5 Quick Wins to Realign Your Social Strategy to Recent Changes
It’s no secret that social media is fast-paced and ever-changing. So how can your business keep up? Here are five quick things you can tackle this week to realign your social strategy to the latest updates and features.
1.Update your Facebook template
Facebook recently reported that each week, two out of three people on Facebook visit a local business page or event page. They’ve responded to this by introducing new updates to Facebook business page templates in order to make connections between users and businesses simpler and more valuable.
How to Execute
Update your Facebook page layout to best match your business type or goals in your account settings by looking for the “Edit Page” tab. You can choose a specific template for your industry, including venues, nonprofits, restaurants, shopping, services, and more. A template updated for your industry will help prioritize the actions you want your potential customers to take in order to get the most value out of your presence on Facebook.
2. Utilize Instagram stories
Are you using Instagram stories yet? While they aren’t exactly a new feature, many argue that the introduction of Instagram Stories was Instagram’s smartest move yet. With 400 million daily users today, Instagram Stories are used twice as much as Snapchat stories and have literally changed the way users consume and share things online—allowing them to be more authentic on this platform in real-time.
How to Execute
Use this feature to showcase the people and values behind your business. For example, post images or videos from events, feature employees introducing themselves or talking about what they do, or share educational content about a product in short digestible clips. “Stories” are so-named because they’re designed for storytelling—and Instagram’s built-in filters, polls, gifs, and tagging capabilities allow you to tell a story in an enticing, engaging way. Don’t be afraid to jump in—you can start small with a handful of images in one story and then experiment by adding videos or other features later on.
3. Consider promoting pins on Pinterest
Pinterest is growing fast, and brands are seeing a hike in their investments here. For example, Pinterest recently reported that 61% of Pinners have made a purchase after seeing business content on Pinterest, and Promoted Pins drive 5x more sales than regular pins.
How to Execute
Not only are Pinterest ads driving more sales, they’re also driving great engagement from an audience looking for inspirational content, and they’re easy to execute. All it takes is boosting an organic pin you already have. For best results, do your customer research and make sure you know their purchase journey, then pin get-the-look images, how-to content, or whatever info it is that your customers are seeking in that part of their journey. Develop your pins, add them to an appropriately-themed board, and then promote them to audiences looking for that kind of content.
4. Focus on Twitter engagement
Twitter doesn’t have to just be about how many followers you have or how many likes you get per tweet. It’s uniquely one of the only social platforms that’s built to actually engage in conversations. In fact, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey recently tweeted some hints about updates the platform is working on, including ways to more easily follow Twitter threads.
A Twitter ‘thread’ is a feature Twitter previously released that allows you to embed and click-through related tweets to connect them to your conversation. The anticipated update would eliminate the need to click-through for a more seamless discussion, and potentially show you who is online now to participate in the discussion.
How to Execute
To start a thread on Twitter, simply draft a tweet and add another Tweet to your thread by clicking the highlighted + icon (the icon will highlight once you have entered in the text). Use threading on Twitter to start a tweet chat or engage directly with tweets from your community, customers, or business partners. The more you interact, the more you can further grow relationships on Twitter that could turn into real business leads.
5. Take advantage of LinkedIn Groups
Over the past few months, professional platform LinkedIn has been working on rebuilding their Groups feature from the ground up, with a focus on bringing conversations to the forefront and increasing ways to make it easy for professionals to talk to professional communities.
How to Execute
The new groups feature is available right on the main LinkedIn website and app for easy access and a seamless, faster experience for all professionals to easily participate in groups alongside sharing regular content. Use LinkedIn Groups to help cultivate a valuable community. Simply search for groups relevant to your industry and start engaging with both posts and members to establish credibility. Over time, as you to begin sharing content of your own, you may find yourself increasing traffic to your website as someone who knows their stuff and respects the perspectives of others in the space.
