Master New Skills: Social Media Power Tips to Be More Successful
Let's face it, social media is getting more complicated as time progresses. Instead of trying to succeed with your 2014 social media plan and wondering why it isn't working, you need to stay current. Enter these social media power tips!
Guy Kawasaki and I were recently invited to give a presentation at an event for Gone Social in San Francisco. Thanks for having us Gone Social SF! We compiled a group of updated social media power tips to help jumpstart your social media marketing. (In the photo from the Gone Social SF team: Simon Walker (of IFTTT), me, Guy Kawasaki, Lauren Michaels (of Pinterest), Evelyn Obamos (of Pinterest), and Kevin Chuang)
This is a top ten format with Guy and I each providing five tips – the full video presentation can be viewed here.
Get your copy of The Art of Social Media here.
Using real-life examples with practical applications, we show you how to take your start-up or small business from zero to hero with your laptop, smartphone, and some great WiFi. Practical, tactical, and a little smart-asstical. Let's dive in!
Social Media Power Tips to Try Today
Guy's social media power tips are the odd numbers, and mine are even.
1. Hide comments on Facebook
Guy says, “I don't care who comments on my posts. There's no such thing as too much engagement. I just “hide” the stuff that I don't like. When you do so, the commenter and his/her followers can still see it, so they think you haven't deleted it.”
2. Use native analytics
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all provide fantastic analytics with the upgraded, free business accounts. Use them!
I also use Sprout Social's analytics for client's social media as well as my own.
3. Write once – post many
Guy loves using Social Champ to post multiple tweets. Try it here
Why Guy repeats his tweets, “I repeat my tweets because I don’t assume that all my followers are reading me 24 x 7 x 365. This is the same reason that ESPN and CNN repeat the same news stories (without updates, simply identical reports) throughout the day. I’ve examined the click-through patterns on repeat tweets, and each one gets about the same amount of traffic. If I tweeted stories only once, I would lose 75% of the traffic that I could get.”
4. Be a multi-faceted jewel
When people are trying to figure out how they want to use social media, oftentimes they go to the extreme of posting all business content or all personal content thinking that they can say this account is for business and this is my personal account. Adding statements like “these views are mine, not my employer's.” Well, guess what? That’s not how the internet works.
Be a multi-faceted jewel by sharing personal information and business information in a mix that works for you and feel comfortable. A gem role model is Arianna Huffington, who shares some of her travels and personal photos but doesn’t go overboard with minute personal details. I think if you look around, you’ll see that many successful people have a balance which is my goal as well.
If you’re ready to shine online, consider becoming a multi-faceted jewel. I think you’ll find that it helps you connect with the right kind of people and build an honest, transparent brand online. And that’s what it’s all about.
5. Go (Facebook) Live
Facebook loves Facebook Live! It's currently reaching many people in the Newsfeed. Going Live on Facebook can help your Facebook Page obtain more reach, and you can connect with the people who mean the most to you in your Facebook community.
When you go Live on Facebook, people who follow your Page may get a very valuable notification for your event. It can be customized so not all followers will get one, but when you're live, you'll see all the people start filling “the room,” and you should start talking immediately.
More reading: How to Use Facebook Live: A Complete Guide
6. Stay legal
Every day, we search for just the right photo for our post on our blog, Facebook, or from various sources. But do you have the legal right to use the photo just because it’s online? No. Can you get in trouble for this? Yes. Let’s look at what you can and can’t do to remain a good citizen of the web.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that just because the photo is online you can post it anywhere. That is NOT true. Don’t do it.
I recommend Librestock for great photos that you can legally use. It searches 38 free photo sites! And it's free.
More reading: Oh Snap, Can I (Legally) Use That Photo?
7. Use Lightroom to Instagram to post
Guy is fantastic with photography and Lightroom. He found this great trick that you can borrow:
LR/INSTAGRAM Direct from Lightroom to Instagram. No fiddling.
8. Organize your assets
Social media management is challenging; organization is the one key factor to success. It’s impossible to juggle all the balls you need with social media if you aren’t organized.
Winging it is for the newbies and hacks. Suck it up and create a plan. You’ll thank me later.
If you haven’t used Trello yet, open your account here. You need Trello! It’s like a whiteboard with super powers. (And it’s free!) This isn’t a sponsored post, I truly love their product and I want you to be more productive too.
9. Use Wirecast to publish on Facebook Live
Wirecast allows you to go from unknown to superstar with your Facebook Live productions. You can set up shots with your webcam, an external camera, smartphone, or tablet and add other fancy things like pre-roll videos and graphic overlays.
It's complicated but worth learning. Guy uses it for all his Facebook Live broadcasts.
10. Sync or swim
Use services that sync across your laptop and other devices, or spend much time doggy paddling!
I recommend Planoly for Instagram.
Planoly is an end-to-end Instagram management platform. It allows you to plan & schedule for Instagram visually. Drag and drop your photos to see how they’ll look on your Instagram profile feed before scheduling them to post. Play with the layout and think like a magazine editor. I’ve previously recommended this to you, and now Planoly makes it easy to do!
No, you can’t schedule your Instagram posts and forget about it – Instagram doesn’t want that to happen yet. But you can do everything with Planoly leading up to publishing your post with a notification to remind you when you’ve scheduled it.
Bonus: Create professional designs
Guy recommended Canva for Work. You can see a demo in the presentation link below.
Canva for Work’s key features include:
- Create a brand kit. Centralize brand colors, logos, and fonts. Keep your brand guidelines up-to-date and in one place. Enable your entire team to access and use your colors, logos, and fonts in their own designs.
- Save branded templates. Create templates for everything from social media graphics to presentations. This ensures consistency and empowers your social media, marketing, and sales teams to create their on-brand graphics.
- Magically resize designs. Quickly resize a design into all the formats you need. Create a design once, and optimize it for different social media channels or campaign collateral.
Read more: Everything You Need To Know About Canva
I hope you got a few new ideas and at least one social media power tip that inspires you to do something new!
More about The Art of Social Media.
Social media changes so fast. And we all have to keep up with these changes if we want to make the most of the benefits of social media. Thanks Peg for the tips and tools you shared in this post.
I really really love your writing style. keep moving bro.
Best of the best. Like it 1000 times
This post give me lots of advise it is very useful for me. Like it always
Hey, Peg!
It is an awesome article on the power of social media. Social media is a great weapon that helps marketers to spread their words among customers. Liked all the tips that you mentioned in the tips. You can also add social login to the list, it saves user’s time by allowing them login website using their social media account.
Thanks for sharing the article. Keep doing a great job.
Hi Peg!
It is amazing to find articles like yours where you prove that social media will always continue to grow and how it is such a strong attribute to marketers. A lot of people feel that they have learned all they need to know when it comes to social media, but I feel like you can never learn enough. It is so exciting at how fast this field is growing and how much it is benefiting other people who do not necessarily understand social media as a whole.