In today’s world, it’s becoming more important for companies to build a strong digital presence. One of the major ways to accomplish this is by establishing a good social media strategy. Because each social media channel is so different from the next, it’s important to learn how to communicate on each one to best engage your followers. Learn about Tindall-Creative Marketing’s top best practices for how to best market yourself on each digital channel.
Facebook is a popular channel among millions of users, but businesses often find it to be overwhelming to know how exactly to use it for their benefit. Starting with your profile, it’s important to establish a good first impression. This all starts with the profile picture and cover photo. Simplicity is important for the profile picture, since you only have 180 x 180 pixels to work with. Many companies choose to keep this as their logo since it is the cleanest depiction of their brand. As for the cover photo you can go a little more creative, you have a little more room in there (820×312 pixel) to add text so perhaps include a mission statement or an event or promotion that you are putting on for the week.
Once your profile is all set, it’s time to start posting. Right behind content, the timing means everything for the success of your post. Depending on your target audience and industry, it’s important to do your research to determine the best time to post so that they are seen. To ensure you are able to follow these times, make a content calendar and schedule out the posts ahead of time. That way you can ensure you never miss the most engaging window for your followers. Users are more likely to stop scrolling if they see an image or video, so try to always post an update with one of them in it, and if you can, also stay active on Facebook stories. These are immune from Facebook’s algorithm, so it gives the highest potential of being seen by followers. If you are nervous about over promoting yourself in the content, just remember the 80-20 rule. Keep 80% of your posts to inform and 20% to promote yourself. This makes users more engaged and less of an impression that you are over-selling.
Twitter users share many different types of content than Facebook. Twitter is centered around brief updates at just 280 characters. One of the main differences of setting up a Twitter profile is that you will need to choose a handle. You want this to be as close to the other names you have on social media to keep it consistent. You also will need to pick a profile picture and header image. These can be more similar to what you choose to do for your Facebook profile picture and cover image. You also have room to add a bio, which you want to utilize to explain your company offering (in just 160 characters).
In addition to finding the optimal times and organizing your planned posts in a content calendar similar to what you would do with Facebook, the actual content that you should share on Twitter is a little more unique. For instance, images for Twitter are even more crucial because you don’t have much space for the content. It has also been proven that GIFs on Twitter bring out a 55% boost in engagement. Another critical piece to your content on Twitter are hashtags. Not only did Twitter invent them, but they hold a higher chance of making your account more discoverable.
Instagram is the most visual platform among them all, however there is a lot of room to write a caption – with over a 2,000 character limit and a 30 hashtag limit. The first step to becoming discoverable on Instagram, is building your follower base which starts by establishing your target audience and optimizing your profile to cater to them. Stick to a short and sweet bio to sum up your company and how it can benefit a user to follow you, then be sure to include a link to your website so they can check you out for themselves. Posts are not clickable so the bio is the spot to include a link that is easy for a user to access. Once you have your profile picture size to fit Instagram’s 110 x 110 pixel circle image, you are ready to start sharing content.
Content on Instagram is laid out side by side, so it’s important not only to plan the captions in a content tree, but to also plan the image for each post. The more aesthetically pleasing your feed appears, the more likely new visitors will want to follow you. This look should reinforce your brand in some manner. Similar to Facebook, you can also utilize Instagram Stories to ensure your post will pop up at the top of your followers’ account. Although you have 2,200 characters to type up a caption, only the first 2 lines will be seen before a user has to click “more”, so be sure to keep those lines compelling so a user remains interested. In the same aspect, although there is room to include 30 hashtags, you may want to stick to the top 5 most beneficial ones, to not appear like spam.
Just as you would for the other platforms, you need to start by establishing a powerful profile. Keep the profile picture at a high quality and utilize that and the header image similarly to as you would on Twitter and Facebook. It’s also important to understand that the type of content on LinkedIn is traditionally more scholarly and focused on educating, rather than promoting. It is a great tool to get the word out about your business, but not necessarily a shoutout to your products. That being said, center your content around adding value to your customers’ lives, rather than what they can purchase from you. It’s extremely important to target this content to meet the needs of your followers, so target audience research is critical.
LinkedIn also has additional features that businesses can take advantage of, including InMail and Groups. LinkedIn InMail gets 3X the response as regular email, so it is a great way to spread the word about your company. The only requirement to do so is to have a premium account. As for groups, this gives you a great chance to connect with others in your industry. By joining groups that consist of professionals in your industry, you have the ability to establish your spot in the community all while connecting with other business owners. It’s a unique way to remain prevalent in the community and also be more active on the social media channel.
Start Reaching More People on Social
Social media is not a new trend, but it is definitely becoming one that you don’t want to pass up from a business perspective. If you’re unsure how your current strategy is performing, it may be time to take a look into the analytics and see if there is any room for improvement. To learn more about how Tind-All Creative Marketing can help you with your social media needs call us at (860) 916-4561 or visit tind-allcreativemarketing.com.
