Power Tips for Top Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms are always changing and evolving their algorithms. To keep pace with updates, continually experiment and adapt your social media strategy to optimize your performance.

In this blog, I will cover some key tips for using top social media platforms: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. I will also cover the best ways to integrate your blog into social media.

It’s not necessary to be active on all of these platforms, and some of these sites may not make sense for your company. What is necessary is to find the social media platforms that work best for you, and leverage them to engage with your audience and customers and generate traffic and leads.

Facebook

Facebook‘s newsfeed algorithm is called EdgeRank. The concept of EdgeRank is to show people only what’s relevant to them. There is a ton of content on Facebook and strong competition, so creating compelling content that is relevant to your audience that gets a lot of shares and comments will result in higher visibility.

Facebook tips:

Videos are very successful on Facebook. Upload videos to Facebook directly, and not as an embedded YouTube video in a post.
Allow Facebook to show thumbnail images for links.
Use Facebook insights for analysis.
Interact with other pages, inside and outside your industry, to spot and understand trends, create relationships and boost visibility.

Google+

Google+ has a killer app called Hangouts On Air. Hangouts On Air is a chat session with video for up to nine people. It’s public and synced to YouTube where it’s automatically archived.

Google+ tips:

Use Hangouts On Air to interview users and customers and connect and engage with them.
Use Google Ripples to graphically display who shares your posts.
Monitor the hashtags Google+ assigns to your posts.
Use Google+ Polls to get user feedback.

Twitter

Twitter really becomes valuable when you start searching, as opposed to posting. Search for topics, hashtags, companies, and people you are interested in following. Use Twitter to interact with your audience and customers as well as other industry professionals.

Twitter tips:

Utilize the search capabilities.
Repeat your tweets three to four times, eight hours apart, to reach more of your audience.
Add an image to a tweet to increase your engagement.
Use relevant hashtags to reach more users.

LinkedIn has the highest content standards of all social media platforms. People use LinkedIn for professional networking, to research companies they are interested in working for and for business development.

LinkedIn tips:

Integrate SlideShare into your LinkedIn account.
Customize your request to connect with someone by explaining exactly why you want to make a connection and who you are.
Position yourself by highlighting your expertise.
Participate in groups relevant to your career and industry.

Pinterest is becoming a search destination for everything from recipes, fashion and design to health, travel and technology. You have the ability to create boards for any topic you choose and post related “pins.” It is a great place to share infographics as pins are typically displayed as images linked to more information.

Pinterest tips:

Don’t pin personal items or photos on company boards.
Use hashtags minimally.
Add original pins.
Rotate your boards to show people a diversity of interest.

Instagram

Instagram is about sharing snapshots of your brand. It is a platform for sharing images that illustrates who a company is. It is a great place to show off your clothes if you are a fashion brand, your stunning location if you are a hotel or travel destination, and you can even add short videos to demonstrate how your products work.

Instagram tips:

Use a five to ten word caption.
Use many relevant, trending hashtags.
Engage with your followers and industry by commenting and reposting relevant images.

Integrating your Blog into Social Media

Sharing your blog across social media is a great way to deliver your content to your customers, drive traffic and generate leads. Here are some tips and best practices for sharing your blog on social platforms.

Write several tweets pointing to your blog content.
Format the design of your blog for the platforms you are targeting.
Add social media icons to your blog page so users can easily share.
Create 500-1000 word blogs posts on LinkedIn.
Write guest posts on other blogs and share them on social media.
Create SlideShares of your most successful blog posts.

Summary

Social media platforms are widely used around the world. They are one of the best ways to engage with your customers and share your content. But, the tactics for each platform varies and it’s important to find which platforms work best for your company.

If you are targeting global audiences, remember to use locale-specific social media platforms, like Qzone and Tencent Weibo in China and VKontakte in Russia.