Social Media Best Practices
It can be tough to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of social media marketing. Best practices are always shifting, and platforms are constantly updating their algorithms. But staying on top of the latest changes is essential for any business that wants to succeed on social media.
After all, social media is one of the most powerful tools we have for reaching our target audiences. Here are some of the best practices you should be following in order to stay ahead of the curve:
There are four ways to build your brand on Facebook: your Facebook profile, Facebook groups, your Facebook page, and Facebook stories.
Your Facebook profile is your landing page. It’s the page that shows information about you, your photos, and recent posts. A lot of leaders may be tempted to not use their personal profile, but we recommend it. You never know who you’re friends with on that platform. Your Facebook contacts may hold the prospect you’re trying to reach. For example, if you’re a CEO of a mortgage company, you may have 100-200 Realtors or loan officers that you’ve added throughout the years who are connected to your profile. So, it’s certainly still worth posting some of your leadership content and leadership thoughts on Facebook. You’re reaching out to people you are already friends with, and who really do care about you and your content.
Next up is Facebook groups. Facebook groups are micro communities within Facebook where people can come together and share their thoughts, photos, articles, videos, and whatever else comes up in one space with people who share these same interests. It’s a great way to get connected to your audience because once you’ve joined a group, Facebook boosts those posts in your feed. And if someone joins your community, it shows they take an interest in what you’re going to say about your industry or your group’s shared topic. If you’re in the mortgage industry, you may make a Facebook group that doesn’t necessarily have to do with your specific company, but it may be mortgage-related. Basically, you could create a space where you can invite people of all walks of the mortgage industry to come together. And from there, you’ll start building relationships based on what you post in that group.
Now, Facebook pages are usually a space for a company, a brand, or a person’s professional profile page. This is separate from your main profile. A page is something you have to get people to like, and that can be more difficult. Facebook pages are probably the hardest space to gain traction if you’re starting from scratch. Pages are not being promoted in the feed as often as your profile or groups are. That doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t have one, because it’s great to have your brand in as many places as possible, but we recommend not solely relying on this Facebook resource. However, it could be a helpful supplemental resource in which you could place recycled content.
Facebook stories features short videos–which are becoming increasingly popular across all platforms–and it’s a great way for people to get a little glimpse into your everyday life. It’s a way to show your full range of interests and passions, and how those all contribute to make you an Attractive Leader.
By and large, it seems that more people have a stronger sense of how to humanize themselves on Facebook. So if you’re one of those people who posts regularly about your life, great! A helpful way to think about LinkedIn (and other platforms) is to apply similar principles. Just make sure that all of your posts are in alignment with your vision and values as an Attractive Leader.
If you are not a frequent Facebook poster, now is the time to start. Share pictures, share about your family, share about your day–and your work, too. Usually, posts work across platforms.
A helpful way to look at Instagram is to consider it as a zoomed-in version of Facebook. Let’s say you post on Facebook a couple times a week depending on what’s going on in your life. Instagram, in comparison, is more of a daily look at your activities. It features pictures with spaces for captions below, which allows for more of a focus on creative images–alongside images of you with your family, friends, on trips, etc–to help emphasize the content you produce in your text. It’s a great visual way to engage with your audience while establishing who you are–on a human level–on social media.
We recommend setting up your account as a “business account.” (You can do this by clicking on the 3 bars in the upper right-hand corner and scrolling down to the bottom where it says “switch account type.”) This allows you to see analytics & schedule posts through third-party platforms. You can also set it up to automatically post to your Facebook account.
Types of Instagram posts (feed, carousel, stories, videos, reels)
There are 5 different types of posts on Instagram, and if you want to be successful on the app you definitely want to use all 5.
Feed Posts: These are the “normal” posts that you think of when you think of Instagram. Any photo or graphic is considered a feed post
Carousels: Carousels are just like feed posts except you can swipe through multiple photos or even videos. You can have up to 10 images/videos in one single carousel post
Videos: Videos are the “classic” video format that Instagram has had for a while now. These can be up to a minute long and have more size customizations than the reel format for videos. Keep in mind that the audio you use for videos must be your own, and you can’t access Instagram’s music catalog.
Reels: Reels are all a 9:16 aspect ratio (think selfie-style) and they can be up to 1-minute long. Reels tend to follow trends, and keeping up with the latest trends will help your performance. You can also add trending audio to these, which can increase your chances of being shown to a larger audience.
Stories: Stories have been around for a few years now, and they’re a great way to connect with your audience without posting on your feed. Stories do exactly what the name suggests – they tell a story about your day. You could share a selfie while walking the dogs, a screenshot of the podcast you just listened to, or even reshare posts created by you or other accounts you follow. Stories disappear after 24 hours, but you can archive them by organizing them in “Story Highlights.” Those are the little circles you see underneath your bio on your profile. To save a story to a highlight, click on the 3 dots in the lower right-hand corner and select “save to highlight”. The highlights on your page will appear in chronological order, and you can edit the photos within each highlight at any time. To create a highlight cover, you can select any photo within that highlight or upload from your camera roll.
Choosing your posting schedule
The best posting schedule is the one you can keep up with! It’s best to be consistent on Instagram rather than posting 7 times one week and only one the next. We recommend starting posting 3 times a week and then upping it to 5 if and when you feel like you can manage it. If you’re having a hard time posting consistently, remember that posting a quick story is still a great way to interact with your audience.
When selecting the best time to post, you’ll want to check your analytics to find out when your followers are most active. You can find this by clicking on the “Insights” tab, then clicking on the arrow to the right of “Total Followers,” and scrolling all the way down to the bottom where it identifies the most active times. For most people, that time is somewhere between 3-5 pm, but it can vary depending on your following.
Caption and Hashtag Strategy
When it comes to writing Instagram captions, you need to think about it like a search engine. Gone are the days where hashtags were the only way to find content. Now, Instagram takes information from your caption, the hashtags, and the photo itself to recommend content to the appropriate audience. This doesn’t mean hashtags are useless, but they’re definitely not as important as they used to be. Stick to 3-5 relevant hashtags and feel free to throw in a signature hashtag that relates to your personal brand.
Instagram algorithm basics
Instagram prioritizes content based on a number of factors. These are LIKES, COMMENTS, SAVES, and TIME SPENT ON POST. So the trick is to create content that people are more likely to interact with. It’s hard to accomplish all of these things in a single post, which is why it’s important to experiment in the beginning to see what your audience responds to best. Here are a few things we recommend:
LIKES: It’s been proven that people are more likely to like a photo if there is a face on it. So share something personal. A selfie or a family photo will almost always beat out a graphic when it comes to likes.
COMMENTS: Think about what makes people comment on a post. They’re usually answering a question posed in the caption or congratulating you for something big. Make sure you’re sharing those big “Congrats Worthy” posts as well as writing compelling captions that urge people to respond in the comments. Another way to encourage people to comment is to reply to comments whenever you receive them. Try to start a conversation rather than only saying, “Thanks.”
SAVES: People save content that they want to remember at a later date. This could be a quote, a recipe, or a tutorial of some sort. Try to think out of the box for this one. People are more likely to save something they haven’t seen before.
TIME SPENT: Instagram’s main objective is to keep users on the app for as long as possible, so naturally it makes sense that they favor content that people look at for extended periods of time. There’s a few tricks to this – first, consider writing a longer than normal caption. Another way to beat the algorithm is to make use of long carousel posts. If people have to scroll through 10 different pictures, they’re bound to stay on your post for a while.
TikTok
If we continue with the “zoomed in” metaphor I used above, you could say that TikTok is, in some ways, a “zoomed in” version of Instagram. It’s a space to upload fun, short videos that are usually catered to niche content based on your interests. Let’s say you are passionate about grilling. This would be an excellent platform to share videos about your thoughts on grilling, cooking techniques, sharing a video of your cooking process, and funny inside jokes that appeal to the grilling community.
That being said, TikTok certainly isn’t something just a niche platform, and it’s not something you’d want to overlook. Just looking at the numbers alone, it has one billion monthly users as of 2021, surpassing Twitter, Telegram, Reddit, Pinterest, and Snapchat. TikTok engagement in the U.S. increased by 1,533% between 2017 to September 2019. (In comparison, Instagram inched up by only 6%.)
To leverage trends on Tik Tok, the idea is to use popular sounds and hashtags. These can easily be found on the discover page and also under the “Tik Tok Viral” playlist when you go to add sound to a video. Using current trends makes it more likely to end up on the “For You” page, which ultimately gets you more engagement and followers. Trends include dances, voice-over sounds, jokes/pranks, and sharing recaps of popular shows, films, or books.
LinkedIn, of course, is the big one. This is the one that you want to focus a lot of your energies on. Especially in terms of turning your profile into one that reflects who you are, rather than just a bobble head for your company.
The modern day Recruiter is using LinkedIn in a major, major way. So as with all of your social platforms, you want to make sure that your page best represents who you are as an Attractive Leader.
Visibility
The first step in this process is to make sure that you are actually visible. When people search for you, can they find you? Or is your account set to private? And if your name populates in the search bar, do you have a photo to help identify who you are? Being visible and readily found is crucial. People want to know you exist! And while you’re at it, make sure that your photo is a professional headshot. People are 32 times more likely to engage with you when you have a professional headshot associated with your LinkedIn profile.
Headline and Contact Information
Many people simply rely on the auto-generated headline that LinkedIn creates. You don’t want that. Instead, clarify your role in your own words so that you’re an Attractive Leader from the outset. From there, you want to max out your content information like cell phone number, email address, and social platform links (like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.) I also like to have a Link Tree account, which allows you to have a virtual business card. That way, if anyone goes to, say, linktr.ee/richmilligan, it pulls up my Link Tree page, which allows me to provide access to all of my websites through one central link.
About Me
The final piece here is the “About Me” section. And you want it to be about you–as in, you as a human being. So, to effectively do that, I recommend that you represent four things:
- Who you are outside of work. Establish that human connection. It’s not too much information, but just a short paragraph that highlights who you are.
- Then you address who you are inside of work. Identify what exactly you do, and what you’re responsible for. (And if you’re a recruiter, you’ll likely want to mention something along the lines of looking for like-minded people.)
- Your value system. This is what really makes you magnetic as an Attractive Leader. For example, I say, “I believe that teams should be treating one another better than their best friends.” I would highlight this to show people what I value and what types of candidates I’m looking for.
- The fourth paragraph closes with an invitation for like-minded people to connect. Adding in additional contact information at the bottom is helpful to add here, too.
From there, it’s a matter of curating your content to reflect the values you identify above. In all of your social platforms, make sure that you are clear and consistent with your vision and your values. Once you build your profile and start regularly posting, the rest is sure to follow.
