Social media has become integral to numerous facets of life — business is no exception. At this point, businesses that don’t have a social media strategy in place are missing out on a key aspect of digital marketing and public relations. Social media holds the power to amplify your business, especially when it comes to brand awareness, lead generation, hiring, and advertising.
Building a strong digital identity is almost always a worthy endeavor, but it does require work — far more than just setting up social media accounts. A strong social media strategy will include:
- Staying on top of new and changing trends
- Updating, monitoring, and managing multiple channels simultaneously
- Interacting and engaging with followers and target audiences
- Using analytics tools to analyze your reach, engagement, and sales
When tasks like these fall to the wayside, it can prove detrimental to your business and its reputation. Whether your social channels are steady, stagnant, or even nonexistent, you’ll want to take into account these do’s and don’ts of social media.
Social Media Do’s
1. Create and Curate Compelling Visuals
Humans are visual creatures. Visuals provide a quicker, clearer, and more emotive understanding of a message than a large block of words. Web content that contains visuals receives up to 94% more views. Choosing which images, videos, infographics, and other forms of media to use is an important part of social media marketing. Whatever you land on, if the content isn’t original, make sure to credit the artist or photographer responsible by tagging their account.
2. Enact Social Listening
Social listening is about monitoring your brand’s social media channels and listening for:
- Customer feedback
- Mentions of your brand
- Discussions about particular keywords, hot topics, competitors, or industries
Social listening allows you to better create content that your audience wants. It’s all about listening to social conversations and shifting your social media strategy in response. Tuning in to relevant conversations can also help you build a good reputation. Commenting on or taking a stance on trending topics is an excellent way to position yourself as an industry leader and expert.
3. Take Advantage of the Stories Feature
Stories are collections of images or short videos posted by a user that disappears after 24 hours. Pioneered by Snapchat, stories are now popular on other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. It may be easy to ignore this feature, but you’ll want to consider this: Currently, Stories get 15 times more engagement than in-feed posts.
4. Track Your Activity
After developing your social goals, keep track of them with social media analytics. This involves gathering, analyzing, and applying data related to your profiles and the content you share. There are numerous paid and free popular tools on the market, including:
Most social media platforms also have their own built-in analytics tools, like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
5. Think Before You Post
Your social media content should reflect the attitudes and values of your target audience — not of you or your team. Always keep your personal and business accounts separate, and make sure your content is authentic and relevant to your business and target audience.
Social Media Don’ts
1. Don’t Let Mistakes Slip Through the Cracks
Grammar and spelling mistakes happen to the best of us, but letting too many slip through can negatively affect your brand’s reputation. If you don’t have the time to triple-check your social copy, consider hiring a freelancer. With so many platforms dedicated to contract workers, it’s never been easier to hire a qualified proofreader or copy editor, especially in a time crunch. Or, try a free digital writing assistance tool like Grammarly.
2. Don’t Overuse Hashtags
Hashtags always have a pound sign followed by a keyword or term. While using them is a convenient and efficient way to increase your visibility and categorize and connect your content to other related posts, they can also be annoying to your viewers.
Consult guides like this to find out how many hashtags you should use and which are best, depending on the social media platforms you’re posting on.
3. Don’t Just Copy and Paste Content
Not all social media platforms are used in the same way. Get to know how content is posted and how users engage with it — this will differ on each service. Coming up with a post and then copying and pasting it into every platform available is not an effective digital marketing strategy.
Figure out which social media platforms your target audience uses most and focus on those first. Also, make sure that the content matches the platform. Consider the word limits, features, effects, common courtesies, and trends happening on each specific platform.
A quick tip: Video performs well on almost all social platforms! If you don’t currently use any video on your social channels, get your team to brainstorm ways you can start.
4. Don’t Ignore Your Followers
At its best, social media for marketing and public relations is a two-way street. If you ignore your followers’ questions, comments, and concerns, they’ll take note, and likely take their business elsewhere.
5. Don’t Choose Quantity over Quality
In addition to prioritizing networks, you should prioritize the content you share. There’s a fine line between posting regularly and spamming your followers’ feeds. Most importantly, you want to be posting content of value to your audience.
Elevate Your Social Media Strategy
Integrating solid social media strategies into your digital marketing and public relations efforts will grow your business in meaningful and profitable ways, and we have numerous case studies to prove it.
As one of the premier brand management agencies in Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, Bloom Communications helps mission-driven organizations grow and thrive. Contact us today to find out how we can help you step up your social media strategy.