Rules to Better Social Media for Business - 41 Rules
Social media should be an essential piece of your business marketing strategy. It is important because it allows you to reach out to people locally, or even internationally if you want. Using social media platforms to promote your business will help you connect with current and potential customers, increase your brand awareness, and hopefully, boost leads and sales for your company. Of course, it all depends on your business strategy too. Marketing goals come from Business goals.
Using social media effectively is a must in Digital Marketing nowadays.
Here is a series of social media rules to help you improve your businness' online presence.
For personal accounts, see our Rules to Better Social Media for Personal Accounts.
If you still need help, our SSW Digital team is ready to assist you.
If you are wondering how many times you should post on your social media, the answer is: as often as you can post great and relevant content. You don't have to post every hour to be relevant, and in fact, you can be seen as a spammer on socials.
As Neil Patel says: "If you post too infrequently, your audience will forget that you exist and you will quickly fade into the deep dark recesses of their minds. However, if you are posting too often, you will become a complete nuisance and they will dread seeing your posts overcrowding their feed."
Most marketers recommend at least 1 post a day, depending on the social media platform - you might find that this can hard on YouTube, for example. In general, consistency is key. Make sure you have a routine set to follow up your insights for a deep dive into your metrics and you will find out what works best for your audience.
You can use a social media management tool like Buffer to post to your social media platforms at least 3 times a week (ideally daily) with upcoming events, information about products or services, relevant news, or anything else that you think your followers would be interested in.
Tip: If you struggle with content creation, check out the types of content you should post on your social media.
These posts maintain your online presence and are great branding for your business!
Creating content can be exhausting. Often you're planning it weeks in advance, with many different posts and platforms involved. This can lead to mistakes such as typos, or wrong URLs. It's always a good idea to get someone else to do a "test please" on your content before you post it. This will help make sure your content doesn't have any issues that will compromise the user experience while consuming it, or even affect your business goal with the post.
Here are some helpful tips that you can use to improve your content approval process:
- Use a template that you can easily fill in and that is also easy for people to understand what you want to post, where and when
- Block a period in your calendar to work on the content to create a routine
- Define a process that you can follow: Create content > Get images approved by designers > Get content approved by Management OR improve content based on feedback. If your process is not efficient and adds a lot of blockers to your work routine, then it is not effective.
- Commit to a deadline - Try to work out what the timeline will be, from creation to review. This is particularly important if your content is timely.
- Use a branding guide to be consistent with the brand's look and feel
- Encourage specific feedback (Eg. feedback like "I don't like this design" won't help you improve it)
- Reduce the rounds of approval - In this process, you should include only people that have the skills and capacity to analyze your content goal, and consequently the content itself
- Always think of your personas when creating content - who are you trying to target?
Figure: Example of a template you can use to get approval for your social media content, note it shows what platforms it will be posted on, when, the test and how it will look. It will also help give you an idea of what your feed will look like to ensure it has a nice balance of images In this age of misinformation, it is easy to get swept up in online hype and share stories/posts that everyone else seems to be sharing. This, however, can get us into trouble as it can perpetuate said misinformation and impact how a situation is viewed by the general populace.
It’s important to not only check that what you share on social media is correct, but also, that your opinions are based on fact.
What if your view differs from popular opinion? It's OK to have a dissenting opinion, and it is OK to play devil's advocate, but you should:
- Acknowledge when you're not an expert in a particular area
- People's perspectives matter, for example, if someone has a history of C# it might explain why they like Blazor for a UI over JavaScript
- Acknowledge when you're unable to verify what you’re saying
Here are some helpful tips to aid in fact verification:
- Go to Snopes.com or use other fact-checking sites
- Look at the author and what they’ve published in the past... notice that they will have a bias one way or the other
- Look at other authorities and see what they say
What's equally as important as fact-checking is building your own public profile and becoming an expert in a specific area.
Becoming an expert and a source that people can trust isn’t something that happens overnight, it's something that you must continually work on. Here are some helpful hints to get you on your way:
- Pick several topics and stick to them (be consistent). It’s better to home in on subject matter, rather than being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none
- Use the above fact-checking tips and tricks. Make sure you know what you’re talking about, but also that you understand that other people's opinions may differ
- Engage with people. Initiate discussions, reply to comments, talk to people who have dissenting opinions
Analyzing your results (click-throughs, engagement, and new followers, for example) lets you see what was successful and what people have engaged with the most.
This helps you further streamline your content and provides an insight into trends and areas of growth. Remember, Marketing is an iterative process - the more you reflect, the better you can tailor your content and allocate your time and resources to a campaign that is delivering results.
- First, you have to identify all your marketing efforts - E.g. website, social media, blog, newsletter, events and chatbot.
- When you think of each marketing effort, try to think of what you are trying to achieve with that activity. For example, if you share a newsletter every month, what are you trying to get from it? Inquiries? Sales? Set a goal for them and follow up. This will help you identify which channel is working the most, even further, and what efforts are worth keeping. You will be able to identify if, for example, your audience is not on a specific social media you thought you would perform well.
- The next step is to make sure your pixels, conversion codes, etc. are working properly.
- After this, create a spreadsheet that you can update every month to keep track of your marketing activities.
- Present this to your manager and your marketing team to encourage discussions and improvements. A quarterly marketing meeting would be ideal to look back and see what went well, and what didn’t go as expected. See our tips for good presentations.
During this meeting, you can discuss: - Marketing activities you worked on
- Results (highlight key results)
- Plan for next month, including budget and tactics
- After the meeting, send an email with what was discussed, what you worked on, and what results you have achieved. Of course, don’t forget to include the approved budget.
- Keep this information in a report-style document stored on your Intranet so that you can look back to compare results.
Taking photos can be difficult when you don't have an available photographer urgently.
So, don't discourage your team members that don't have the right skills to keep sharing photos with your Marketing team. Instead, we asked some hot photography tips from the SSW TV team to help you out!
Here are the tips:
Framing
Being eye level with the subject and using the rule of thirds, which involves mentally dividing up your framing using 2 horizontal lines and 2 vertical lines, as a professional camera would do – if you are not using one. Also make sure there isn’t too much empty space and that you are not missing anyone important, if you have a big group, for example.
Figure: Rule of thirds visualisation Composition
See the composition checklist:
- What is in your photograph? Is it well-positioned?
- Is the desk clean?
- Are there things that shouldn’t be in the photograph? E.g. confidential information
- Lighting: Get the most out of lighting, especially if you are taking indoor photos. Try to avoid taking photos behind bright windows.
- Make sure your lenses are clean before taking photos.
Perspective Choice
If possible, use portrait mode on your camera for taking photos of developers, as there’s a better chance of making use of the whole frame and photo composition. Also depending on what you are trying to capture, choose from landscape or portrait (camera position) when taking the photo.
Photo Style
Regarding the photo style, it’s better to smile in photos, so try and get your models (aka employees) to naturally smile in their photos. This makes the business seem more inviting to clients, besides giving the photo a warmer tone. It’s always good to take natural photos as well, like a shot of our team working together. When possible, it’s great to show a bit of diversity, as the techie community is pretty much consisted by the male sex.
For a better visual across all your social media accounts,, you should follow the standards that each platform requests.
They have variations of sizes according to the placement, for example, banner, profile icon or a post. If you are creating an image for an advertising campaign on Facebook, they will offer you a hand full of placement options, like news feed, Facebook marketplace, video feeds, right column and many others.
As all of them will have different specifications, so it’s best to check their support if you have any questions regarding this. Hootsuite is a reliable source, for example, check this guide: Social Media Image Sizes 2022: Cheat Sheet for Every Network. It is important to know this, as posting on social media with the correct dimensions impacts how engaging your posts will be.
Twitter
On Twitter, we have the following variations for images:
- Image post
- Cover photo
- Profile image
Instagram
On Instagram, we can have a lot of variations if we use all their placements. See next:
- Image post can now be a variation of a square, vertical or horizontal photo
- Stories
- Reels
- Profile image
Facebook
On Facebook, they have the following variations for images:
- Image post
- Images with Shared Links
- Cover photo
- Profile image
- Facebook Stories post
Facebook Ads
Besides following the size of the images on Facebook Ads, you should also have limited text on images as there’s a better chance of your design or video getting approved more easily. If you need more information about Ads placement, check Facebook support for clarification.
- News Feed Ads, Marketplace Ads and Messenger Ads
- Collection Ads
- Carousel Ads
- In-Stream Video Ads
- Search results
- Stories (Instagram, Facebook and Messenger)
Figure: Good example – Images for ads on Facebook and Instagram consistent with company's branding guidelines and also with the traning sub-branding LinkedIn
LinkedIn is like Twitter and Facebook:
- Business Profile image
- Cover photo
- Post image
- LinkedIn stories post
YouTube
On YouTube, you will find:
- Profile image
- Cover Photo
- Video Thumbnail
- Shorts
- YouTube stories post
TikTok
On TikTok they have the following variations for images:
- Profile photo size: 20 x 20 pixels (minimum size to upload)
- Cover photo for your TikTok video (ideal ratio is 1:1 or 9:16)
Sometimes it can be hard to keep generating content daily for your social media and even more when there’s not much going on. Here are a few types of content you could use for your next social media posts:
1 - Internal projects, services or products that your business developed or offers
Figure: Devs doing a Scrum Retro meeting with the Product Owner after working on SSW TimePro 2 - Projects that your company worked on
Figure: Developer being recorded by SSW TV about the web app that SSW developed for Sydney University 3 - Video content
Figure: Adam Cogan and Matt Goldman's discussion on "Avoiding the Technical Debt Spiral" at SSW TV 4 - Events that your company organized
Figure: Azure Superpowers - Paid training promotion on SSW's social media Figure: Angular Hack Day post-event post 5 - External events that you and your team attended to
Figure: SSW’s team in our booth at NDC Sydney 2019 with Alumnus Tiago Passos 6 - Team members profiles
Figure: In profile photos, you can show your employees in action Figure: Another example of an employee action shot 7 - Employees' blogs posts
Figure: Use the same image from the blog post for consistency 8 - Business blog posts
Figure: When you promote your own business' blog post on your social media, try to use the same design & branding 9 - General content written/followed by your team
It can be a blog post or one of the many useful SSW Rules - these are best practices that are worth sharing with everyone.
If your company follows an SSW rule, then share it on your social media too. Use #ssw and #sswrules so readers can find more!
Figure: Even though some of your content won't have a photo, you can either take one like this, or add a relevant one from a free stock photo service 10 - Employment opportunities
Figure: Hiring post following branding guidelines 11 - Teamwork, parties, etc
Figure: A team shot just before NDC with part of the SSW China office Figure: SSW Melbourne - Following COVID-19 safety guidelines 12 - Relevant news for your industry
Figure: If you don't have a catchy photo to represent your news, try free stock photo websites like Pexels or Unsplash 13 - Memes (if they suit your industry)
To see best practices for sharing memes on your socials, check out Do you know why you should use memes as part of your business social media content?
Figure: A meme once a week on weekends can help you boost your social media engagement 14 - Application upgrades/updates
When you make an improvement to a product, share it on social media. This can be a new feature, big bug fix, or upgrade. This benefits both the business and the employee.Read more about this in Do you share your improvements to products?
Memes are one of the greatest symbols of social media – fun fact: some people use social networks mainly for that reason. They’re funny and they usually carry personality, either to a person or a brand. They’re easy to engage with, but sometimes besides bringing some popularity to your account, they can also be risky for your business depending on its content. They can bring great results to your business’ social media, but you must plan it accordingly to fit your audience’s interest.
Why do memes work?
Memes are successful because they can tell something about your company culture. Memes can work to show our ideas, emotions, and actions in a simple communication manner that makes it easy to engage with, especially nowadays that people are usually running short on time.
Here are some points that make memes great for brands & businesses:
- They are an easy way to increase brand awareness and your engagement rate – people will like it, tag someone and share
- They are great for giving your brand its own voice and sharing it on social media as a representation of your values and your company culture
- According to research, they lead to higher engagement from your audience
- They increase the chance that people will remember your brand when they see the meme elsewhere, and there’s an opportunity to impacting your audience
While some companies have managed to successfully use memes to express their brands in a different way, not all businesses that have tried to implement the same strategy had positive results.
What can go wrong and how to avoid it?
A New York-based drugstore chain Duane Read got involved in a legal battle over licensing rights with Katherine Heigl when they decided to share a photo of her shopping at their store across their social media to promote their business.
Although there’s no 100% right formula on how to use them, here are some tips to avoid problems for your business:
- Check the rights on an image before using it: It’s important to be aware of the risks you’re taking, and how that could affect your brand image. Make sure you have the rights to use it.
- Never, ever involve your business in problematic topics: don’t make jokes about race, gender or sexual orientation. Basically, don’t be discriminatory. Politics and religion are risky too.
- Use an appropriate tone: It should be simple enough that most people can understand it without further explanation. Also keep in mind that if the meme is about your brand, it’s not quite a meme, it’s an ad.
- Consider the alternatives: If you want to use a specific image but are afraid there might be implications, explore alternative options. For example, you can try licensing an image from a stock photo website that you want to feature as a major part of a marketing campaign if they are suitable for it.
- Test it before posting: If you’re in charge of social media, ask a work colleague to check it before it goes live. Try to think of guidelines that everyone on your team understands and follows.
Know your audience
Start by making sure who your audience is and if they would engage with the memes. Learn who your brand followers are and what they care about, constantly check the insights of your social media. What are they telling you about your audience? Are they the type of people who would enjoy seeing a meme, or would they find it hard to understand it?
Your brand values and personality hold great insights into the type of people who follow you on social media and the expectations they have over your posts. For example, if you are considered a popular brand for a younger audience, memes are probably a good strategy. However, if you’re trying to project a serious tone, a meme is probably not your way to go.
Be aware that some businesses and industries are too serious to create and post that type of content. We also have to mention that some social media don’t quite have the right audience for a meme, for example: LinkedIn. We suggest a bit of research: check what your competitors are posting and if they use memes too, how do they approach it? It’s a great exercise to do market research if you want to add some personality to your socials.
Correlating it to DevOps Culture, as a marketer, you should have a growth mindset on this. After testing a meme and posting it, you’ll learn from your experiments and gather insights on what’s the best way to implement this to your social media strategy.
Canva is an intuitive online tool for creating images and crafty digital designs and is particularly effective for designing engaging social media memes.
While Canva is a valuable design tool, it may not be suitable for every design requirement. It is essential to complement Canva with advanced design tools and occasionally integrate AI image generators for a comprehensive design approach.
Don't use Canva for complex designs
For intricate and complex designs requiring advanced editing or branding designers, professional software like Figma, Adobe Photoshop, or Illustrator is more appropriate.
Do not use AI-generated images for social media content, as the current quality is difficult to match professional style.
Note: This may be updated as AI imaging technology evolves.Use Canva for simple memes on social media
Canva is great for creating memes due to its vast library of images, icons, and easy-to-use text overlay features. When crafting memes for social media, Canva’s templates can be a quick and effective starting point.
Being consistent on your content across the different platforms you use is key to having a consistent online brand presence. It will help you grow audience engagement across the social media platforms you use for your business by following your branding guidelines and the personality you defined for your company.
The content of your social media posts should be consistent across your different accounts, which means having the same caption (text), URLs, videos, images, and hashtags on each one. If your post exceeds the character limit of a site such as Twitter, you can write a separate, shorter version of the post to use instead.
Be aware that if you decide to update or edit the content later, you might not be allowed to do so. No social media platform allows you to change the original image or video after it's published, and some sites have additional editing limitations. For example, on Twitter you cannot update anything; you would have to delete the tweet and start again. On LinkedIn, you cannot edit a video thumbnail (whereas you can on Facebook).
Across all platforms, you will find that they have some limitations and recommendations regarding character limits. See them in this blog post from HootSuite.
Also, Sprout Social has an interesting social media character counter that you can test your content before putting your post out.
Figure: Posting inconsistent content across social media accounts can lead to brand confusion and loss of audience engagement Some tips:
- Hashtags are really popular on Instagram and Twitter, but not as much on Facebook.
Note: This does not apply to social media ads. If you run campaigns with repetitive ad copy, you will fail in every single campaign. To be able to prove that you have good ad copywriting on a certain campaign, you will need a variety of text to see which ad is performing better and driving more conversions. - LinkedIn is a professional platform, so it is good sense to avoid using too many emojis or sharing memes if it's not the right fit for your industry. For more information on this topic, check out our Rule Do you know why you should use memes as part of your business social media content?
- Hashtags are really popular on Instagram and Twitter, but not as much on Facebook.
You spend a lot of time and money creating great video content, so you need to make sure that you get the most out of your time and money.
Content creation wizard Gary V (Vaynerchuk) has shared a great model for this on his blog called the 'reverse pyramid' where you start with a video, that you are able to repurpose into dozens of smaller pieces of content, contextual to the platforms that you distribute them to.
This could take many different forms — for example, if you’re not comfortable on video, you could record a podcast. You might even film yourself recording the podcast so you could have a video out of it as well. And from that video or audio clip, you can create content for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.
You can find an explanation of the Gary V Content Model here.
Step 1: Create pillar content
This is the content that will be used to create all other types of content. They include:
- Interview
- Q&A
- Presentation
- Educational Video
- Daily vlog
- Demo
Video: An example of a smaller video you can be used to drive traffic to your YouTube Channel
- Create a quotable image with a nice background:
- Create a version of the video for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and/or Instagram. Write the copy for the post.
- Create a Giphy with one of the main points and a moving background video from the pillar content. Write the copy for the post.
- Create a blog post from the audio
- Use tools like Rev or Descript to transcribe the video file and re-write the transcript as a blog post
- Post the blog post to other platforms like Medium.com, LinkedIn Articles, Substackand your blog
Step 2: Distribute content
At 12 pm, you should post your pillar content on all platforms. At 12:01 pm, you should post all your micro-content.
Remember the micro-content should promote your pillar content.
You should also publish the blog post. You will republish the blog post on other websites in 2 weeks in Step 6.
Step 3: Monitor comments and reply to all
You must reply to all comments and use these comments to find out what content should be created next.
Step 4: Email the best video to the list
At the end of the week, you will email the best video out to your list with a listing of the other videos.
Step 5: Publish the blog post
You need to wait 2 weeks before republishing the blog post to other platforms, so Google knows that your website is the source of the blog post.
The sites you can/will republish to are:
Posting regularly on social media is important to continue to build your brand and engage with your customer base.
The best social media posts always include an image or a video, as this is more engaging for your users and helps your followers to associate with your brand more easily. You should try and vary these images depending on the text of the post, for example, a post about an event would be complemented by a promotional image for the event or shots from previously held events.
Social Media Strategist Jeff Bullas reports that Facebook posts with photos receive an average 37% increase in engagement, and Buzzsumo found that posts with images receive 2.3 times more engagement than those without.
Be aware that just sharing random or any images will not set your social media apart from your competitors. You have to think of several aspects of the photo/video, such as:
- Quality of image
- Framing, composition, perspective, and style - See Do you know how to take great photos for your socials?
- Text application on the image - See Branding - Do you know when to use an overlay on images? and Do you know the text limit for images?
- Following the business's branding
Hashtags identify the keyword or topic of interest that the post is about. They allow searching for similar posts on the topic. They were popularized on Twitter and now work on Facebook, Pinterest, etc. On Twitter, it is possible to "track" (aka Subscribe to) a tag.
The best tweets will use a combination of @mentions and #hashtags where appropriate to properly leverage the platform – that way readers can check out the people involved OR join the conversation about a topic. See our rule on when to use a hashtag vs. a @mention to see how to best leverage them in combination.
Tips for companies
Tip #1: Encourage people to use the correct hashtag by adding the hashtag to your sidebar or footer.
Figure: On www.ssw.com.au/ssw/netug you can see the sidebar shows a feed with the hashtag used Tip #2: When creating your own hashtag to promote a service, product or event, check if it isn't already in use for anything else.
Tips for everyone
Tip #3: Don't use too many hashtags – 4 is a good number if you have relevant hashtags, or you may appear to be "spammy" and turn people off. On Instagram, you can share your hashtags on the first comment and they will appear "hidden", so you can use more here. Just remember to alternate between the hashtags you use. If you use the same hashtags on every post, they will not be as relevant.
Tip #4: Keep your hashtags on topic – you might seem "spammy" if you use hashtags that are unrelated to your post.
Tip #5: For more readability, capitalise the first letter of each word, for example, #SocialMedia.
Examples of hashtags
- #SSW - For our company-related posts
- #SSWRules - For our public standards
- #SSWTV - For our video channel
- #SSWTraining - For our training programs
- #NETUG - For our .NET User Groups
- #AngularHackDay or #AIHackDay - For one of our "Hack Day" training events
Social media analytics tools like Talkwalker revolutionizes hashtag tracking on Twitter, offering valuable insights and data-driven analytics. Unlike manual searches, Talkwalker provides an accurate count of hashtag usage, enabling users to measure trends and understand the magnitude of discussions on specific topics.
Figure: Talkwalker shows that the hashtags usage in this case, Microsoft announced the MVPs on the 7th of July that is shown by the spike on the graph Talkwalker's benefits extend beyond mere hashtag counts. The tool allows users to gain deeper insights into mentions, user engagement, geographic distribution, and influential users related to a particular hashtag or event.
Armed with these valuable data points, businesses, marketers, and researchers can make informed decisions and tailor their strategies to better connect with their audience.
The real-time detailed analytics redefine hashtag tracking, providing a comprehensive approach to understand Twitter trends. With its dynamic graphs and powerful insights, Talkwalker empowers users to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of social media and make informed decisions to enhance their social media presence and engagement.
When advertising on Facebook means you will have to adhere to the guidelines Facebook has created: Advertising Policies. One of the most important guidelines to follow is the 20% text rule on all ad images. You can also follow this for your organic content, as this will make your feed look cleaner - save the text for the post.
In Facebook Ads, this requires that there is no more than 20% text on any image used in your campaign. This limit includes logos and slogans. Failure to meet this guideline will result in your ads not being approved by Facebook and will require you to adjust the text amount on your image before they can be run.
Have a look at Facebook's Best Practices For Image Ads.
Readability of URLs is important, so you should consider making a short URL. However, it is not just making the length as short as possible - it should be friendly.
If you use a unfriendly and long link people can't see what they are clicking through to. In fact, this is what most spammers rely on.
Link: blog2.northwind.com/archive/2022/10/25/now-available-visual-studio-2022-rtm-virtual-machine-with-sample-data-and-hands-on-labs.aspx
Bad example - The long URL makes it hard to clearly see what it will take you. People can’t easily type or remember it
Link: northwind.com/blog/visual-studio-2022-sample-data
Good example - The nice and clean URL makes it easy to see what the link is about
Sometimes even a nice URL can be improved by removing all the filler words and just keep the main keywords. This way your URL's are more friendly. Also, make sure your main keywords are relevant for searches.
northwind.com/how-do-i-find-the-version-of-the-word-document.html
Figure: Bad example - The filler words remain
northwind.com/find-word-document-version
Figure: Good example - The filler words removed and only 'juicy' words remain
Bit.ly
Sometimes you are not in control of the link. In those cases, use Bitly to transform any long URL into a shorter, more readable link.
Auto-shorten link: bit.ly/3zTHz8b
OK example - Auto-generated shorten URL - It's short but hard to remember
When have a Bitly account, you can customize links to a more readable option.
Custom shorten link: bit.ly/VS-2022-Sample
Good example - Short URL, and easier to remember
You should always publish your blog posts to all social media platforms you use. It helps boost traffic and visibility for your site.
Don't simply share the URL and maybe the title, as it won't make people get interested in taking an action. On social media, nowadays, you have an average of 5 seconds to get someone's attention on the feed – sometimes even less than that. So, you should put the effort into carefully choosing a catchy image to make your blog post interesting visually on someone's feed and adapting the content to different social networks. For example, if you use Twitter, you will have fewer characters. A good starting point is to choose a statement or a statistic from your blog post to share on the social media post and give the user a snippet about the content they are about to read.
The combination of a good image and an explanatory caption providing enough (and interesting) information from your content will make the user want to visit your blog to find out more about what you have to share.
A successful event requires attendees to show up, or it won't reach its full potential. You will have to promote your event in a way that makes sense to your topic and approach.
The most cost-effective way is to use a large variety of online services that are available and to talk about the event.
Meetup
This is the best way to increase the discoverability of your event. Meetup provides the following:
- Allows people to search and discover events
- Allows people to join your group to get updates
- You can easily list your upcoming events and have people join them
- Comes with an automatic mailing list so you can send out announcements
Social Media
In some circumstances, it is worth setting up one or more accounts on social media for promoting and corresponding as the event identity. In technical circles, it is especially popular to use Twitter as a way to create awareness about events. SSW uses a combination of X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to promote our events, that way we have a much larger and diverse audience to draw from.
Tip: Get your staff to tweet at events and to re-tweet your events to help reach a larger audience!
Word of Mouth
Don't underestimate the power of one friend or colleague telling another. DDD Melbourne sold out in 10 hours with almost no promotion except for Twitter and Word of Mouth. If you are creating a recurring event, Word of Mouth becomes extremely important as past experiences flow through the grapevine.
To maximize reusability and minimize costs, it’s best to avoid including dates as text in graphics for promotional videos.
If there is some particular value/purpose in including dates there may be exceptions to this rule.
Social media management tools are a must-have marketing tool these days. They are software, web applications and apps that help a company to successfully manage content and engagement across different social networks. These tools offer many helpful features, like content scheduling, social analytics, teams collaboration, content creation, and many more.
We will go through a few options you can choose - each has different plans/prices and features that suit different businesses needs.
Buffer
Buffer is a great tool for managing multiple social media accounts across a range of sites such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
It allows you to choose which accounts to post to, can post to multiple social media accounts at once, and even lets you write and schedule your posts to be released over the course of a day or even over the next few weeks, so you don't need to be at your computer while maintaining an online presence. It also offers URL shortening and provides analytics so you can track the success of your posts across multiple sites.
You can either visit the Buffer website or install the Buffer extension for your browser that sits next to the address bar of your browser.
Figure: To use the Buffer app from your browser, simply click the symbol Figure: You can select as many Social Media accounts as required and post to each platform at once using Buffer. You can also use the "Customize for each network" button to modify the content for each platform before you post it The content of your posts should be consistent across accounts. When making a post that exceeds the character limit of a site such as Twitter, you should write a separate, shorter version of the post to send to that site only. You can also use the "Customize for each network" button on Buffer to modify the content to better suit the platform for each post. This means that you could write the content for a Tweet and then modify it to remove things like #Hashtags to post it to LinkedIn where they don't make sense.
Figure: Bad example - only Tweeting using Twitter alone and not using a scheduler to post across the different media platforms at once. This is time-consuming! Figure: Good example - posting using Buffer to modify your content between platforms - much faster than posting individually to each platform every time #Hashtags
Hashtags are used across social sites such as Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to identify a keyword or topic of interest and facilitate a search for similar posts on the topic.
Establish a short #hashtag that can be easily associated with your brand, company, or campaign and ensure this #hashtag is used consistently across social networks, along with any other keywords relevant to the content of your post.
For more on SSW #Hashtags, check out Do you know how to use hashtags?
Custom URL shortening
Buffer uses bit.ly for shortening URLs. You can create custom URLs at no cost by joining bit.ly and going into Settings | Advanced. This will allow even your shortened URL to carry your unique brand without the look of a long, untidy URL.
For more on bit.ly and URL shortening, check out Rules to Better bit.ly.
Tip: Buffer does not tag people on Facebook or Linkedin. You will need to manually go to the Facebook/Linkedin post and edit it to tag the people you want.
SocialPilot
A SaaS product, SocialPilot is another really cost-effective option with many features, even under their most basic plan. They offer functionalities like a social media calendar, a social inbox, social media analytics, client and team management.
They allow you to connect to social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google My Business. SocialPilot also integrates with platforms like Zapier, Canva, Snip.ly and Bit.ly.
Figure: SocialPilot analytics reporting can help you understand better if your content is working towards achieving your goals HootSuite
Available since 2008, Hootsuite is a really complete tool for managing your socials. Besides the basics, Hootsuite also helps keep an eye on the latest social conversations, trends, and brand mentions. Hootsuite offers integration with Zendesk, Canva, Slack, Monday, and others, if you need app integration to manage your social media. Hootsuite also offers training through Hootsuite Academy’s industry-recognized certifications, depending on the plan your company chooses.
However, all of that comes at a price, and Hootsuite is one of the most expensive options.
Figure: Hootsuite allows you to add chatbots for Facebook Messenger. You can combine automated and human responses to answer user questions, comments, etc. Sprout Social
Out in the market since 2010, Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform, with product tools from Publishing and Scheduling to Employee Advocacy. Sprout Social allows you to connect to many networks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Tripadvisor and even Glassdoor.
Besides three options of plans, they have three additional and optional premium solutions: Listening (below), Premium Analytics and Employee Advocacy.
Figure: Sprout Social has a Listening feature that allows you to build a deeper understanding of your audience, discover trends and apply insights from your social media in your business strategy In the digital age, the challenge lies in fostering engaging and meaningful online discussions after presentations. As presentations increasingly move to virtual platforms, it becomes crucial to create an interactive environment that encourages active participation and knowledge exchange.
Getting attendees at a course or presentation to be online involved has many benefits:
- They can share ideas with the presenter and each other
- They can provide feedback for improvement of the material
- They can share key points that they learn
Using hashtags is an effective way to promote and encourage discussion around presentations in the online realm. By incorporating relevant and unique hashtags into presentation materials and social media posts, participants can easily identify and join the conversation. Hashtags create a sense of community, allowing individuals to connect, share insights, and engage in discussions beyond the boundaries of the presentation itself.
They serve as a powerful tool to aggregate conversations, making it simpler for participants to find and contribute to ongoing discussions related to the presentation topic. Embracing hashtags as a promotional strategy can enhance the reach, visibility, and overall engagement of presentation discussions in the online space.
Maintaining a public profile on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn is a free and easy way to connect with users and keep them updated your products, services or events.
The downside to this is that not all who want to connect with you and your groups are real people – some are spammers or bots who will clog up your group, forum or event listing with unwanted advertisements or even links to sites that contain malicious code.
Before approving a membership request, consider:
- How old is the account?
- Is the account profile properly filled out?
- Do the name and picture match the listed gender?
- Does the profile picture look “real” (as opposed to a picture of a model that the spammer has stolen from elsewhere)?
- Does the account show real status updates or are they gibberish?
- Are they a member of many incongruous groups that don’t fit with their location?
Note: These are only guidelines, not a hard and fast rule. Use your initiative when approving membership requests.
For groups on Facebook, there is now a tool that allows admin to ask up to 3 preset questions of all users wishing to join. This can be helpful in establishing in separating spammers from legitimate users.
Figure: Asking a screening question is a good way to separate real people with a genuine interest from those who just want to spam the group Figure: an example of a suspicious profile Some sites will allow you moderate comments so that only approved posts are displayed. If you're experiencing ongoing problems with spammers, this might be a good option to use as it keeps your site friendly and professional and gives you the final word on what content is shared with your members or followers.
Sometimes the photo you want to share is not ideal to include texts and/or your logo. Adding overlays on these images creates a professional look to any photo, helps to hide messy desks or floors if needed, and it gives it a consistent contrast and feel to the post.
It’s a good way of adding text to a photo as well following your branding guidelines at the same time.
See some bad and good examples from SSW's social media below:
Figure: Bad Example – An overlay could have made this post look nicer
Figure: Good Example – Overlay on a social media post used to have some text on it
Figure: Good Example – Overlay on a social media post to fill in the 4 square gaps that a wide photo can have
Responding to messages from the general public and clients on social media is an integral part of maintaining a company's online presence and reputation. Platforms like LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), X (formerly Twitter) and others provide different avenues for these interactions.
Learn how to effectively manage and respond to messages ensuring that the conversation aligns with the utility and purpose of the feature.
LinkedIn Company Pages
When messaging for your Page is enabled on LinkedIn, members can directly communicate with your company. This feature is a powerful tool for engaging with a professional audience, allowing for direct interaction, and networking. And the best part? You can select conversation topics 😃
This tool helps to manage LinkedIn communication and interactions if your businesses frequently receive inquiries from clients, potential employees, and partners.
How to Enable Messages for LinkedIn
To enable messages for your Page:
- Go to your Page super or content admin view.
- Click Inbox in the left menu.
- Click the three dots (more icon) to the right of Inbox.
- Select Inbox settings from the dropdown menu.
- Turn on the Message button toggle on the right and select relevant conversation topics.
Figure: Inbox settings screen. - Click Save in the upper-right corner.
Key Aspects of the Reply Feature
Here are some keys reasons why you should consider implementing the LinkedIn reply feature.
- Pre-set responses: Setting up pre-written responses to common inquiries relating to conversation topics such as requesting a demo, careers, service requests, and general support.
- Common questions: For frequently asked questions based on the above conversation topics, automated replies provide instant information, improving the user experience and reducing the initial workload on your team.
- Conversation topics: On platforms like LinkedIn, automated replies can be aligned with selected conversation topics, ensuring relevance in responses.
- Time-saving: It significantly reduces the time spent on repetitive queries, allowing your team to focus on more complex inquiries that require personalized attention.
- Customer experience (CX): Immediate responses to inquiries, even if automated, enhance the customer experience, as users receive a prompt reply.
Best Practices for LinkedIn Messaging
- Assign the right admin roles: Ensure that individuals with the 'super' or 'content admin' role are equipped to reply to messages. This is particularly important for specific conversation topics, like "Careers," where subject matter experts should manage interactions.
- Quick responses: Aim to reply to messages as quickly as possible to maintain engagement and show that your company values the interaction.
- Setting up conversation topics: When enabling messaging, select conversation topics that reflect the subjects you want members to inquire about. This helps in guiding the conversation and ensuring relevance.
- Edit conversation topics for accuracy: Edit the topic of a message to accurately reflect its content. This helps organizing and filtering conversations in your inbox.
- Option to disable messaging: If necessary, you can disable the messaging feature from your inbox settings. This removes the "Message" button from your Page and stops new messages from members.
💡Tip: Ensure that your LinkedIn Page messaging reflects your company's tone of voice and expertise, and that it's managed by knowledgeable team members.
Meta (Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp) – Setting up Automations
Meta's tools are particularly effective for businesses targeting a demographic that is highly engaged on social media, especially for consumer-focused interactions.
Meta allows you to create automated responses to your audience based on keywords, or one of their preset responses.
The X (formerly Twitter) Approach
X offers messaging features that might provide alternative advantages for certain business communications.
X also has some limitations, as an example, they only allow users to receive direct messages if they have agreed to receive messages, or if they are verified. Learn more about their limitations here.
A common marketing challenge for international companies is managing social media content in different languages for a diverse audience.
LinkedIn offers many ways to customize your company's posts for audiences all over the world. One of these options is to create posts for a specific audience group based on their location and language and more.
LinkedIn pages:
- Microsoft USA, Microsoft China, Microsoft France
- SSW Australia, SSW France
Figure: Bad example - Multiple LinkedIn Pages for each region
LinkedIn pages:
- Microsoft
- SSW
Figure: Good example - Single LinkedIn page covering all regions
Benefits of targeted, multilingual content
Here are a few valuable benefits of doing this:
✅ Growth – You can grow your audience in a single LinkedIn Page as opposed to starting from zero every time you add a new office location!
✅ Reach – As your audience grows and so does your engagement, you will be able to reach more people and businesses
✅ Employment – You will be able to advertise all the roles you are hiring for, locally and internationally, if this is your case
✅ Scaling up – If your business is growing, you will be able to manage your LinkedIn presence under a single page and your business will look bigger as it grows!Figure: Good example - Microsoft's LinkedIn page shows their jobs from all around the world and their offices 🌍 🏢 Figure: Language, job function, location and industry are some of the options you can select to do a targeted post on your LinkedIn Figure: LinkedIn will use your profile information to show targeted posts to you. For example, if you set your language to English, you will be targeted only for English content. Why create targeted posts in different languages?
LinkedIn is extremely popular in North America, Europe and Asia. Having a multilingual profile can increase your online visibility and help reach existing and new clients and partners in these locations, which are also the largest and fastest-growing economies.
Considerations to keep in mind
When creating a multilingual LinkedIn Company page, some key elements to keep in mind are:
- Make sure your services/products are suitable for the new audience you are targeting your content to as all markets will have their own individualities
- Ensure you are communicating the same message in all languages, and nothing is getting lost in translation
- You will need to invest in research to find out how your new audience is consuming content so you can adapt to that
LinkedIn targeted posts in practice
1. Targeted Posts
Here is how you can create Targeted Company Posts:
- On the “All Pages” or “Home” tab of your Super or Content admin view, draft your post
Figure: LinkedIn’s draft post window - As the default setting is “Anyone”, you can adjust the privacy settings by clicking on the 🌏 dropdown & selecting the correct audience for your post
Figure: For a targeted company post, you would select “Targeted audience” 🗒️ For comment settings, click “Anyone” at the bottom of the “Create a post" window – select your preferred settings (Anyone or No one) & click save to apply your changes.
- Add your preferred targeting criteria on the Target audience settings Page. ⚠️Targeted posts must target a minimum of 300 Page Followers
Note: You can add up to 150 different locations!
Figure: Good example - Target Audience Settings Page after your criteria reaches enough target followers - Click the ‘Save’ button and you are all ready to post!
2. New language for your company’s About
Here is how you can add new languages to your LinkedIn company page:
- On your company page, click on ‘Edit Page’
Note: you will need to have admin access to be able to do this - On the left column, scroll down and you will see ‘Manage languages’
Figure: If you have a multilingual business, you can select the different languages your clients may speak in this section on LinkedIn - Then you can add a tagline and a description. Please note that LinkedIn does not offer all languages in the world, so you need to verify if the needed language is covered by LinkedIn 🌐
- After adding that information, you can choose your default language and your LinkedIn company page will be ready to reach new markets! 💥
Keeping track of your company's reviews on external sites like Glassdoor and Google is essential for maintaining a strong online reputation. Responding constructively to both positive and negative feedback shows engagement and commitment to improvement. Ignoring reviews can mean missed opportunities for growth, while unresolved issues may impact your company's image and employee satisfaction.
Verify your company on external websites
To manage your company's reviews effectively, you must first verify your company on the external website. This verification process often involves claiming your company's profile, which allows you to respond to reviews and access additional features.
Check-in regularly
Make it a habit to log in regularly to monitor new reviews and feedback. Regular check-ins help you stay on top of what is being said about your company and allow you to address issues promptly.
Set up notifications
Ensure that notifications of new reviews are sent to the company's information email address. This way, one or more employees can monitor and respond to reviews without relying on a single person. Distributing this responsibility ensures timely responses and continuous oversight.
Respond to feedback appropriately
Responding to both good and bad feedback is essential. Acknowledge positive reviews with gratitude and address negative feedback professionally and constructively. This shows that your company values employee input and is committed to continuous improvement.
👍 Positive feedback
- Thank the reviewer for their positive comments
- Highlight specific points they appreciated and acknowledge their contribution
👎 Negative feedback
- Address the concerns raised by the reviewer directly
- Provide a clear explanation or steps being taken to resolve the issue
- Offer to continue the conversation offline if necessary
By following these practices, you can maintain a positive online reputation, demonstrate your commitment to employee satisfaction, and identify areas for improvement.
Examples
👎 Negative company review:
"The management here is terrible and they don't care about employees at all."
Company response:
"We disagree with your feedback. If you have specific concerns, you should bring them up directly instead of posting anonymously."
Figure: Bad example - The company's response is defensive and dismissive, failing to address the reviewer's concerns constructively
👎 Negative company review:
"The management here is terrible and they don't care about employees at all."
Company response:
"We're sorry to hear about your negative experience. We take feedback seriously and would like to learn more about your concerns. Please reach out to us at [contact email] so we can discuss this further and work towards a solution."
Figure: Good example - The company responds to negative feedback constructively, showing willingness to address the issues and engage in further discussion