Social Media MOT
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day running of social media business pages but it’s good to take a step back and re-evaluate the different parts of your digital strategy and whether they’re working effectively or not. Maybe your Facebook page needs a bit of tweaking or fixing, perhaps your Twitter account isn’t performing as well as it could be, maybe you have an Instagram page that needs a kickstart… Why not use this checklist to give your social media an MOT?
Check the About section of your Facebook page
Make sure the information here is up to date: contact information (phone number and email address), website link, and a Story/Description (a chance to add some additional information about why people should follow your page). Can visitors easily find the information they need?
Have consistent branding across your social media
Profile photos, business name and brand voice should be consistent across your social media. It is important that the tone and personality of your content is the same across all channels as well as the look of your business.
Link to social media from your website
A back-to-basics reminder but an important one – don’t forget to link to your social media profiles from your website and make it easy for people to see where they can have a conversation with you online.
Use photos and videos in posts
It’s an often-quoted fact that posts with photos and videos get a whole lot more engagement than posts without. According to this HubSpot blog post tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images and Facebook posts that include images have 2.3 times the engagement of those without. And what’s more, native videos on Facebook are said to have triple the engagement of text and image posts.
Think about the timing of your posts
Check your analytics for when your audience is most active and post at these times. The most popular times of the day are commuting times (first thing and around 5pm), lunchtime and 8-10pm in the evenings.
Google My Business
If you Google your business and it says ‘own this business?’ under the contact info it means you haven’t claimed it. You can check the contact information, opening hours and map location, and manage Google reviews from Google My Business. Visitors will often rely on the information in the Google listing rather than checking your website. Having a Google+ page and sharing content here will also help with SEO.
Create different content for the different channels
Don’t connect your Twitter to your Facebook page – each channel is different, with different audiences, and should be treated as such. It’s not a good idea to have a Twitter account that has no tweets other than a half-cut off sentence from a Facebook post. Twitter should be used as an enagement tool, not as a duplicate of Facebook.
If your business is quite visual are you making the most of this highly visual platform? Instagram is all about great images and is an ideal engagement tool. Instagram Stories is a good way to convey the personality of your brand with behind the scenes content. Check the hashtag of your business to see if visitors are posting content that you can share (you could even add a sentence to your bio information with a hashtag for users to include if they would like to be featured in your feed). Unlike Twitter (which should only include two or three hashtags) you can use a large number of hashtags on Instagram – make sure you choose ones that are most relevant to your business. And did you know you can convert your existing Instagram account to a business account? This opens up access to Instagram Insights (which gives you very useful analytics) and Instagram adverts.
Engage!
Social media is all about having a conversation with your customers and potential customers, and good communication is key. Make sure you are listening to your audience. Respond to reviews (like and thank people for glowing recommendations, reply to any negative comments); engage with visitor posts and comments on Facebook; like and retweet mentions of your business on Twitter; regram, like and comment on posts your business is tagged in on Instagram. Engagement is the heart of any social media strategy and without it you’ll find that your social media is stalling.
And if you’re looking for more social media advice/training why not get in touch!
