Social Media Best Practices That Every Marketer Should Follow

What do all marketers want and strive to acquire from their audience?

The answer is simple enough. Trust.

But it is not something that you obtain easily. For any customer trusting someone or something is very hard especially in today’s world, flooded with competitors flaunting their products in every possible way.

How does social media best practices relate to all this?

I’m getting there.

Marketers believe that a large portion of their audience is active on social media.

And, I don’t have to tell you. But, where your audience goes, there you go! That’s how marketing works.

Social platforms now serve as platforms where you reach out and engage your customers. It can get hard with the challenges on social media. But first, you must identify the perfect social media platform that suits your brand or company. You can also choose multiple platforms to promote.

Listed below are ways on how you can make the best use of social media best practices for business in each of the respective platforms.

Jump to,

• Facebook marketing best practices
• Twitter marketing best practices
• LinkedIn marketing best practices
• Instagram marketing best practices
• Pinterest best practices
• Best Social Media practices for Google+

 Facebook marketing best practices

Facebook is the largest social network and if you are stepping into the world of Social Media for the first time, you’ll want to check Facebook out first. With nearly 2 billion monthly users, Facebook will allow you to garner as many followers as you’d like if you play your cards right.

It is easy to survive on Facebook but to thrive, you’ll need a working strategy that gains likes and keep your existing audience engaged.

What to post on Facebook?

Social Media Marketers spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to post on Facebook.

You should decide what to post based on what you want to achieve on that social media platform.

If you want to engage your audience or keep them interested constantly, schedule a week’s worth of posts, videos, and images in just 15 mins with our Content Curation guide.

Facebook is best suited for Pre-recorded videos, live videos, and curated content

Social Animal’s Facebook Search will make your job easier by telling you,

1. What is the best type of content to post? (Based on the keyword that you enter)
2. Which is the best day to post?
3. What is the best time to get maximum engagement?

You can also do a Facebook competitor analysis with Social Animal’s Facebook Search.

To know more, read 8 Ways to take down your Competitors on Facebook

1. You’ll be able to see how any page has fared over a period of time.
2. You will be allowed to monitor your competitor’s engagement data that includes the number of likes, shares, and comments over a period of time.
3. You can also view what sentiments worked best for your competitors.

To do a Facebook Competitor analysis, Log in to Social Animal here or Signup for a free trial.

Other things to keep in mind before posting on Facebook:

1. In the world of social media, if your content wants to get noticed, it should stand out. Do all that you can to ensure that you post quality content that is relevant to your audience.
2. Always plan ahead. Make note of important events and days. Share posts that captivate the audience by catering to their needs.
3. Do not forget to caption your post. Captions can do wonders in drawing people towards your content.

Twitter marketing best practices

Skeptical about using Twitter for business? Why wouldn’t you be? It is true that Twitter has fewer users than Facebook. But this doesn’t make Twitter any less important.

Let me enlighten you on the benefits of using Twitter for business.

1. Marketing for free! Construct a simple pitch with the allowed characters and voila! It can reach all your followers who are online.
2. Reaching out to customers is super easy. All you have to do is send them a message or tweet after they’ve followed you. This personal touch will gain you a lot of loyal followers.
3. Twitter can also be used as a medium to communicate with all your followers. And it is one of the fastest ways to spread a message.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also an added perk. All your tweets are indexed by Google, giving you a chance to rank.
5. Twitter is the place to be for Audience Engagement! You get to listen to all kinds of feedback, and talks that go around. You’ll know what your customers want and you’ll also get ideas that you can explore.

Twitter is the perfect social media to be in if you want to create and nurture lasting relationships with your customers.

Twitter is best suited for: Links, Articles, News, and Announcements

How to optimize your Twitter profile in 3 steps?

1. Make sure that you have an appropriate Twitter handle/ @username. You can always use your brand name but there are people who tend to play around with words and use terms that might be used by customers as a search term for any product.
2. Your Twitter bio should be concise and clear. You must also allow space to include a few hashtags in your bio.

You might wonder why. But hashtags are a popular way to look for things and if your bio has a hashtag that represents what you do, you’ll have the chance to come up in the search results.

Are hashtags really that important?

Yes!

• Using a hashtag simplifies the process of search as it pulls up relevant posts with that particular hashtag.
• Hashtags coerce the user to take a look at the post that carries it.
• Hashtags actually save you time by effectively putting information at your fingertips.

3. Now that we’ve established that hashtags are important. You are required to include as many relatable hashtags as possible every time you tweet or share something. Using hashtags improves each tweet’s visibility.

How to find and follow Influencers?

Before we jump to finding Influencers, we’ll have to dwell a little on why Social media Influencers are important.

First things first, Influencers are known to build good networks. Their audience range is wide. And when an Influencer mentions your brand, they are actually amplifying all your marketing efforts and help you reach a wider target audience.

Influencers can also help in building trust. A recent survey states that users tend to buy from a brand if they are influenced by someone who they trust. This someone must be a specialist who posts quality content that their audience believes in.

Now, how do you find such Influencers to follow?

There are tools which allow you to find Influencers based on the keyword that you search for. But these sites solely display results of Influencers with the keywords embedded in their bios.

Now, what good would that do?

You’ll have to agree that many top influencers don’t really specify topics they influence in their bio text. Some powerful influencers have terse or funny bio texts.

Tweeple Search has a specialized “Influencer mode” which searches for your query/keyword in the article content that people have shared rather than in their bio texts. You can even see the list of article URLs they’ve shared. 

LinkedIn marketing best practices

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the largest platform for professionals and companies. But what can you gain in LinkedIn marketing for business?

LinkedIn allows you to establish thought leadership as you connect with people, post quality content, build communities and answer questions. This will also let you become an Influencer.

Believe it or not, LinkedIn is probably the best network to generate leads as its interface features easy communication with potential customers.

LinkedIn is best suited for News/Announcements, Tips.

Here are a few things that you’ll have to follow to get the best out of LinkedIn,

1. Make sure that you fill up all the details on your profile and your company’s profile. LinkedIn is one place where you will not want to look like an amateur.
2. When you fill up those details, make sure you add in a few keywords that relate to your company. This will make it easier for the consumers to look you up.
3. Customize your company URL. Trust me. You’ll not want the automatically generated URL with all those numbers to represent you.
4. Produce content that is audience-specific. Your audience on other social media platforms will greatly vary from who follow you on LinkedIn.
5. Use LinkedIn ads and sponsored updates to target specific groups.
6. Take a look at additional features that LinkedIn offers and choose the ones that best suits your purpose.

Instagram marketing best practices

People, in general, are drawn to stories. And if you think storytelling is the way to market and reach your audience, then head to Instagram.

If you are still not sure, here are a few reasons why you should use Instagram for marketing.

1. Instagram is all about appealing to the sense of vision. And, Did you know that photos and pictures are the most engaging form of content on the web? With this in mind, Instagramming is the best way to let your audience know what you are all about.
2. Similar to Twitter, using hashtags in Instagram for your images can make your posts reach a very large audience in no time.
3. If you think that Instagram will work only for product-based business, then you are wrong. All it takes is a little bit of creativity to showcase your service based business.
4. Instagram also lets you post ads to reach a more targeted audience.

Instagram is best suited for Short promotional and educative videos, Viral videos, Images

What are the Best Social Media best practices for Instagram?

Keep up with the Trends

Instagram’s algorithm ranks and classifies posts on the amount of engagement each post gets. But it also takes into account how quickly any post gets its audience engaged. And to engage your audience it is often recommended that you post content related to what is trending. Topics that create a buzz tend to spread faster. Hence it’ll do you a lot of good to know what’s going on.

Keep checking Google Trends to see what’s up with the peeps around the world. You can also see trending hashtags on Twitter and Facebook.

Get your audience to participate

Engage with your audience and get them to participate. Respond earnestly to the feedback or suggestions that you get.

To increase your engagement you can also create contests. Instagram contests are very popular and you’ll see the engagement increase double fold.

Create a marketing strategy for Instagram

Yes. Just like all other social media platforms Instagram needs a strategy to work too.

Check these off before you begin.

1. Who is your target audience on Instagram?
2. Who are your competitors in Instagram?
3. What kind of message and content do you want to convey?

If you are done with the above, let’s get to creating a marketing strategy for Instagram.

1. Perform competitor research. How is their Instagram profile different from their profiles in other social media? You’ll also have to look at the pictures or videos they’ve used to convey any message. Also, monitor the engagement they’ve obtained for different kinds of posts.
2. Next, Brainstorm different possible ideas and how to implement them.
3. Determine how often and when to post by taking a look at your previous posts and see when the activity has been at its peak.
4. Get creative with the kinds of content you post by making use of Instagram’s additional features like Boomerang and Layouts.
5. Maintain an active presence by creating a Content Calendar that will also enable to keep track of all your posts.
6. Include user-generated content in your posts to add in more variety.
7. Make sure that you post original and innovative captions.
8. Experiment with Instagram stories. Instagram stories can carry links and they stay online for a limited period. Make your stories eye catchy and easy to read.

Be consistent in posting and do not expect results immediately. Building a brand on Instagram takes time. You’ll have to grow while you learn.

Pinterest best practices

Pinterest might not be a social giant like Facebook and it is true that the audience is more female than male. But it has been proven that conversions occur more on Pinterest than on any other social media.

How to use Pinterest for business?

Inspiration and Ideas. That’s what Pinterest gives its users. So the key to winning customers is to Inspire and give them ideas.

And you’ll want to jump with happiness when you hear this!

93% of Pinterest users use Pinterest to plan purchases.

So all you have to do is,

1. Make it easy for the users or pinners in this case to take action. Add save buttons which helps them pin content with just a click.
2. Keep posting consistently.
3. Pinterest like Instagram is a visual platform. So make sure that you post high-quality images.
4. Make the description as informative as possible.
5. Use as many keywords as you can when you try promoted pins.
6. Try featuring multiple products in a single pin.
7. It has been noted that vertical pins perform better. Make sure you don’t compromise on Image quality.
8. Add Text Overlay on images to get more visibility.
9. It is also advised to add the price in descriptions. This puts the customer at ease and just a click away for purchase.

Social Media best practices for Google+

You might have heard of Google+ but you will probably be hesitant to invest in marketing on this particular social media platform. You might think it is not popular and there might not be many users. But I think it’s time you seriously rethink your decision.

What if we told you that Google+ can actually help you rank higher in Google’s search results?

Here’s why and how you should use Google+ for business,

1. Google indexes everything that you post on your company’s page in Google+. Thus, this content has a chance of ranking even if your website doesn’t.
2. Posting often gives you a better chance to rank. So, maintain consistency in your posting schedule.
3. Google also displays “local results” that match any keyword. And your Google+ page plays a major role in ranking these results. Encouraging reviews on your Google+ page will give you a fat chance to rank.
4. Promoting your Google+ page along with other social media best practices might do the trick of increasing visibility.
5. It is easier than you think to find Influencers on Google+ as the community is limited. This will let you communicate and build relationships.

Following the above practices will only get you started. Be a smart marketer and tune your strategies with the suggestions above. Always remember that each social media platform is unique. What works in one may not work in the other.