10 Social Media tips from an expert
Marketing Manager Elly Georgiou lives and breathes social media strategy. We asked Elly to shares her ten best social media practices that can be implemented today.
Believe it or not, social media isn’t just about posting selfies and watching the latest dance trends… as catchy as they may be. Social media is a predominant businesses tool.
No matter the industry, size or goals of your business, social media can help you achieve brand awareness, increase followers, increase product sales and create and maintain strong relationships with your customers or clients.
In saying this, social media is best effective if you know how to use it. If you’re a small business owner, you can also check out these social media tactics to build your small business.
Nonetheless, here are ten of my best practice tips for social media today.
One: Know your audience
To put it simply, you cannot build a strong following without knowing whose attention you wish to grab.
Ask yourself:
Who is my audience?
What does my audience care about?
What is relevant to my audience?
Defining your target audience is more than demographics. You need to consider their motivations, aspirations, and pain points.
Really knowing your audience will allow you to produce relevant content that your audience will respond favourably to. It will also allow you to build a consistent brand with meaningful messaging, style, and tone of voice.
Two: Choose the right social media platform
This links with the first best practice. Knowing your audience will let you know where to best target them and thus build a presence on the right social media platforms.
For example, if your audience is B2B, take advantage of LinkedIn. If your audience is younger and mainly B2C, take advantage of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
Assuming your audience uses social media, focus on creating thoughtful, specialised content on fewer platforms rather than generic content across every platform.
Depending on what social media platform(s) you choose, always be knowledgeable of specific trends and software updates to best utilise these platforms. Keep in mind that trends inevitably change and you need to keep up, for example in the last couple of weeks Instagram has changed its standard tile from a square 1080 x 1080 to a rectangle 4:5 ratio 1808 x 1350. Instagram made this change to reflect the larger grid format of competitor TikTok.
The correct size for Instagram posts.
Three: Audit your performance
You could be pumping out all this social media content - but how will you know if it’s contributing to real results?
Currently, many social media platforms have in-built insights that you can view for any period of time (Instagram has a 90 day limit). Alternatively, you can link your social media accounts to an automated analytics software which compiles all the data for you.
Conduct monthly or quarterly social media reports to see how your accounts are performing. You can experiment with posting on different days and times. Analytics will show you which times and days perform the best. Analytics will also inform you as to what type of content is the most popular. If your reels receive a larger number of views over your static posts, invest your time and creativity in posting more reels.
Four: Scheduling
If you own a business, you may not have time to manually post multiple times every day. Construct a monthly social media calendar and take advantage of social media scheduling platforms. You can schedule your posts for the month for automatic publishing and know you’re covered on social media for the month.
You can also schedule the posts across different platforms to ensure maximum reach. Keep in mind, you may have to slightly adjust your tone depending on the platform (LinkedIn can be quite professional so don’t go using all the emojis).
We mainly use a pro Loomly account for scheduling. The dashboard and interface are easy to work with and it is reliable.
Five: Community management
Set aside at least one hour a day to respond promptly to any comments or messages. “Like” or react to similar businesses’ content. Connect with like-minded individuals or businesses in the same industry to build your network. Community management can’t be an afterthought if you want real growth.
By building these connections, you are then in the position to ask your audience for feedback so you can improve your content or offering and it builds a genuine and lasting online relationship. The point of social media is to build community, so don’t neglect it!
Six: Be genuine
People favour a brand or business that is trustworthy and genuine. Don’t be afraid to tell your story. Showcase the raw and unedited history of your business.
Let your audience know where you came from and how your business started.
Highlight your business’ ethos and communicate it through your messaging, instilling trust between you and your audience. This means sharing the good news but also sharing the bad. Covering up bad news will only make your brand look bad in the long term.
We are seeing a lot of founder-led content at the moment and I personally am loving the human connection and so are many others.
Seven: #UseHashtags
Don’t forget to use hashtags on social media, they are a part of the secret sauce for success. Hashtags allow your content to be found by your audience. Ensure the hashtags you use are appealing, relevant and popular so your content is found, boosting shares, views and reactions.
I always ensure that we are mixing popular hashtags with niche hashtags to broaden the reach and increase visibility. For example, I would use 1-2 trending tags for visibility and then 5-7 niche/specific ones that really target the intended audience.
In saying this, I don’t favour using generic hashtags like #love or #food. Overused hashtags don’t give any context to what your post is about and are way too competitive to be found. I much prefer to create a branded version of something popular like #foodwith_yourname.
Eight: Craft captions that drive engagement
Your caption is your opportunity to talk and connect directly with your audience, it is a PR opportunity and you should never waste it!
Firstly, start with a hook. Grab attention in the first line by posing a question or a bold statement like “We found the formula to blow up your social”.
Once you have the attention, add value to keep the audience reading and engaged. The easiest way to do this is to teach, entertain or inspire.
Try to end with a call to action (CTA). By this I mean encourage shares (especially on Instagram), save, likes and comments. This can be as simple as “What’s your go-to tip for ranking on Instagram? Share below!”
Don’t write long-winded captions that don’t have a point. Long is okay if it is telling a story and interesting, long and no point will lose your audience fast.
Nine: Get comfortable with reels and video
We have previously spoken about the importance of video and we are not backing down! TikTok is an all-video platform so that is an obvious one, but it is worth noting that Instagram prioritises video content over images. The reason for this is that video keeps users on the platform for longer.
Reels are discoverable, they appear in the Explore area, in the hashtags and Reels feeds which gives your content many opportunities to be found.
The fast-paced nature of Reels makes them more engaging and they encourage a quick interaction (which makes them even more discoverable).
It is important to use trending sounds and according to Instagram if you want to go viral, Reels with trending sounds and high completion rates are more likely to go viral.
Ten: Post regularly
With many competing priorities in business, it is easy to let social media drop off the list! It is essential, however, to post consistently; the algorithm 100% favours frequent posters. We recommend a posting schedule of 3-5 times per week.
To ensure consistent posting, planning is key. Knowing what you have coming up, writing a plan, using a scheduling tool and including the tips outlined above you will have strong social presence.
We manage accounts for a number of businesses and individuals and know what works. Digital PR and social media are a proven way to reach a wide audience and we would love to help. If you own a business and are looking to increase your social media presence, contact us today so we can help you achieve your social media goals.
elly@popcom.com.au