10 easy social media hacks 

We’ve advised dozens of clients on social – increasing their reach, engagement and driving web traffic. The following 10 simple tips are guaranteed to improve your company’s social media status: 

1. Start with a strategy:  Set meaningful objectives, research your target audience, establish your most important metrics, analyze your competition, create and curate engaging content, then assess your results and optimize. 
2. Know your target audience: Are you targeting the right audience for your corporate objectives?  Analytics on most social platforms tell you the ages, gender, geography and interests of your followers. For example, you might find Facebook is the perfect platform for your B2B marketing efforts, whereas your Pinterest account is attracting buzz from consumers. With that information in mind, you’d want to adjust your content according to the desired audience. 
3. Respond to fans, quickly: 75% of consumers say social media has empowered them to interact with brands, according to Sprout Research. If users have taken the time to respond or message you, they expect a timely response. In fact, 42% of customers expect a response in 60 minutes and 32% expect a response in 30 minutes.
4. Verify your account: Getting a blue verification check next to your social media channel makes it easier for users to find you and increases your brand credibility. It takes only a few minutes to apply for the verification checkmark on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. 
5. Post at consistent times: Audiences on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube value consistency in posting days and times, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all. Each platform has best practices for certain times, based on when users are most likely to engage with content. Analytics can offer insight into posting time, and we can help you make sense of them. 
6. Post in native format: When you are about to post a photo on Instagram, you might see an option to post the same picture to your Facebook and Pinterest accounts at the same time. It’s fine to post across all channels, but beware of this automated cross-posting feature because it can affect proper formatting. It’s often better to post directly on Facebook – a.k.a. the native format. 
7. Features to know: As social media channels compete for users, they release new features to vie for users’ attention. One example is a “story,” a collection of images or videos that a user can post which last for only 24 hours, like a highlight reel. Instagram and Facebook have recently added platforms for watching longer videos on their platform, called IGTV and Facebook Watch. Keeping up to date with new features can help you stay ahead of the game.
8. Hashtags, and key words: To help people find your posts, add hashtags (#), followed by keywords related to the content in the post. However, best practices differ slightly per platform. On Instagram, for example, you might tag a picture of a flower with semi-related terms, like #plant #gardening #pretty. On YouTube, this is a big no-no. If there’s no gardening in your video, #gardening should not be used as it will be sent to viewers looking for gardening and they won’t be pleased.  
9. Track and Measure your goals: Every social media platform has its own native analytics. Facebook’s are in the Insights tab. Twitter provides Twitter Analytics.  For Instagram and Pinterest, you’ll need business accounts to see your data. To maximize your effort, find a social media analytics tool that fits within your budget and needs. The time you save on manually creating reports and pulling together different networks’ data will more than make up for the money you spend on these tools.
10. Practice social listening: This is a great source of research for learning what consumers think about your brand and your competition. Part of social listening means stepping into the conversation yourself, engaging with users and replying to questions and feedback. There are many social media monitoring tools available which allow you track mentions of your brand, related keywords and industry trends. 

For a list of media monitoring tools and other pointers – and/or a complimentary social media assessment, please reach out to Renee Miller.