The content bandwagon for 2018 leanings and trends is up and running in full swing as all and sundry make the proverbial leap into it. However, few facts and practices nevertheless hold good. In case, the flurry of holidays has fully obliterated your “what-where-when-to-post” memories, here’s the social media cheat sheet for 2018.

• Audience and theme definition

Crisp and clear parameter identification is imperative that defines your visibility status, exact space or positioning, listeners, topics of discussion, followings, sharing agenda, a forum of sharing, content types, and target audience.

Cross-pollination of content is permitted. However, the best approach lies in sharing its entirety across all social media in a staggered manner and not in one shot. It will annoy your audience if they come across the same post in all social media rostrums.

• Consistency maintenance

The plethora of various social media channels will allow you great flexibility and scope to publish your content. However, you have to comprehend and remember the feasibility of a content based on its topic and the posting forum.

For instance, a visually appealing platform will allow cheerful and high-spirited contents like candid images and videos of individuals and their activities. They bear an authentic care and feel. On the contrary, company-wide group photos are more relevant for corporate communication and messaging.

People are more likely to follow highly consistent and increasingly attractive and elegant looking feeds. The rules-of-thumb identification and following are necessary to create strong and recognizable social media feeds.

• Slang or jargon usage restriction

To outreach a wider audience, short and simple contents are preferable. People often try to correlate human slang with corporate jargons and mix the two while creating the content, which is nothing but an extremely unpleasant situation.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to add fun and delight. Whereas, the content that LinkedIn posts, should bear a professional and business-centric tone, especially when your brand represents the organisation.

You can use slang adroitly and with finesse in contents that contain humorous and fun-loving elements. The key to choosing the right words lies in deciphering your brand tonality, business type and user perception.

• Hawk’s eye approach to competitors

Engage in stalking and waging a strategic war against competitors with your business potentials. Keep following what social influencers are carrying out. This will be helpful for you to stay acquainted with the latest unmissable trends, discover fresh hashtags, and track down topics that will strengthen influencers.

Simultaneously, you can alter the content topics and go ahead implementing innovative tactics to evaluate your most favourable business opportunities.

Having said that, you must think about doing some thorough research to understand and stay updated with the ongoing business scenario, so that people don’t assume you to be tone deaf and blind while using slangs, trending terms or hashtags in your content.

• Constant engagement and interaction with authenticity

Wherever feasible and relevant, resort to liking and replying to the comments on your social media posts, particularly the ones that contain something interesting and are beyond generic.

This enhances the perception of engagement by garnering increased followers or target audience loyalty and ensuring identical or improved traction for your future posts.

This also encourages a heightened degree of interaction and expansion of your network as these activities will reflect additionally in the audience’s feeds to their corresponding followers.

People always crave for attention. That fully explains how social media is founded on this perspective that forms its bottom line. Giving a little love to your fans and followers is a reciprocal approach that will never leave you barren and empty-handed.