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Sometimes you need a little help to create good content that your readers will like.

The only way you’re going to be successful with your social media efforts is if you give your readers the content they want to read. If you have good content, people will be inclined to share it on their social media networks. And, if people share your content, your social media rankings will improve. Below are five ways for you to find out what your readers really want to read.

Here’s the Obvious One: Ask Them!

Don’t assume you know what content your online community wants to read about. Reach out to your audience and ask them what they want. Do a survey by using SurveyMonkey, Free Online Surveys or Zoomerang. Create a list of topics and ask them to vote “yes” or “no” for each topic or have them rank them in order of interest. Add your survey to your Web site, email newsletters and promote it on Twitter and Facebook to get results.

Check Your Blogs Comments

When you write a post that gets lots of comments, you know that’s a topic people want to hear about. Look at all the comments and see what they liked about the post. Consider doing a series of similar posts and educate yourself on the topic to see where you can expand on it.

Check Websites that Rank Content

There are Websites such as Topsy and Inbound.org that are real time search engines and they rank the most popular content by the hour, day or week. You can find a site that focuses on content relevant to you and check it daily to get ideas. There are sites for relevant news for small businesses ranging from marketing to finance or others with content for SEO, Mobile, Social Media, Analytics and many more.

Check Your Retweets and Facebook

People usually retweet posts they believe are useful and interesting. When you post links or articles people retweet a lot, turn them into articles that you can post. The key is to find a topic people are interested in. Once you know that, creating content about that topic is only a matter or research.

Hire a Ghost Writer

Sometimes even the best of us either run out of time or run out of steam and  need a fresh take on our content. Hiring a ghost writer will give you an influx of fresh ideas and your readers may enjoy the variety in writing styles and topics.

Your take away from this post should be that in order to get people interested in what you post, you have to give them what they want. Don’t assume you know what they want to read. Get engaged and ask them what their interests are. You may be surprised at the response.

If you think it’s time for your company to change gears when it comes to content creation, get in touch with Hadfield Communications at www.hadfield.net. We’ll be glad to analyze your current content and social media efforts and give you feed back on how to improve on what you already have.

There are too many things on a daily basis you have to keep up with. Don’t start your Social Media presence without a Plan.

Having a Social Media Plan is crucial if your business is going to be successful with your online presence. Businesses often fail in their social media efforts because there’s no structure or commitment from the start, leading to poor or no results and frustration.

If this has happened to your business, you’re not alone. That’s the reason you need a Social Media Plan that will help you stay on track with daily maintenance, recurring posts and projects you may want to initiate. Following are five helpful tips for creating a social media plan that will keep you on track.

Create Goals for Your Business

Your social media strategy should be molded by your goals. Are you looking for new sales leads? Are you trying to increase your Web traffic?

Are you trying to raise brand awareness? You can’t do everything at once, so you’ll have to set goals that are attainable and invest time, energy and resources into achieving those goals.

Find Out Where Your Customers Spend Their Time

Recent research has shown that internet users spend anywhere from 16% to 25% of their online time on social newtworks. In comScore’s 2012 U.S. Digital Future in Focus Report, researchers found that customers are spending 1 out of every 6 minutes online on social networks. This is good news if you’re trying to reach customers and start a dialogue with them through social networking sites.

Stay Engaged on a Consistent Basis

You need to think about the ways and frequency which you’re going to engage with your customers. It’s better to have a steady stream of engagement in order to reach your goals. Respond to comments, tweets and posts on a daily basis as this should be part of your maintenance. Do not let this go by the wayside or people are going to think your not interested.

Create Useful Content

Post relevant and current information that your clients will find useful and they will start to see you as the authority on a subject. Your followers don’t want a sales pitch, they already like you. They want conversation that will be useful to them and not just talk about how great your company is. Don’t go more than a couple of days without posting something or you’ll look disengaged.

Delegate Tasks

Once you start growing and your social medial presence is established, you’re going to want to broaden your horizons and keep up the activity by posting videos on YouTube, interacting more frequently on Twitter or creating and installing some custom apps on your Facebook page. To accomplish all this you may need some help. If you become overwhelmed by all the activity, look into adding a team member to help you out. Graphic artists can create impressive infographics, writers can keep your blogs updated and write white papers or you could even consider bringing in an intern to help with the day-to-day conversations and gathering information. A talented team can help you achieve your goals much faster than you could on your own.

Positioning your business for success in social media takes strategizing and time dedication. Monitor your analytics to see where you’re being successful and where you need to make adjustments to your plan. Starting a social media marketing campaign is exciting but it should not be taken lightly. Go into it knowing that it will take time and dedication. You’ll get much better results if you have a well planned social media strategy from the beginning.

If you think it’s time for your company to get a social media plan, get in touch with Hadfield Communications at www.hadfield.net. We’ll be glad to analyze your current social media efforts and give you feed back on how to make it work for your company.

Do you have a well though out social media strategy?

I’m baffled when I talk to people and they say they spend hours on social media everyday but they don’t see any results from it. When I ask them: What is your social media strategy? they look at me with the proverbial deer in the headlights look.

Your social media strategy should be predicated by your goals. Here are a few simple questions you should ask yourself before embarking on a social media campaign:

• Are you looking for new sales leads?
• Do you want to stay connected with your current customers?
• Are you trying to get more people to come into your stores?
• Are you trying to increase your Web traffic?
• Are you trying to raise brand awareness?
• Which social media channel is your demographics using?
• How often do you plan to post fresh and relevant content?

By answering a few simple questions, you can hone in on a strategy that will work for your purposes and you’ll feel much better about pursuing avenues that lead you to that end.

Another useful strategy is to merely connect with people and thereby raise your brand awareness, increase your Web traffic, promote word of mouth or be seen as the authority on a subject. If you take this approach, don’t expect immediate sales because your goal is to broaden your network and get your name out there.

Positioning your business for success in social media takes strategizing and time dedication. Monitor your analytics to see where you’re being successful and where you need to make adjustments to your strategy. Starting a social media marketing campaign is exciting but it should not be taken lightly. You’ll get much better results if you have a well planned social media strategy from the beginning.

If you think it’s time for your company to get a social media strategy, get in touch with Hadfield Communications at www.hadfield.net. We’ll be glad to analyze your current social media efforts and give you feed back on how to make it work for your company.

Let’s face it, it takes times to wade through the massive amount of information that’s available for us to read on-line and it’s time consuming to cut through the clutter and get to the actual stuff that may help us out. There are so many different social media outlets that keeping up with all of them will bog you down. How do you know if social media is really worth the time you invest in it?

If you spend two hours a day on Twitter and Facebook, that’s 25 percent of your day. How can you ensure that you’re going to get a good ROI on your time spent? Here are a couple of suggestions that may help you decide if you’re going in the right direction:

­Have a strategy
Don’t just put your company on the new social media site of the day just to have your name out there. Have a strategy first. Do you want to increase sales? Do you want to increase Web traffic? Do you want to raise brand awareness?

Figure out your demographics
If your audience is younger, than maybe Facebook would be a better resource for you but if your audience is more business people, then LinkedIn should be where you focus your time. If your target demographic is women, then Pinterest would be where you should focus your time as it has a huge following among women.

­Focus on marketing your brand
Don’t expect immediate sales from social media because that’s not going to happen. Your focus should be on marketing your brand as opposed to direct sales. The goal here is to connect with people and create a network, boost traffic to your site, connect with customers, make relationships with people and get your company name out there.

A good way to keep your social media current is to engage a couple of your  employees in participating and persuading them to make it a priority, therefore contributing to your company’s social media becomes a part of their day. If you do this, be sure you set guidelines on how much time they should spend on it and what the message should be.

Blogging and social media are here to stay, like it or not. With so many resources available out there and so many people making those resources work for them, the question is not whether social media is worth your time, but how are you going to organize your time to make social media work for you.

If you think it’s time for your company to get a social media strategy, get in touch with Hadfield Communications at www.hadfield.net. We’ll be glad to analyze your current social media efforts and give you feed back on how to make it work for your company.