize their newsfeed. Besides that, social posts with higher engagement are always given priority. Studies have also shown that social posts which are more visual, such as images, videos, and live videos tend to get better traction and are thus given preference. The more you understand your audience, therefore, while ensuring a high level of engagement on your posts, will help you to get recurring results from each of them. Let’s understand how you can make that happen:

Optimize Your Content For Search

The best way to extend the life of your social media posts is to optimize them for search. Look for common search queries in your niche using tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest and trending content in Buzzsumo.

Posts that answer some of these common audience queries will continue to show up in search results for months and years to come(or even more), thus adding to their visibility among your target audience.

Make Use of Hashtags

Hashtags are the best way to categorize your social posts in a particular niche and ensuring they are more relevant and searchable online. Studies have shown that you should ideally use 1-2 hashtags on Facebook and Twitter to get a higher engagement. On Instagram however, the higher the number of hashtags, higher will be the engagement. You can make use of hashtag research tools like Hashtagify.me, RiteTag and Keyhole to find popular hashtags in your niche.

Make Use of Social Tagging

You can make use of social tagging on all social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. This makes your post appear in the newsfeed of those who you tag and widens its reach. Whenever I publish a post on my LinkedIn profile, I make sure I have tagged some of those in my network who I have a strong relationship with. I inform them before tagging them. One more thing that works for me is I always ask those I tag to add comments and inputs. This ensures higher engagement for my post while giving them visibility in my network thus benefiting everyone in some way or the other.

Once my post starts doing well, I also tag more people in the comments section – this revives the post and improves its visibility and engagement.

Post on the Right Days/Times

According to my experience, I can tell you that while targeting a B2B audience on LinkedIn, morning times are the best to get the maximum reach. If on the other hand, you are posting on Facebook for a B2B audience then your reach would be higher after office hours or on weekdays and on weekends. Similarly, if you are targeting a B2C audience then posting during morning hours and during working hours would fetch you better reach and engagement on your posts. You can also check out this study by Co-Schedule on the accurate times to publish your posts.

Content Format and Paid Promotions

The best way to choose the right format (Such as text, image, link, video) for your social media posts is to analyze the engagement level on each and choose the one with the highest engagement. The following screenshot shows some of my recent LinkedIn posts.

As you can see in the screenshot the first two posts are videos and got an average engagement of 2.55% and 0.75% respectively while the third one which was an image got an average engagement of just 0.28%. For me, video content has always performed better than text and image-based posts.

The analysis does not just help you to use the right content format but also improve the lifetime value of posts through paid campaigns.

The above screenshot also shows that I’m running a paid remarketing campaign for the first two posts with higher engagement. Assuming that higher engagement means higher CTR, the video post shown above would fetch 9 times more leads than image posts.

So this way you can improve the lifetime value of your social media posts by:

1. Analyzing which post formats are performing well and focussing on those formats.
2. Using paid promotions to get the best out of your high performing posts

How to Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Posts?

While in earlier days of TV, Print and Radio advertising it was hard to measure the results of advertising campaigns. Times have changed now and every social media channel provides you with in-built metrics of each and every post you publish.

Each social media post you add on your business pages will have a specific objective such as awareness, conversions, and retention depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey:

1. For awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, you would need to track the reach, shares, and impressions of your posts.
2. For consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, you would be focussing on tracking engagement (likes and comments)  and MQLs from your posts
3. For decision stage of the buyer’s journey, the metric to track would be SQLs.
4. And finally, for retention stage, you need to track the number of repeat purchases from your existing customers.

You can create benchmark metrics by tracking some of the social metrics of your competitors and from your own experience. You can then do a cost-benefit analysis of each of your posts on the basis of these objectives.

Over to You

Well, as a business, you can create a well-thought story channelized to educate and entertain your target audience on social media channels. Using the tips shared in this post, you can use the right strategies to make to strategically improve the lifetime value of your social media posts. You can also improvise on your efforts with the help of the right measurement techniques.

Have more ideas on how to get more out of social media posts? I would love to know your inputs and suggestions. Please feel free to add them in the comments section below.

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