Social media is ever-changing and can be confusing. So we’ve thought of every tip and bit of advice that we know to create a mega-list just for you.

This is a long one, but a great one. Grab a cup of tea and get ready to learn!

Social Media – General tips

#1 – 80/20 rule. Use 80% of your content as a chance to engage and increase brand reach through posting general news or interesting content. The other 20% should be used as a sales opportunity with great calls to action.

#2 – Decide what you want to get out of your social media, then set goals relating to those targets that you’ll be able to track and achieve.

#3 – Focus on quality not quantity. This will help your brand reach and post engagement.

#4 – Visual posts get a lot more engagement than plain text, or you could experiment with video and gifs.

#5 – Check your timing – post when there is most activity on each platform. You can find this out through reporting on your platform to see when your followers are most active.

#6 – Show your business’ personality – have fun with your posts.

#7 – Spread good vibes only! Stay far away from any controversial topics that could give people a negative impression of your business.

#8 – Emoji’s are great! ???????? You can use these on nearly every platform (apart from LinkedIn).

#9 – Engage! Respond to your followers and they’re more likely to carry on engaging with you – this ultimately help with your Google ranking as it shows you’re an active user having conversations with your followers.

#10 – No spamming, keep your content to the appropriate amount for the platform.

Keep going! Here’s some cats to help you along!

#11 – Repost original content such as blogs and infographics. Posts have different lifespans depending on the platform. To help your content get the most exposure, repost it a few days after the original post, then again after a week.

#12 – Use great calls to action. Decide what you want people to do, this could be to “subscribe”, “get started”, “sign up” or “join.”

#13 – Make sure you use the right image sizes for different platforms – these can be found on the different platforms or here.

#14 – Use upcoming events to your advantage – post relevant or funny content. This could mean creating a meme for the winner of a sports event, or just showing your love for something like ‘Chocolate Day’.

#15 – Be consistent – decide how much you can realistically post per week and stick to it.

#16 – Respond politely and positively to negative comments – more people than you think will see them so give a good impression.

#17 – Use scheduling tools! These will make your life so much easier when posting on social media, there are a wide variety ready to use for free such as Hootsuite and Buffer.

#18 – Include social sharing buttons in your blog and website to help link back to your social media.

#19 – Get your employees to be ambassadors for your company by reposting and sharing the content you’re posting to cover all platforms.

#20 – Cross-pollinate your followers. If you have a load of Twitter followers but aren’t doing so well on Instagram or Facebook, post a link to your company page with a call to action or incentive to like and follow.

#21 – Keep branding consistent across all of your channels – use the same logo image as a profile photo and if you can, create a banner image that is a good representation of your company and include your branding. Banner images will need to have their size adjusted across the different platforms, but it’s worth it for the professional feel you social media profiles will have.

Twitter

#22 – Use open questions to increase engagement.

#23 – Jump on a hashtag to gain reach – you can see some planned event hashtags in Twitter Analytics events.

#24 – Share other people’s posts and they’re likely to do the same.

#25 – Link to tips and problem solving articles.

#26 – Make your posts short and snappy for the skim-readers.

#27 – It’s better to have less followers that are more engaged than a lot who don’t care.

#28 – Retweet and like other user’s content.

#29 – Quick responses to queries will help your brand image.

#30 – If you want more followers, follow as many related accounts as you can (200-300 a week), most will follow you back. You can download a free app to delete people who don’t follow back.

#31 – Use Twitter analytics to see detailed statistics of how your content is performing, view your top tweets and average engagement per tweet.

#32 – Create saved searches to gain access to the topics and questions people are talking about in your industry, regularly check them to see if you can help, at the same time promoting your brand. We show you how to do this here.

Facebook

#33 – 2-3 posts a week is a good number to start with. If your main focus isn’t on Facebook just stick with this amount. If you’re mainly on Facebook, you could see how posting more content works for you.

#34 – Post high quality content that is targeted to your audience.

#35 – You can get away with longer posts than Twitter but still keep it short enough to read quickly.

#36 – Facebook displays how responsive you are to comments on your page so make sure it’s a good rating!

#37 – React and comment on other businesses or page posts to gain likes and engagement.

#38 – If you have a killer post that people love, more are bound to love it so boost that gem!

#39 – Start using Facebook ads to closely target different audiences with content that’s designed specially for them – Facebook has recently released a whole series of new-style ads that will be even more engaging for users – remember imagery and video will sky rocket your chances of engagement.

You’re on the home streak! 

Wooo!

#40 – Video content is taking over Facebook, whether it’s a 30 second video or a live stream, give it a go.

#41 – Live stream videos are given priority over other content in a news feed so make the most of this type of content by streaming an interesting subject or event – just make sure you have a decent internet connection!

#42 – If you do live stream – find a way to add in your branding or logo to the video.

#43 – Use Insights to see how your content is performing and what style is working best for you.

Instagram

#44 – Post as much as you like, just don’t get spammy.

#45 – Use all of the hashtags! – There’s not really a limit to how many you can use but if you’re really trying to get noticed, 30 is a good amount to use. This is the best way to get more reach on the platform as people are always searching through different hashtags. There are also apps such as TagsForLikes that can suggest the best tags to use for the post you are putting out.

#46 – Be creative and post high quality images.

#47 – Use the grid feature on your camera to help compose your shots.

#48 – Comment and like other people’s posts, users will visit your profile and follow you.

#49 – There are a lot of apps you can use to make your content more visually appealing – edit in the Instagram app or in your photos. Create a collage with the Layout for Instagram app, create a short video with Boomerang or a time lapse with Hyperlapse.

#50 – Quote posts also work really well on Instagram, there are loads of apps to create these images too, a great one to use is Typorama. It’s free and lets you use your own image or a pre-existing one to then add and edit text with a lot of different font options we love to play with!

#51 – Take part in Instagram’s #projects you can find the weekend hashtag projects under the #WHP tag. There is also #BoomerangOfTheWeek and #ThisWeekOnInstagram tags that you can get involved with.

LinkedIn

#52 – 1-2 posts a week. Content on LinkedIn lasts a lot longer than other platforms so you don’t really need to post every day.

#53 – No hashtags! Content can’t be searched for using hashtags on LinkedIn so it will be obvious that you have just copied the content from another platform if you post with them.

#54 – Posts with advice, tips and top 10’s as well as company and industry news work well on LinkedIn.

#55 – Make sure you share your content with groups related to the industry, you can only do this from your personal page but it’s a great way for it to be seen by more people and increase business followers.

#56 – Keep an eye on the analytics page.

#57 – Make sure your page is branded to fit your company – it’s obvious to use your logo in your profile image, but also keep in mind that you can add more branding in your banner image.

Google +

#58 – 2-3 posts a week is good for Google as content lasts longer than Twitter.

#59 – Posts here help your Google ranking and SEO so it may not be the most active platform, but it’s a key profile to have.

#60 – Similar to LinkedIn, posting in Google communities will help other users who aren’t following you to view your content.

#61 – If you have a niche you can’t find a group for, start your own community.

#62 – Comment on influencer’s posts in an engaging way to start a conversation.

#63 – Give your post a title that will grab people’s attention.

BONUS #64 –  Get in touch if you want us to handle it for you!

Let us know what tip you found most useful, or if you have any more for us, we’d love to hear them! Comment or get in touch on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.