Harp Interactive

Get with it! 6 Quick Social Media Tips

Tweet this. Like that. Snap what?

Eager to tackle the marketing beast we call social media but not quite sure how to hit it?

Planning and growing social media initiatives for your brand takes some training in order to really get it, so we’re sharing a few of our best tips.

Below you’ll find six social media tips to launch your brand into the social sphere.

6 Social Media Tips You Can Get

1) Get Present

Just as being present in yoga is essential to a successful practice, being present on your social media platforms is equally critical. But unlike in yoga, being present is more than a mindset when strategizing for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social platform.

Up at the top of the social media best practices list, being present means you are available to respond quickly to direct messages, questions, comments and to also thank people for sharing your posts, tweets or grams.

A quick response lets your community know your brand is listening, that you care, and goes a long way in building brand loyalty.

[Tweet “Quick responses let your community know your brand is listening & goes far in building loyalty.”]

There are plenty of tools that help you monitor your social media accounts, including HootSuite and the Facebook Pages Manager App.

Tip: Leaving for the night? In Facebook, you can now toggle the ‘Away’ switch for 12 hours.  You can also download your unique messenger code and publish it on your print and digital assets to give people a quick way of privately getting in touch with your company via the Facebook Messenger app.

Social Media Tip 1: Get Present

Harp’s Facebook Messenger Code

2) Get Branded

We live in a visual social media world.  People process images 60,000 times faster than text. Tweets with images get 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets than those without images.

[Tweet “Tweets with images get 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets.”]

This type of response to visual vs. text posts holds true across all social media platforms. People’s brains are also changing to instantly accept or reject content based on visuals thanks to the increasing popularity of real-time platforms, such as Snapchat and Periscope.

Take advantage of all the social media styles for sharing images and videos.  Create branded images for your blog posts and social media posts to provide instant visual recognition and to build your brand’s awareness when your posts are shared.

[Tweet “Create branded images for your blog & social media posts for instant visual recognition.”]

Emotionally compelling graphics and video help you to stand out on increasingly noisy social media platforms and help seed your brand across the web every time the image is retweeted, shared, pinned, etc.

[Tweet “Emotional graphics & video help you to stand out on increasingly noisy social platforms.”]

This can be done with a logo, watermark or a specific image style…however you want to visually brand your images. But please make sure the images are yours to brand, not third party images that you are simply sharing.

Tip: Tools like Canva and Pic Monkey make visual marketing easy for those without professional design expertise and tools. They even have pre-set social media graphic sizes so you don’t have to keep up with the ever-changing size dimensions.

Get Branded - Social Media Tips

Example of branded image from our blog.

3) Get SMART

Not sure how or what to measure on social media beyond how many followers or likes your brand has?

Follow the S.M.A.R.T. method to set smart social media goals that are:

  • Specific,
  • Measurable,
  • Attainable,
  • Relevant, and
  • Time-based.

Not only does this help you align your social media goals with your business objectives, it will go a long way in defining the ROI of your efforts (a big plus)!

Get Smart - Social Media Tips

4) Get Analytical

Posting content to your LinkedIn Company Page on a regular basis is a social media best practice, one that is often ignored.

[Tweet “Posting content to your LinkedIn Company Page on a regular basis is a social media best practice.”]

LinkedIn is a social network too—actually one of the oldest out there.

LinkedIn is prime real estate for:

  • brand building,
  • attracting a professional following,
  • recruiting, and
  • thought leadership.

Use LinkedIn Analytics to understand which of your updates is the most popular, then boost it to your target audience using LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates. A Sponsored Update appears as a native ad in your audience’s news feed.

Get Analytical - Social Media Tips

5) Get Cross

Creating content for your brand’s blog and social media assets can be (and often should be) a full-time job. However, the reality is that not a lot of small businesses can afford to hire a writer for the sole purpose of content creation. So it makes sense, from an efficiency standpoint, to cross-promote your social media content.

Cross promoting means posting the same content & links on multiple social media channels after adapting the content for that specific channel.  

Tip: Be strategic about cross promoting content. Tailor your content to fit each platform’s guidelines.  Write and use a headline for each platform the content is posted on vs. simply saying “I just uploaded a video on YouTube.”

Schedule the posts for different times of day and different days of the week. Even consider rewriting the headline slightly to add variety and a fresh perspective.

Get Cross - Social Media Tips

6) Get Real

Be. More. Human. This was the much tweeted social media mantra at Social Media Marketing World 2016. Definitely not a new concept in social media, but one that is easier said than done.

Tips on getting real:

  • Post video responses to Facebook messages.
  • Use Live Video to build your likability and trust factor.
  • Sign your tweets, posts, and other content with a first name.
  • Leverage social media influencers to not only amplify but humanize your brand.
  • Use social media to supplement your customer service center. Allow them to be authentic and raw. This is what your audience craves.
  • Do away with canned messages. Even though they seem to have a place, they don’t. Replace the canned content with guidelines for ‘voice’.
Get Real - Social Media Tips

Source: @Cision on Twitter

7) BONUS: Get Help

Putting together a strategic, goal-oriented and optimized social media marketing plan can be daunting. And throw in the fact that platforms are continually adding new features (cough cough…Facebook) at wickedly fast speeds, which makes it difficult to keep up with, let alone incorporate, into your social media marketing plan.

That’s where an outside agency like Harp can really benefit brands and businesses. If you find yourself short on resources, time and ability to keep pace, please don’t hesitate to ask for assistance.  It could make all the difference in your social media marketing efforts. Ask us about a social media audit for your brand.