In 2022, there are over 4 billion social media users worldwide. As these numbers continue to grow, social media sites continue to change the landscape of digital marketing.
Take advantage of these trends and meet your audience where they are – on social media – while developing a voice and strategy that will grow your brand identity. Here are tips to improve your social media management.
Note: If you’re looking for tips on starting your account from scratch, we’ll have a blog on this coming soon. Stay tuned!
1. Take Advantage of Post Templates
Post templates are a quick and easy way to generate quality content for your feed. Optimized for social media, all you need to do is plug in your imaging and/or text.
Post templates are great for:
- Staying visually consistent and on-brand
- Creating professional-looking posts that are visually pleasing
- Saving time while generating high-quality content
There are a couple of popular ways you can source templates.
- Canva
The ever-popular option for small and large businesses alike, Canva is a budget and user-friendly graphic design platform with many options for customizing trendy templates.
Pros
- Easy to navigate for those unfamiliar with graphic design software
- Many third-party resources available
- Trendy template designs
Cons
- Free to an extent – professional features require a subscription
- Design capabilities are limited – if you’re looking for complex and fully-custom designs, you’re likely better off hiring a graphic designer
- Overused templates – with Canva being so popular, there are lots of other social media accounts using the same templates
- Purchasing Templates
Many graphic designers offer a collection of beautifully designed templates for a one-time cost on places like Etsy or Creative Market. These still require some do-it-yourself work and maybe investment in design software, but they can help give your posts a more polished, uniform look.
Pros
- With these templates not being offered for free on Canva, there’s a lesser likelihood that other business will be using them too
- More options for you to find designs that match your brand
Cons
- Upfront cost that can vary from less than $10 to over $50
- Although you can pick a set that best suits your needs, they are not fully-custom to your brand
- Use Proffessional Services
A professional social media manager and creative will have the skills and tools to help you create fully custom templates and posts that match your brand and needs exactly.
There are many ways to introduce one to your team – in-house full-time, part-time, freelance. One of the services we offer at DUO Strategy and Design is social management and the production of social assets.
Pros
- The sky is the limit – with an experienced social media manager, you’ll be able to make the best out of what ever you’re envisioning
- A social media manager knows the ins and outs of the social media world. They can also work with you to come up with a strong and unique creative strategy that will set you apart from the crowd
- Beyond templates, a social media manager can help you create branded and ready-to-post content, including captions to content to hashtag, responding to analytics for the best performance
Cons
- This option may cost you more than the other two options, but you’ll be guided by professionals who can help you generate the best-possible content
2. Schedule Your Posts
If you’ve ever wondered how some of the best social media pages stay so on top of their game, here’s the secret: scheduled posts. Social Managers use applications to schedule posts so you can plan weeks and months ahead.
Here are a few other reasons why so many social media managers swear by calendars:
- They help you push content consistently, whether that’s once a day or a once a week
- Calendars allow you to look at all your posts together before anything has been posted, so you can get a sense of flow and timing
- You can get a head start on important dates like big sales, important holidays, or product launches
There are many tools on the market that can help you optimize post scheduling, ranging from free with basic functions to subscription-based with powerful capabilities.
Here are a few options to start:
Hootsuite is a popular option for post scheduling. It offers both a free and paid plan and supports Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Buffer is a similar option to Hootsuite, offering free and paid plans for post scheduling, and supporting Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Tweetdeck is a dashboard offered by Twitter to help users make the best of the network. Completely free to use, Tweetdeck allows users to easily find relevant content and queue new tweets.
1. Audit: Your Content, Your Goals, and Your Competition
Having a firm grasp on your content, goals, and competition can help you post relevant and engaging material.
Audits should happen at scheduled interverals; consider quarterly audits, with weekly check-ins to make smaller adjustments and reflect on the shorter-term data.
- Are you catering to your target audience?
Assess who your content is reaching to understand if your post types are reaching and engaging the intented audience.
There are a number of items to consider:
- Age, gender and location data on native platform analytics
- Followers
- Engagement – Who is engaging with your content? What type of posts are getting engagement?
- CTA (Call to Action) – Who is engaging with your CTAs on social media? How many leads are posts generating and what is the follow-through rate of those leads?
- What do you want followers and potential followers to know about your business?
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Your social media should be an extension of your brand and business.
Consider ways to optimize your content and to ensure your information reflects your company in it’s most current form. This can be as simple as updating contact information and business hours or going the extra mile by sharing your brand story. [link to brand story blog?]
- Canvasing profiles of similar businesses, is there anything they do well that you can improve on?
Identify what accounts you like – and why – and be aware of what your competitors are doing. This market research is an important part of any marketing strategy and should be an ongoing aspect of your strategy.
Be open to finding inspiration from other accounts – in and out of your industry.
One of the first steps we take with our clients through at DUO Strategy and Design is identifying model accounts we can use as inspiration and scouting competitor accounts to see what has been successful for them.
- What have you already done that’s working?
Find the posts that have garnered the most engagement and try to identify what it is that’s giving the push in popularity. Use your success to your advantage by following in the footsteps of these posts – ie. double down on what works.
You might be eager to hit the ground running with your socials, but taking the time to create a thorough management plan will be extremely rewarding in the long run.
In many ways, there’s a lot more to social media than you might think – that’s why now more than ever, so many businesses are wanting to extend their resources in socials.
At DUO Strategy and Design, we can work with you to manage and grow your social media platforms.
