Let’s face it, social media is getting more complicated as time goes on. Instead of being trying to succeed with your stale social media plan and wondering why it isn’t working, you need to stay up-to-date. 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 photo from the Gone Social SF team: Simon Walker (of IFTTT), me, Guy Kawasaki, Lauren Michaels (of Pinterest), Evelyn Obamos (of Pinterest), and Kevin Chung.
This is a top ten format with Guy and I each providing five tips.
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Using real-life examples with practical applications, we show you how you can take your startup 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, often times they go to an 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 and not those of my employer.” 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 feels 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 that 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 right away.
6. Stay legal
Every day we search for just the right photo for our post on our blog, Facebook or Google+ from a wide variety of 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 that 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 and the one key factor to success is organization. It’s impossible to juggle all the balls that you need to 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 just 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 web cam, an external camera, your 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 a lot of time doggy paddling!
I recommend Planoly for Instagram.
Planoly is an end to end Instagram management platform. It allows you to visually plan & schedule for Instagram. Drag and drop your photos to see how it’ll actually look on your Instagram profile feed before scheduling it to post. Play with the layout and think like a magazine editor. I’ve recommended this to you in the past 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 what you can do with Planoly is everything 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 own 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.
I hope you got a few new ideas and at least one social media power tip that inspires you to do something new!