It’s a well-known fact that blogging is one of the best ways to build a foundation on which to build your social media strategy. Here are a few tips if you are thinking about creating your own blog.
Table of Contents
Best Practices For Implementing Social Media Tools
![Top 7 Impacts of Social Media: Advantages and Disadvantages [Updated]](https://www.simplilearn.com/ice9/free_resources_article_thumb/real-impact-social-media.jpg)
1. Learn everything you can about your audience
The first social media best practice?
If you don’t know who your audience is, you can’t give them what they want. And then they won’t give you what you want (their business).
Who are you trying to connect with?
Millennials, single moms, kids with kanines? That’s a start, but get as specific as you can to best engage them. Do the research and rely more on data, less on your gut.
Get clear about your current customers, too. So you can go find and make new ones with the same traits. Such as:
- Their age
- Where they live
- What languages they speak
- How much they earn
- How much they spend
- What they buy
- What they do in their spare time
- What stage of life they’re in (student, parent, retiree)
Other tactics to consider for learning about your audience include:
- Analyze website and social media analytics
- Be clear about the value for your products and services
- Create a target market statement
- Test your social ads on your target market
- Lather, rinse, repeat—to learn new ways and means over time
Want to dive deeper into this topic? We have a guide to conducting audience research that includes a template to help you build customer/audience personas.
2. Choose which networks to use (and which to ignore)
Because too many marketers spread themselves too thin across too many networks.
How do you determine which networks to show up and share on?
Research the demographics. This will help you determine which networks to use—and which to lose. These are the kinds of insights you should be looking for:
Instagram demographics
- A billion users, 500 million of them active every day
- 71% of Americans between 18 and 24 use this network
- 43% African Americans, 38% Hispanic, 32% white for U.S users
Facebook Demographics
- More active monthly users than any one country’s population
- 1.4 billion daily users, and 2.13 billion monthly ones
- 25-34 year olds are the biggest segment for U.S. users
- 75% of U.S. adults rake in $75,000+
Twitter demographics
- Big. Political. Platform. More so than the others.
- 330 million active monthly users
- 45% of new users have college degrees
I think you get the idea.
Know more about your audience and who uses what social network and combine those two data points to better sell your brand.
3. Have a plan
Have you created a social media strategy, summarizing what you want to do and achieve on social media?
Yes? Good job.
No? You should. Why?
To know whether you’re succeeding or failing for every post, share, like and comment.
This guide will walk you through each step of crafting a winning plan. But here are the highlights:
Set goals
Otherwise, how do you know what’s working, what’s not, and what to change as you create and share content? And, track useful metrics. Here’s a few.
Social media KPIs are also worth tracking.
Conduct an audit
Gather and examine what’s working and what’s not on social media in one place. This will help you plan what to do more of, what to improve, and what to stop. Easily see:
- Who you’re connecting with
- Who’s connecting with you
- Which networks your target audience uses
- How your brand compares with your competitors
And… ask yourself a few (honest) questions about your social accounts:
- Is your audience here?
- If so, how are they using this platform?
- Does this help you achieve your business goals?
Use your answers to decide which accounts are worth keeping, or ditching.
Need help setting up your audit? We’ve got a template for you.
4. Keep an eye on the competition
Because if you don’t, they’ll get the upper hand. Also, to learn from what they’re doing, to help you decide what you should (and shouldn’t) be doing. Why reinvent when you can circumvent?
For your social media competitors you want to know…
- Who they are
- Where they are
- What they’re doing
- What they did before
- How well they’re doing what they’re doing
- Any threats to your business
- Identify gaps in your own strategy
Do some intel to ask and answer…
- What networks are they on?
- How big is their audience?
- How often do they post?
- How much do they engage (shares, likes, and comments)?
- What are they good at?
- And not so good at?
- What threats do they pose?
There are tools and techniques to help with this (and a template to organize your findings).
Competitors can give great inspiration for your social media activities.
Heck, I’ve contacted and befriended many copywriters. We share war stories about losses and victories, along with tools, approaches, and ideas for doing and being better.
You could (should), too.
5. Listen for mentions of your brand
Know what people are saying on your social media channels.
If you do—you can track, analyze, and respond to those conversations. If you don’t—you’re missing out on valuable insights for your business.
Social listening is a two-step process.
1. Monitor channels to capture mentions of your brand, competitors, product, and relevant keywords.
2. Analyze those mentions to identify what you should do next.
Like… Respond to a happy customer (or to a troll). Test one campaign against another. Or significantly shift your brand voice and tone.
Learn how people think about you, compared to the competition. Is a competitor taking a beating in the press? Could that be a golden moment to share, show, or say?
Beat the competition to discover and resolve pain points. Is someone talking about their feature that sucks? Can you quickly add a new feature that doesn’t?
Identify influencers and advocates. Is someone out there saying something superb about you all? Maybe it’s time to collaborate with them.
Listen, learn, and earn.
social media best practices for students
1. Use a Facebook Page to broadcast updates and alerts.
Facebook can be the perfect social media platform to incorporate into the classroom. Instead of putting instructors and students alike through a new learning curve when dealing with a traditional online classroom dashboard, stick to something everyone already knows.
Have students follow the class’s Facebook Page, and the instructor can use it to post class updates, share homework assignments and encourage discussion.
Even if a student isn’t active on Facebook, these Pages are still accessible when signed out. However, keep in mind Facebook Page are public and anyone with a Facebook account can comment on the posts.
2. Use a Facebook Group to stream live lectures and host discussions.
Instructors can also create Facebook Groups for each of their classes—both public or private—and stream Facebook Live lectures, post discussion questions, assign homework and make class announcements. Keep students engaged during school breaks or snow days by posting reminders and assignment to avoid having to review once class resumes from the break.
When using social media for education, it’s important to ensure a professional boundary, so when setting up a Facebook Group, teachers do not need to send friend requests. Email both parents and students a direct link to the Facebook Group for access.
Groups are the perfect “home base,” especially for an online course and can make it easy to connect with student.
3. Use Twitter as a class message board.
Twitter can be great as a discussion board or message board for a class. Teachers can create a single Twitter handle per class and reuse it every year, or they can create a new handle each school year. The 280 character limit makes students think critically on communicating concisely and effectively, a beneficial skill to develop.
Teacher can use Twitter to post reminders for assignment due dates or share inspirational quotes and helpful links to practice quizzes or resources.
Teacher can also create discussions and Twitter chats surrounding a specific hashtag that they create.
4. Use Instagram for photo essays.
In a visual heavy class, students can use Instagram to present a series of photos or graphics in a visually appealing manner. Instagram allows students to practice digital storytelling in ways that other social media platforms may fall short.
Students can create class-specific Instagram accounts and may delete them after the course is over if they so choose.
5. Create a class blog for discussions.
Writing blog posts gives students another outlet for digital content that they can then easily link back to class social channels. There are many different platforms available, such as WordPress, SquareSpace, Wix, Blogger, Tumblr or Medium, where teachers can create a class blog. Students can create their own user accounts to make discussion posts or add comments on class prompts.
The course syllabus and any assignments, updates and resources can be shared on a blog as a central location as well.
Conclusion
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