You wouldn’t wear jeans to a black tie event, would you?
Likewise, you wouldn’t post pictures of a night out on LinkedIn, right?
That’s because there are different rules you should follow on each social networking site to appeal to your audience.
For example, prospective clients are sharing interesting and funny things with friends and family on Facebook, while having more professional discussions on LinkedIn.
This means your behaviour and content needs to differ from one social network to the next.
That’s why we’ve collated a list of quick tips for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to guide you through the online noise.
- Listen. Twitter is all about conversation. It’s all very well sharing your own content and opinions, but if you’re not listening to other
people, they’re going to get tired of you very soon.
- Reply to people’s tweets. Automated tweets can work well to get your content out there, but when it comes to communicating with clients and prospective clients, then it’s all about the personality of your firm. Here’s a test for you: go to your Twitter profile page and click on ‘Tweets and Replies’, have you been replying to anyone, or is it all one-sided?
- When sharing your content, ensure that you always link back to your website. Google calls this ‘Social Circles’; it helps build your online presence.
- Host competitions. Facebook is a place where you should showcase the fun side of your firm. It can be as simple as getting people
to comment, like or share your post for them to enter a prize draw.
- It’s important to be approachable. Share humorous posts or pictures of your team. Did someone bring some homemade cake to work? Are you doing a sponsored team run for charity? Take a picture and share it – people want to see the human side of your firm.
- It’s a known fact that Facebook has started to limit the reach of posts, so even if people have liked your page, they may not necessarily see your updates on their homepage. This can be frustrating when you have worked really hard on a piece of content and you’re not getting any feedback. This is where it pays off to ‘boost’ the occasional post. Through boosting, you can hone-in on your desired audience based on age, location, interests, etc. Another way of getting yourself out there is through partnering with your chosen charity and utilising their Facebook page.
- Unfortunately, links don’t work in the photo description box on Instagram. This means that you need to link back to a piece of
content from your website in your bio instead and ensure that there’s a strong call to action to push conversions.
- Quality over quantity. In the early days of Instagram, it was all about getting your content out there multiple times a day to keep up with the fast-paced newsfeed. However, audiences have slowly become tired of mediocre content and are only prepared to interact with quality posts.
- Don’t use generic hashtags. To get noticed by the right audience on Instagram, you must be very specific with the tags you choose. For example, it’s important to tag your geographical location so that people in your local area can find you easily.
- Personalise your message when you invite someone to connect. It shows that you care about making worthwhile connections
instead of spending five minutes scrolling through a list of people and sending generic requests – that won’t make anyone feel special.
- Actually make contact with your new connections, but avoid being too “salesy”. Being friendly and approachable is key. Also, if they endorse you it’s a good idea to thank them personally in an update – this showcases both you and your connection.
- Like on Facebook, sometimes it’s a good idea to pay a little to get noticed. On LinkedIn, you can target your advert to a specific group of people so you’ll gather the audience you want. Just remember to track your spend on advertising so it doesn’t get out of hand.
Overall, remember to keep it social, it is “Social Media” after all!
For further info, why not download our Tips Booklets and become a Social Media Master!