Get Results With These Organic Social Media Best Practices

It’s 2023 and social media has been at the forefront of pop culture (and our daily lives) for nearly two decades. But in the ever-evolving digital landscape, it’s hard to keep up with the latest trends. Does your company need to be on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok and Pinterest? Should your brand be doing the latest dance videos? The City of Johnston, Iowa, recently asked us to present to city officials from across the country about organic social media best practices. Check out our tips below, which help answer these burning questions and more.

Optimizing Your Platform Presence

Optimizing your presence and integrating with the social media platform you are utilizing is a basic but necessary first step. What are some quick tips for you to do this?

• Complete your about section. Having this filled out can save your company time by giving people easy access to your company mission statement, hours, website and other basic information.
• Upload videos directly. Most platforms prioritize video, which means direct uploads will help you appear more in the algorithm, increasing reach. Uploading directly also keeps people on your platform for longer, instead of sending them to other sites like YouTube, where they can easily be pulled into a black hole of content.
• Keep posts copy concise. Get your point across and try to do it with as tight of copy as possible. The longer your post, the less likely the reader gets to the point and takes action before moving on to something else.
• Use tagging when applicable. When possible, include the location with the photos you post or tag relevant people. This is a chance to pull in another channel of users who have been/are looking at other posts from that location or follow that individual.

Audience

Knowing your audience is the biggest and sometimes hardest part of using social media effectively. Even when dealing with an industry like agriculture, where the majority of your audience are farmers, there is still so much variety within that homogonous group. Are they old-school? Are they early adaptors of technology? Are they worried about government regulation or fluctuating markets? Do they buy based on relationships or is it strictly product performance? Maybe cost is all they care about.

The point is, knowing your audience can go a long way toward shaping your voice and tone. Once you discern this, you can decide what platforms to reach your audience on. If your audience skews younger, TikTok and Instagram are essential platforms to connect. Older, Facebook is where your audience is. Professional, go to LinkedIn. And if you're looking to reach women, Pinterest is the place to be.

Remember, there are three main reasons people use social media. They want to be:

• Informed
• Entertained
• Connected

And for better or worse, 71% of people get news from social media. Does that number surprise you? Well, here’s another shocking figure: According to Statistia, in 2022, the average person spends nearly two and a half hours on social media a day. Yes, you read that right. So if people are getting their news from social media and spending about 10% of their day on the platforms, you really can’t afford to miss out on the opportunity to reach your audience.

Goals

After discovering your audience, the next step is to set goals for your social media. One of the best and easiest ways to do this is by using the SMART goal framework. Let’s break it down:

• Specific – What do you want to share or achieve? Don’t dance around what you want to accomplish – unless you’re on TikTok. You've got a story to tell, so figure out how you want to tell it and what will make it successful in very specific terms.
• Measurable – How are you going to quantify your success? Are you trying to get people to sign up for an event? Are you passing on information? Either way, ensure you can measure objectives through engagement, link clicks, or submissions.
• Achievable – Is your goal realistic based on your current situation? Knowing your audience will help you set realistic expectations and allow you to adjust your tactics going forward.
• Relevant – How does this fit into your overall plan? This, again, ties back to knowing your audience. A big push for something no one is interested in doesn’t do anyone any good.
• Timely – Is now the right time for this communication? Starting too early on a social media push can burn out your audience. Starting too late can hinder participation and cause you to miss out on reach.

Post Frequency

The age-old question – How often should you post? There is no perfect answer, but here are the recommendations from HootSuite:

• Facebook: One to two times a day.
• Instagram: Between three and seven times a week.
• Twitter: One to five tweets a day.
• LinkedIn: One to five times a day.

We didn’t forget about TikTok: According to the Digital Marketer, creators should post to TikTok one to three times a day.

These numbers might seem daunting, but don’t be overwhelmed. We tell our clients this – do you have something worth sharing? If so, post it, even if that means posting multiple times a day or only once a week. Quality beats quantity every time.

We also recommend creating an evergreen content library to pull from to fill empty spots in your social schedule. These are posts that can be made at any time and have some relevance to your audience.

What you want to avoid is disappearing. Posting erratically (a lot one week and then nothing for a month or more) can confuse followers and cause them to look other places for information, connection or entertainment.

Four Ways to Increase Engagement

Now that you know your audience, have goals, and know how much to post, you might be wondering how to increase audience interaction with your content. Here are four ways to do just that:

• Respond to questions. This is an easy way to make a good impression on your followers. According to HubSpot, 39% of users expect a response within an hour.
• Use photos/video in every post. According to BuzzSumo, Facebook posts with photos get 2.3 times more engagement than those without. And as we say at AKC Marketing: Video is king. The idea of filming, editing, and distributing high-quality video might seem overwhelming, but here's a secret: You don't need to do that to increase engagement. Facebook users are four times more likely to watch Facebook Live videos than pre-recorded videos. These kinds of videos don't require any kind of editing – just your phone, you, an internet signal, and BOOM, you've got video content.
• Use real photos instead of stock images when possible. A study conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs found photos that contain faces have as much as 38% more chance to receive likes and are 32% more likely to attract comments compared to the photos without face
• Optimize the times you post. You know how often it’s recommended to push content, but you can further increase engagement by deciphering when your audience is on platforms. Start by referencing these timing suggestions by HubSpot, and see how your posts are doing during those time frames. Everyone’s audience is different, so while 8 p.m. on a Sunday might be a great time for one company to post, 7 a.m. on a Tuesday might work better for another.

Social Monitoring and Listening

The next step in upping your social media presence is prioritizing proactivity over reactivity. One way to do this is through social monitoring and social listening. What does that mean? According to Sprout Social:

• Social monitoring is caring for your customers by monitoring social media for messages directly related to your brand and responding to those messages appropriately.
• Social listening is understanding your audience and improving campaign strategy by accessing the full spectrum of conversation around your industry, brand, and any topics relevant to your brand.

To conduct social monitoring, make sure you’re checking posts in which your company is tagged or mentioned. Take this a step further by tracking posts with other key phrases and terms important to your company.

Social listening helps you monitor competitors, problematic industries or even potential product issues. The options are almost limitless, but they can help you stay ahead of the conversation should something bad be on the horizon. It can also help you engage in conversations that you may not otherwise have known about happening in your company’s industry.

Negativity

Did you find something negative while using social listening? Better have a plan. We all deal with everyday negativity, but social media negativity can be a different beast. We recommend developing a plan proactively to deal with this, should issues arise. This plan should include:

• Designation of who in your company will handle any negative social media interactions.
• A response plan, including:
  • A general, genuine template for a reply to negativity.
  • When to engage and when to leave it be.
  • When a comment should be hidden or deleted.
  • When a person should be blocked.

Effectively managing negativity means knowing the difference between trolls and people with real issues. If there are actual problems, the worst thing you can do is ignore them. Saying we hear you and we are addressing the issue can go a long way. People need to be heard.

Negativity doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, either. It can be an opportunity to generate real-world, important content to increase your position as a content expert. Use this experience to create content answering or addressing concerns. Not only is this an easy win for content creation, but it shows you are listening to your audience and the industry.

Paid Advertising

Paid social media could be its own blog post (and will be), but it’s important for any social media strategy. After all, the average reach of an organic post on Facebook is 5.2%. This shouldn’t scare you away from developing an organic strategy but should encourage you to experiment with social advertising to reach new audiences. Advertising through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Tik Tok can provide you with some pretty powerful targeting tools. Use it to your advantage. There are many how-to’s available to help you get started.

Need help crafting your plan? Contact us to get started!