With the wide range of social media channels available today, there’s plenty to keep brands busy. It is a full time job just keeping profiles up-to-date, reflecting larger brand goals, and attempting to say something worthwhile daily as you struggle with which channels and activities to prioritize.
24 Ways to Test Your Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook Content
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But if you are looking for ways to go a step further with your social exploits, then you’ve come to the right place.
We’ve pulled together a list of advanced tips from experts in the industry that will help you take your social game to the next level, broken down by social channel.
FACEBOOK
Quality Over Quantity (Lindsay Kolowich – Hubspot)
It’s easy to think that posting more to Facebook will get you more visibility, but that’s a myth. If your posts perform well, Facebook will value your page’s content more highly and give you more visibility to your fans. Spend more time crafting great posts, rather than just publishing lots of them.
Geotarget Posts (James Scherer – Wishpond)
There’s nothing people love more than sharing great things about themselves, what they do or where they’re from. So if you have content that is positive about a particular location, geotarget ads for that content so it shows to people from that area to improve engagement and reach.
Offer Special Privileges (Ayelet Noff – SocialMedia.biz)
It’s important to remind fans why they follow your page (apart from your great content of course!), and offering special deals, sneak previews or free stuff is a great way to keep existing fans loving your community.
Boost Your Best Posts (Derek Cromwell – Social Media Examiner)
Take your content that is already performing well on other channels (and Facebook) and put some money into boosting a post which features that content. It’s clear people like it, so get it under more eyeballs and increase its reach even further.
Test Different Types of Content at Different Times of the Day (Aaron Lee – Post Planner)
We know testing times for posting is a good idea, but have you considered that particular types of content will perform better at different times? Maybe images work better first thing in the morning, whilst news links are better at the end of the day. Test it out and it could give you a whole new level of insight.
Target Ads at People Who’ve Interacted with your Page (Jon Loomer – Jon Loomer)
You can now target ads at people who have interacted with your page in some way using Facebook Page Engagement Custom Audiences. This can be incredibly powerful, as you can use your budget intelligently to target those who you know interact, which will then boost the performance of those posts and help them gain more organic visibility.
Create a Business Story (Katie Lance – Katie Lance)
Earlier this year Facebook made it possible to easily create a great looking video from images and videos on your page that gives people a quick insight into who you are and what you do. Without needing clever design or tech skills you can create a very engaging story for new visitors.
TWITTER
Get More Visibility with Threading (Ross Simmonds – Simply Measured)
It’s easy for your tweets to get lost in people’s feeds given the vast amount of content that is being published. One clever way to resurface old tweets is by ‘threading’: replying to your own tweet and then removing your handle from the start of it. It’s also a great way to tell a story which can’t be squeezed into 140 characters.
Make Lists for Your Most Valuable Followers (Kevan Lee – Buffer)
Make a Twitter list of your most valuable followers (or multiple lists for different areas) and use that to ensure you see their content, share it and interact with them so you can develop a relationship with them. It’s also a great way of surfacing content from people you know you’ll find valuable.
Follow the Followers of Competitors (Kim Garst – Kim Garst)
Use tools to find the people following competitors and you will likely uncover other people who would be interested in your content and worthy of engaging with.
Bonus tip – also research and follow the people that influencers themselves follow – if you can get them following and engaging with your content it’s possible they’ll retweet it and put it in front of influencers in a more indirect way.
Do More with the Favorite Button (Chris Lake – Econsultancy)
There are many reasons people use the favourite button on Twitter, and this list from Chris uncovers all of them. Make more of it for your own use with these approaches, and also use it to interpret when others favourite your tweets.
Do More with the Search Function (Greg Kihlstrom – Imedia)
There are a lot of clever search operators in Twitter’s search function that often go unnoticed. Use the list of operators in Greg’s post to uncover more insight from tweets, such as sentiment or tweets that include links.
Bonus tip – use this as a way of monitoring brand sentiment, with a simple search for your brand name and the <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72x72/1f641.png" alt="