As an owner or marketer of a small or medium sized business who is trying to find traction using social media as a marketing and customer service tool, you probably find yourself spinning your wheels occasionally. You might wonder why your platform isn’t helping to bring customers to your store or website and what you might be doing wrong. In most cases, it’s not that what you’re posting isn’t great, it’s that there are small details you and your team may be overlooking when you post to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
To give you an idea of what those details might be, we’ve compiled a list of 12 action items you can use to evaluate your social pages and strategy that you might have been missing.
1. Consistent Branding Across Platforms
So, are we saying that if all your logos match and are the same color and those logos match your website and your trucks and your shirts and your business cards that you’ll make more money?
YES! That is exactly what we are saying. Brand consistency helps your clients recognize you immediately. Make them all match and update logos and colors everywhere if you make a change! Why do you think every successful company is recognizable at a glance?
2. Optimize Your Bio and About Sections
Look at your bio and about sections on each platform from time to time and be sure it says EXACTLY what you do and who you are using keywords you know your audience might search. Be sure all links are accurate and go to the right place. The website link should go to your website and the phone number should be an accurate one.
3. Use Custom URL Handles
When it is available, you should use the social media handle that says your business or product name, i.e. facebook.com/greentdesign instead of the default one that may say facebook.com/197328y2387gr8e4. Some platforms require a certain number of follows before this can happen, but when it does, take advantage of the branding opportunity.
4. Pinning Posts Appropriately
Several social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn allow you to pin posts to the top of your page so when potential clients land there, they see what you want them to see right away. This is great to promote upcoming events, specials and holiday hours. BUT, you want to make sure you remember to unpin those posts once they are no longer timely.
5. Tagging Posts Strategically
There are so many ways to use tagging successfully. If you mention a business or product or customer that you can tag, always do so. It creates trust, it creates engagement and it lets the people you’re mentioning know that you’ve mentioned them. Just don’t do it excessively and without true reason.
6. Using Hashtags as Intended
Use hashtags on the platforms where it makes the most sense (Instagram is great, Facebook not so much) and use terms that support what you are posting about. Think of hashtags as search terms and keywords that you think potential clients would use if they were looking for your business or to follow along with posts. A broad hashtag like #summer might not do much for your first day of summer post. But making it more local or niche like #summermarketingtipsinpennsylvania might garner some interest.
7. Don’t Disappear After You Post
The intent of social media, whether you’re using it for business or fun is well… to be social! That means that as a business, once you create a post or share a video, only half of the job is done. You should be responding to comments and DMs in a timely manner. Plus, it helps your engagement skyrocket when your customers realize you’ll answer their questions; it’s such good customer service. You can even create posts that you know will come with follow up questions for the very strategy of getting the conversation going.
8. Post Timing and Frequency
Study your analytics and use basic reasoning to determine when you clients are actually visiting social media platforms. If you only post during your business hours, you may be missing hours of visitors later in the day. You can test this easily by changing up when you post and see if you get more engagement at one time over another.
Also be sure to not post numerous times in one day or repeat posts back-to-back. Give your audience time to see the post and react. If you don’t get the engagement you were hoping for, repurpose the content and share in a different way.
9. Captions on Your Videos
When you create Reels, Stories or TikToks for your pages, remember that many users watch without sound. If you want them to know what’s being said, you need to add captions. And keep in mind that you want them to read what you’re saying, so pace it appropriately. The longer they stay on your content, the more chance the algorithm with show your content to other people.
10. Call-to-Actions
Suggesting the next action your audience should take after viewing or reading your content drastically increases the chance that they will do the action you are requesting. Words like “Save this for later” or “Tell us your favorite” or “Call to confirm”, etc, will help you see more of a return on the investment of time you put into creating that post.
11. Not Using Stories
Although Stories disappear after 24 hours, spending some time adding some content there will often allow people who follow you but haven’t interacted with your content recently to get a fresh perspective. Stories are short and you know your audience generally likes quick snippets. Use them to tell a longer story through short bursts, post timely “happening right now” content and to get a general idea out instead of waiting for the algorithm to show your regular posts.
12. Cross-Promoting
Use platform A to talk about platform B. if you’re posting a longer video to YouTube, post just a snippet to Instagram Stories with info on how to watch on YouTube. Keeping customers moving between all your platforms is an excellent way to keep them engaged with your company and not your competitors.
When you look at big brands and they seem like that have it all together, it’s probably because they don’t let the minor details slip through the cracks. Whether you have a whole marketing team at your fingertips or it’s just you in your office trying to spread the word about your business, take some time to review and focus on the little things on your social media pages, you will begin to see a big difference. And as always, if you want some help with the details, reach out to our expert social media marketers. Now go share this on your Facebook page and be sure to tag us! You see what we did there?? 🙂
