Social Media Guide and Best Practices

Social Media Overview

• Successful social media strategy is dependent upon quality content and measurement.

• Celebrating your own organization isn’t valuable to others. Strive for a content breakdown of 80% thought leadership and 20% brand focus.

Content Tips• According to ContentStandard, 53% of brands

reported that a “lack of content creation resources” proved challenging

• Break out statistics from your annual report or other relevant articles into a series of tweets

• Utilize free/cheap resources to produce your own infographics (Fiverr, Piktochart, Easel.ly, Infogr.am)

• Got artistic talent but not confident on web? Draw “infographics” on a white board, take a picture and share

Social Media Is Not Going Anywhere

• 71% of online adults (58% of adult population) use Facebook

• 28% of online adults (23% of entire adult population) use LinkedIn

• 28% of online adults use Pinterest, up from the 21% who did so in August 2013

• 26% of online adults use Instagram, up from 17% in late 2013

• 23% of online adults use Twitter, up from 18% in 2013

How Do I Know If I’m Doing It Right?

• Posts that contain photos make-up 93% of the most engaging posts

• Generally, your posts should be under 250 characters (regardless of social network)

• Posts with emoticons get 57% more likes• Most engagement occurs from Wed to Friday• Question posts get 100% more comments

than standard text-based posts

The Decline of Facebook’s Organic Search

• Facebook organic reach only touches about 1-2% of your followers

• The way to boost your post reach is through engagement and Facebook ads

• Facebook should not be your only option • Facebook ads (it costs about $.25 to reach

1,000 people through Facebook ads)

If not Facebook, then what?

Target Audiences

• It would take more resources than it’s worth to perfect every platform out there

• Go where your target audiences are

• Use each platform differently • Let’s take a look at a few platforms

What Else Is Out There?

Twitter Tips

• 9,100 tweets scroll by every second • Sites like Buffer and Hootsuite allow you to

schedule tweets throughout the day• Tweets with hashtags garner twice as much

engagement• 86% of tweets with links will get retweeted• You don’t need all 140 characters. Tweets with

less than 100 characters perform better

LinkedIn Secrets• Links to YouTube videos play directly in the

LinkedIn feed and generate 75% more shares• Worst time to post on LinkedIn is from 9-5• Be active on groups• Always include an image/graphic in posts and

be sure to include a call to action

Instagram Secrets• 200 million users share 60 million images per day• Top industries: food, fashion, luxury, lifestyle • Use Followgram to keep track of your stats• Although you can’t include links in your posts, you

can in your bio

Pinterest Secrets• 80% of all users are women • Top Industries: travel, design, fashion, food,

home decor, and anything DIY • Pinterest users spend more money than any

other platform• Keywords are an essential• Always include links• Attribute others’ images

YouTube Secrets• Google owns YouTube, so videos do incredibly

well in search• More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube

each month• Good videos grab attention in first 15 seconds• Feature call-to-actions in videos

How to Be Effective

• Don’t be lazy• Own your content• Plan out content with programs like Hootsuite • Share the same piece of content multiple

times on multiple platforms• Measure your engagement to determine

what’s working

Measuring Effectiveness• If you don’t intend to measure your effectiveness,

there’s no point in investing time in social media

Resources Google Analytics TweetDeckFacebook Insights Social MentionHootsuite Reports AddictomaticCollecto BlitzMetrics

Leveraging Personal Brand

• If you are a page administrator for your company, never like or share any of your brand’s Facebook posts from your phone

• Many CEOs are connected with people on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter who don’t follow the company page

• Leadership should share important posts via their personal social media accounts

Avoid Liking Your Company page as Your Company Page

Questions?