A social media strategy is a lot like your favorite dessert’s recipe. You’ll find lots of variations, but it all boils down to one thing: how well you execute it.
Done well, social media marketing can be a powerful way to fuel business growth. 71% of consumers are more likely to make an ecommerce purchase based on social media referrals. Further, 54% of users use social media to research products.
While you might already have a solid social media marketing strategy documented, this piece is all about taking your thoughts off the page and getting down to business.
In this article, we’ll unpack how to consistently deliver value on social media and execute a social media content strategy that brings results.
But first, let’s take a look at the top social media platforms and best practices for each.
Top social media platforms in 2023
The last time we checked, there were over 100 social media platforms: one for pets, another for new moms, books, sports, and virtually any other interest you can think of. To reach your target customers, it’s worth researching the social media platforms where they hang out.
But, unless your product is super niche, you’ll also want to have a social media presence on some of the biggest platforms out there. To help increase brand awareness or maybe start doing social media lead generation as well.
We’ll look at best practices for 5 of these platforms.
We’ve selected these social platforms based on their broad appeal and large user base in the US. Thus, we haven’t included platforms limited to a specific format (like TikTok and Quora), or those that only appeal to one specific demographic (like Pinterest).
Facebook best practices
As of June 30, 2020, one of the earliest social networks still enjoys a monthly active user base of 2.70 billion. A vast majority of the platform’s users are males between 25 to 34 years, while women between 18 to 24 years make up 9.6% of its audience.
Let’s dig into the best ways to drive business growth on Facebook in 2022:
Use video marketing
Facebook users watch 100 million hours of video content every day. This is an excellent opportunity for businesses to present a relatable picture of their brand in one of the most popular content formats online.
Jewelry company Pandora, used video content on Facebook to spread brand awareness. They achieved a 61% lift in purchases and a 42% lift in the number of buyers.
Use shorter posts
One study found shorter posts on Facebook got 32.5% higher reach and 82% more clicks.
The study defined shorter posts as “under 140 characters”, while longer posts were greater than 140 characters but with no character limit. The shorter posts received more likes, comments, clicks, and reach.
Use groups to build a community
Groups are a great way to build a thriving community to glean feedback, ask for referrals, and promote new initiatives.
For example, take a look at the Facebook group Starbucks created called “Leaf Rakers Society”.
Group members discuss everything from Starbucks drink recommendations, decorating tips for classrooms during fall, and pumpkin scones.
Instagram best practices
The social networking site had over 1 billion monthly active users as of June 2018. 25-34-year-olds make up the largest user base on the platform.
Take a look at some best practices for the platform:
Use aesthetic photos
Instagram is a visual platform. If customers don’t find your images compelling enough while scrolling their feeds in the evening, there’s a slim chance they’ll read your eloquent product descriptions or click on your links.
You don’t need an expensive camera to click high-quality photos. But be sure to infuse some creativity into what you shoot and how you shoot it. For extra appeal plan your Instagram feed so it has a specific color tone and style.
To jazz up your photos, use image editing tools like Stencil, VSCO, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
In case you don’t have the time or resources to take photos or hire a professional photographer, stock photos provide a budget-friendly alternative. However, make sure that the stock image you choose is not over-used. You may even use QR codes for Instagram in place of stock images.
Exploit Instagram stories
500 million people use Instagram Stories every day. The feature allows users to post quick highlights of their day that disappear in 24 hours (similar to Snapchat Stories).
You can use stories to run a poll, host a quiz, answer questions from followers (an Ask Me Anything session), and even post stickers and GIFs.
Explore IGTV and reels
IGTV gives you a great opportunity to post educational tutorials and how-to videos.
For example, West Elm, a furniture and decor brand with over 2.4 million followers, connects with its fans with helpful DIY IGTV videos.
Reels are short-form videos you can use to post sneak-peeks or quick hacks. For instance, see how Louis Vuitton uses Reels to promote its latest collection.
Use influencer marketing
According to recent research, 89% of marketers said ROI from influencer marketing is as good as, or even better than other digital marketing channels.
If you’re not sure about how to find influencers or how much it costs, here’s a helpful guide to get you started.
Twitter best practices
The micro-blogging site enjoys a monthly active user base of 330 million, and a daily active user base of 145 million.
According to one report, the vast majority of Twitter users in the US are young (18-29 years), educated, and have high incomes.
Here are some ways to get more out of Twitter in 2022:
Use memes, GIFs, and videos
While text-only tweets are fine, don’t be shy to showcase your brand voice with GIFs, memes, and videos. After all, tweets with video attract 10x more engagement than those without.
Skittles is a good example of a brand that uses GIFs and memes to highlight its fun side.
Use Twitter threads
While a tweet is limited to 240 characters, you can always use Twitter threads for longer, more thoughtful posts. A Twitter thread is a set of connected tweets.
There are various ways you might use a Twitter thread: post tutorials, follow up on a tweet, host giveaways, and provide additional context.
Pick engagement over clicks
Instead of clogging your followers’ timeline with blog links, consider posting thoughtful observations about your niche with minimal promotion.
A good way to drive engagement is by hosting Twitter chats. They allow brands to host a public discussion about a specific topic at a given time.
For instance, SEO tool Semrush hosts weekly Twitter chats with the hashtag “SemrushChat” to discuss marketing tips.
LinkedIn best practices
With 722 million members, LinkedIn is set to turn 19 years old in 2022.
Most LinkedIn users are 30-49-year-old professionals, while 18-29-year-olds make up the second-largest audience. The platform has over 160 million users in the US.
Once considered to be a place to find and post jobs, LinkedIn has gradually established itself as a platform to share thought leadership.
Let’s take a look at how to best use the platform for your business.
Use visuals
Images typically get 2x higher comments, while video content gets 5x more engagement on LinkedIn.
You don’t have to be extravagant with your videos. A simple video of yourself works well too.
For instance, see how customer service coach David Brownlee uses weekly videos to promote his LinkedIn courses with these short videos:
Create engaging content
Pete Davies, director of product management at LinkedIn, reveals the secret sauce for engaging content: “Genuine conversation around real experiences.”
This means posts about how your company solved a specific problem or how you approach challenges such as hiring will spark more conversations than sharing a link to a blog post.
Davies also recommends expressing an opinion with your posts to encourage feedback and using “@” mentions to invite people to share their thoughts.
Connect with the right people
The LinkedIn feed is based on “People You Know, Talking About Things You Care About.”
LinkedIn considers various factors, such as who a person is connected to, to determine what appears on your audience’s feed. They also look at the type of posts a person has engaged with and the pages they follow.
Thus, it’s important to build a network of people who care about the topics you talk about. You can connect with people directly on LinkedIn or use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a tool offered by LinkedIn that allows users to obtain email addresses from LinkedIn.
Youtube best practices
YouTube is the second-largest social media platform after Facebook, with 2 billion+ users. It has a total video watch time of 1 billion hours for a single day.
Here’s how to get the most out of the platform:
Add calls to action with YouTube cards
YouTube cards allow you to guide viewers to your website, next video, or playlist.
It’s a great way to direct users to engage with more of your content or take them to a relevant landing page.
Conduct keyword research to find topics
Like Google, YouTube also works as a search engine, helping people find videos relevant to their interests. To get maximum eyeballs on your videos, it’s important to create content around what people are searching for.
You can use the YouTube search bar suggestions and a keyword tool like Google Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords in your niche.
Use YouTube ads for growth
Racking up video views on YouTube can take a while, but ads are a good way to build early momentum.
YouTube allows you to create different types of ads such as in-stream ads, overlays, banners, and video discovery ads.
4 tips for social media strategy execution and growth
A solid social media strategy needs planning, collaboration, and real-time engagement, too.
Here’s how to nail each of these:
1. Create a social media calendar
Without a well-organized calendar, social media execution can quickly get out of hand.
A social media calendar lets you plan a steady stream of content weeks in advance, track content creation for different platforms, and keep your team in the loop on what’s published and what’s scheduled.
The social media calendar template in monday.com allows you to assign team members to social media posts, add publish dates for each post, add images, video, and text to posts, and track how your posts are performing with the help of integrations.
2. Align your team
Like most content production, social media marketing is a team sport. You likely have designers, writers, videographers, and managers working in unison to produce new content. It’s important to align all these teams to keep the wheels running smoothly.
A scheduling tool is great to queue posts for publishing, but they offer little by way of collaboration.
Your team needs to be able to see dependencies, deadlines, and deliverables clearly, so everyone’s on the same page.
Consider using a Work OS, such as monday.com, to help your team see what different members are working on and collaborate smoothly.
You can assign checklists to team members, so they know exactly what to do each week.
For instance, after publishing a post, you may want team members to boost engagement by tagging relevant influencers, commenting on other people’s posts, sharing the post on other channels, replying to comments on your posts, and tracking metrics.
Creating a shared checklist ensures your team’s always working toward a shared goal.
3. Engage with your audience in real-time
You may use a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your social media posts, but don’t forget to interact with customers in real-time.
Whether customers publicly applaud your brand or criticize your product, be sure to respond promptly. As one study found, 42% of customers who complain on social media expect a response in under an hour.
It’s easy to soak in praise on social media, but criticism can be hard to deal with. The best brands, though, show empathy, and tailor their responses for each customer.
For instance, take a look at how Delta Airlines reassures an angry customer on Twitter:
Don’t limit real-time interactions to social media customer service alone. Host a live chat or participate in one, interact with influencers in your niche, and comment on trending topics.
4. Curate interesting content
Content curation is a low-effort way to build authority in your niche. Hiten Shah used the method to grow Kissmetrics’ Twitter following to over 500,000 unique monthly visitors, before they even had a blog.
While you don’t have to create content from scratch, it does help to add context to anything you share.
For instance, when sharing a link about marketing, you’ll want to add why you found it interesting and why your audience should read it.
Here are a few reliable ways to find great content to share:
- Twitter lists: this is a good way to keep an eye out for new links while keeping your main feed clean.
- Content curation tools: tools like Snoop.it, Feedly, and Flipboard help you read fresh content in one place.
- Newsletters: follow other curated newsletters in your niche to find new sources for curation.
To make curation less chaotic, you can also create a monday.com board for all your team members to drop in interesting links and comments to go with them.
Planning is the key to effective social media execution
The best social media strategies fail due to poor execution.
To ensure you’re publishing high-quality content day in and day out, you need a social media calendar, a good collaboration platform for your team, and content curation that gives some breathing room to your content team.monday.com allows you to build the ideal social media management platform for your business, so you can knock your social media strategy out of the park. With monday.com, your team has complete visibility into their tasks, stages of content production, and a place to collect ideas and inspiration.
Excited to see how our Work OS can help you reach your social media goals? Try monday.com free for 2 weeks.
