26 tips to create social media magic for your business
Have you found your brand’s social media is hitting a wall? Social media marketing takes time, talent, and a lot of creative brain power and it’s possible to get burned out. I’m going to share some easy, actionable items that you can do to put the social media magic back into your brand.
My colleague Rebekah Radice and I teamed up on this together to create a total of 52 tips and here is part one from her blog: How to Create Social Media Magic. Add in my 26 here and voila! You’re in business, baby!
I’m going to break down the tips by social media platform but many tips will work on any platform. Each platform has its own nuances for posting but many of the “common sense” guidelines for social media apply everywhere.
Google+
1. Create a weekly Google+ Hangout series to highlight your brand’s services, talk about industry updates, or to connect with customers. These will live on YouTube and be sharable on your blog and throughout all your social media platforms.
2. Use your super size cover photo to make an impact. At 2120 x 1192, you have no excuse for lacking visual impact. If you are design challenged, hire someone to create something memorable for you.
3. Use Friends + Me to connect your Google+ to other social channels. Use this for thoughtful sharing from Google+ to other social platforms.
4. Highlight your business’s accomplishments on your About page. There’s a lot of rich territory on Google+ so utilize it to boost your social SMO throughout the web.
5. Get your Google+ authorship set up. As Mark Traphagen says, “Google wants to pump you up in search.” Connect your Google+ account and receive a boost in Google search.
6. Tell your brand story with Pinterest boards.
7. Use secret boards to work with a team and build marketing campaigns.
8. Add a board with links to your other social networks and blog so people can find you everywhere.
9. Brand your images for Pinterest with your company watermark.
10. Use the #PinofTheDay hashtag to connect your content with other pinners and work across social media platforms.
More tips on my All Things Pinterest Board
Facebook Page
11. Host a Facebook Q & A on your Facebook page.
12. Make sure your Facebook page is attractive and optimized. You should change your cover photo occasionally for the seasons or for different marketing campaigns to keep your page fresh.
13. Customize your Facebook tabs.
14. Use square images for regular posts with a 1:1 ratio aspect or size them at 500 x 500 pixels. This is easy to do in PicMonkey or Photoshop.
15. Analyze your Facebook page on LikeAlyzer and keep making tweaks in your content to improve your page.
More resources on my Facebook Tips and Tricks board
16. Set your profile up properly using all your visual assets and adding industry keywords with a link to your website.
17. Participant or host Twitter chats to meet people in your industry or potential clients.
18. Use Social Bro or another third-party app to help grow your Twitter follow base the right way.
19. Twitter is about interesting conversations. Make sure you say hello and talk with people. No broadcasting allowed.
20. Etiquette counts on Twitter. Tweet others the way that you want to be tweeted.
More resources on my Social Media Savoir Faire board
21. Connect with influencers through the LinkedIn Influencer program. They are creating original content on LinkedIn and this is a rich resource of relevant LinkedIn content share for your updates.
22. Need to scope out the competition? Go stealth by becoming anonymous to do your research, then switch back to public for networking.
23. Customize the links to your websites for a more professional look.
24. Create great updates for more engagement. Link dropping isn’t effective.
25. Make sure that you add a custom message to each invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Remember that you can’t do this from the apps.
Biggest tip for last!
26. Be consistent in all your social media efforts. Pick one platform and learn to use it well before branching out to other platforms. Being really great on one platform is preferable to sucking on many platforms.
Make sure that you are having fun and enjoying the social interaction. There is a trend in hiring agencies to handle social media for brands but I urge you to have people who are connected with your brand doing your social media. Farmed out social media can end up looking like farmed out social media. Bleck. If you feel like you don’t have time or the skills, please do hire someone to help you with your social media but make sure they know what they are doing and have active, solid social media platforms of their own. If they don’t have an active and vibrant social media platform themselves, how will they create one for you?
I hope that these tips will spark some new ideas and get your brain fired up for creating some social media magic of your own!
Photo credit: Big Stock Photos