50 Social Media Best Practices Ebook
50 Social Media Best Practices Ebook
50 Social Media Best Practices Ebook
BEST PRACTICES
SOCIAL
Astro and friends will guide you through Engaging Your Community .................................................. 8
everything you need to know, in any
circumstance. See how Salesforce can
Publishing and Creating Content ...................................... 12
help through fun, easy-to-follow trails.
Conclusion ............................................................................ 25
Social media accounts for over 30% of all time spent online.* Keeping up
with the latest social channels and their functionalities can feel like a full-
time job. And if you’re like most marketers, you’re probably juggling other
responsibilities, such as reporting on social media metrics, growing your
audience, and collaborating with teams like sales and service to make
every department more social.
That’s why we compiled this list of 50 social media best practices. You’ll
find tips for every aspect of social media in business, from listening and
engagement to publishing and advertising.
But the beauty of social is its diversity. Businesses and individuals bring their
own voice, tone, and approach to social media. So as you read these 50 tips,
think about how you can personalize them for your unique business goals,
customers and challenges of today.
* Lauren Underwood, “Social Media Captures Over 30% of Online Time,” We Are Social,
wearesocial.com/uk/blog/2017/09/social-media-captures-30-online-time.
CHAPTER 1
2. Identify the industry influencers. When you first start listening, you may feel that
no one’s talking about your brand and there’s not much to listen for. This can ring especially true
for B2B brands. That means it’s time to identify the primary influencers in your space. You can bet
that trusted influencers are out there creating great content for just about every topic under the
sun. So find the influencers first and see what they’re talking about.
3. Listen for social selling opportunities. Social selling doesn’t always mean conversion
directly as a result of social. Usually, it’s about social media managers getting the assist from their
sales teams. For example, someone might tweet that she’s thinking about buying a new BMW,
and the local BMW dealership chimes in with a useful video. Look for these kinds of opportunities
— and also times when someone may not be so happy with your #1 competitor. Social selling
opportunities are everywhere once you start looking.
4. Keep an eye out for nondirect brand mentions. People don’t always mention
you by your correct brand name when talking about you. They may spell your name wrong, use
an abbreviation, or simply talk about your industry without specifically calling you out. Put together
a list of words people may use to describe you, your industry, and your competitors, and track
conversation around those keywords across the social web.
To put it all into context for your fellow marketers, answer questions like “Are mentions
going up or down over time?” and “Is positive sentiment increasing?” Doing this on a weekly,
biweekly, or monthly basis will help shape current and future campaigns and the way you
talk to your customers.
9. Automate what you can, but keep the human element. The social listening
process may be overwhelming, depending on the size of your company. Social listening tools
help by automatically tagging keywords and assigning mentions to employees. These automation
steps improve efficiency and allow you to spend more time engaging with people. But you can’t
leave it all to computers. Figure out what automation techniques work for you and allocate
human resources where it makes the most sense. You’ll be more productive and your employees
will be happier doing work that can’t be done by a robot.
2. Put share buttons in strategic places. A few years ago, social share buttons
exploded. Suddenly Facebook and Twitter logos covered every surface of brick-and-mortar
stores and websites. We’ve since learned that share buttons should be used more strategically.
Use social media buttons to let people know about a new network you’ve expanded to (maybe
Snapchat or Instagram) or to indicate where they can get quick customer service, and always
provide a valuable reason they should connect with you.
3. Humanize the brand. Whether you’re marketing highly technical B2B software or a hair
product, you’re still marketing to a person. And people want to talk to other people, not faceless
corporations. Here are a few ways to ensure your social presence is staying both professional
and human:
5. Be mindful of oversharing. While it’s important to stay in the loop and maintain social
relationships, posting too often can turn off your audience. Delivering focused, exciting content
less often will yield better results and help you grow your following. Create a content calendar
with a posting schedule and stick to it. Everyone in your social media audience is busy — and
they’ll appreciate clear and concise communication.
6. Don’t always feel compelled to jump in. You’ve probably seen one of the many
articles poking fun at brands that feel compelled to share their opinion on every celebrity faux
pas, world event, or holiday. Some things are better left unsaid — and most major news events
don’t warrant a response from your company. Similarly, you don’t always have to respond every
time someone mentions your company. Sometimes it’s better to let individual employees,
influencers, or other members of the community interject before — or instead of — you. If you
jump in at the wrong time, you might send the wrong message. So pick your conversations wisely.
7. Aim for transparency. Openness goes a long way in social media. A transparent
communication model helps your community feel involved in your company and appreciate
the trust you show them. You can increase transparency by turning your CEO or other execs
loose on Twitter, actively soliciting feedback, and letting your customers meet and chat with
your employees online.
• Pay attention to the questions your customers ask most and put them on
the FAQ section of your website. A robust FAQ library is a great way to assist
your service team and show customers that you know their biggest concerns.
• Answer every question and provide resources for further reading.
• Lead by example. Conduct research, post case studies, and share learning
moments on your blog.
You don’t always have to have all the answers. Just be helpful.
9. Engage intelligently with positive feedback. When you get positive feedback on
social, tie a bow on that interaction so the customer is likely to say nice things about you again.
Humans are highly influenced by others’ opinions, so when customers openly express their
love of your brand, it’s valuable indeed. Always thank them first. Then you can look for ways to
integrate them further into your community. You may take note of their latest blog post and
share it with your network, add them as a guest contributor, or invite them to a customer forum.
10. Deal with negative feedback swiftly and skillfully. When someone has negative
things to say about your company, respond quickly and don’t delete the post from your page if it’s
on a network like Instagram or Facebook where comments can be deleted. Your customers may
view deletion as a sign your brand is dishonest and trying to hide the truth. And don’t feed the
trolls — stay focused on constructive criticism. If someone is clearly out to tarnish your name, it’s
best not to play into their game on social media. Instead, send them your customer service email
address or phone number and ask them to contact you directly.
Publishing and
Creating Content
Every successful social media strategy involves publishing. After all, There’s a lot to consider before tweeting, posting, pinning, or snapping
what makes social media unique is the two-way conversation. But from your brand’s voice. Take a look at these best practices for a more
sometimes brands go wild with publishing without much of a strategy thoughtful approach to social publishing.
at all. On the other hand, some brands are so creative with their social
content that their posts spread like wildfire across the web.
3. Line up approval processes. Before you can start publishing, you need to decide who
gets to add content to your social channels and when. This helps you avoid situations like having
two people posting different things at the same time. For example, your personnel list might
include the following people, each with different permissions:
• Administrators
• Publishers
• Editors
Some social networks, like Facebook, natively set up permissions for admins, while others require
the use of a third-party tool. Regardless of how you do it, map out your approval hierarchy to
ensure your organization has proper auditing and fail-safes. This will ensure the only people
who can publish to your networks are those who should have access.
5. Publish during nights and weekends. You might work Monday through Friday from
9–5, but your community is global, spanning time zones around the world and checking social
networks outside of your normal work hours. Think about all of the times throughout the week
when you check your Twitter feed or watch a YouTube video on nights and weekends. Posting
outside of regular office hours helps your content stand out when many other brands
aren’t posting.
6. Test ideas for new marketing campaigns. One of the biggest benefits of building a
large social network is the ability to test new copy and concepts with that audience. Experiment
with different headlines and post types to find what might work in an email subject line. Look
back on your most retweeted content to get ideas for new content marketing efforts. Your social
audience is a great petri dish.
7. Publish according to your own data. Everyone will tell you something different
when it comes to the best times to publish, the best post types, and the best calls to action. But
only you have the data to make the right decision for your brand. Never stop experimenting and
develop your own best practices.
* Greg Sterling, “Nearly 80 percent of social media time now spent on mobile devices,” Marketing Land,
marketingland.com/facebook-usage-accounts-1-5-minutes-spent-mobile-171561.
9. Use tracking URLs. Tracking URLs are a great way to prove the return on investment
(ROI) of social. We’ll talk more about ROI in the measuring section, but every time you publish,
post links that have a tracking code built into them. This tracking code will then feed back into
an overall database, helping you track which social networks are driving the most traffic and
purchases. When it comes to proving the ROI of social, every link counts.
10. Embrace the power of 1-to-1 interactions. For some companies, publishing on
social media is all about them. You flip through their recent posts and see all broadcasting and
very little interaction with individuals. When people review your published content, they should
see a mix of content that’s both helping others and sharing your own story. You’ll reach a broader
audience and make a bigger impact if you take time to interact on a personal level.
Advertising on
Social Platforms
So you’re engaging with the social community and growing your The key to great social ads is the right targeting. With social media, you
audience. With advertising on social platforms, you can connect can align your ads to your customers across multiple channels. In this
with your customers in even more personalized ways. Ads on social section, learn 10 best practices for irresistible ads on social networks.
shouldn’t be siloed from the rest of your digital channels. Paid
promotions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more can be
a key component of your entire digital story.
2. Create daily and lifetime budgets for your campaigns. Depending upon the
social network you’re advertising on, payment works differently — and you can usually bid directly
on the objectives you want, such as website conversions, reach (impressions), clicks, or mobile
app installs. Setting your budget for both the entire length of a campaign, as well as on a daily
basis, will help you decide which ads to run when. It will also allow you to look at your day-to-day
requirements, while simultaneously matching them up with your overall spending capabilities.
5. Get smarter about targeting, whether you’re B2B or B2C. Today, ads can
go far beyond traditional demographic targeting, like all 18–25-year-old women in Chicago. For
example, with Facebook behavioral targeting, a B2B marketer could start by targeting people with
specific seniority levels and job titles, segmented by company size. A B2C company might be more
interested in targeting email subscribers who haven’t purchased in three months. The sky’s truly the
limit with digital ads and hyper-specific targeting. Your ads can reach real people, not anonymous
groups. And with Facebook Custom Audiences, Google Customer Match, or Twitter Tailored
Audiences, you can directly target people in your CRM system based on their email addresses or
phone numbers.
7. Cast a sufficiently wide net when targeting. You can create your ad groups by
targeting, but you need to make sure you have a big enough audience to spend your budget and
reach a sufficiently large group of people. Avoid getting way too granular with your targeting,
which will undercut your ad’s effectiveness by limiting the number of people who see it. You
can even target people who look like your own customers with lookalike targeting.
9. Agree on the right KPIs and metrics. Digital ads give you a wealth of data. But data
doesn’t mean much if you don’t do anything with it. Because social networks can track so many
different actions taken by users, they create robust analytics reports that can help you determine
the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. Create a list of metrics and key performance
indicators (KPIs) that are most important to you before you get started so you can monitor these
closely. As your campaign progresses, either make changes to optimize the results of these
metrics or determine whether these metrics are actually the best indicators of your success.
10. Don’t just set it and forget it. Advertising campaigns are living, breathing processes
that require monitoring and adjustment. Fine-tune your analytics rhythm. Look at your results
regularly. Schedule periodic meetings with stakeholders to go over campaign performance.
Even if things are going according to plan, it’s good to have everyone on the same page. Getting
in a rhythm will also make internal sharing a lot easier, as those involved will already know what’s
going on with your ads.
Measuring
Social Success
Establish the right technology, people, and processes so that
you always know how your efforts are performing. Social media
measurement allows you to make decisions regarding fixes or
tweaks midway through a campaign. It also helps you get more
buy-in — and budget — from your company’s leaders as they
see the impressive results of your social media strategy.
• Increase awareness
• Generate leads
• Increase service speeds
• Convert more leads to sales
• Surprise and delight existing customers
• Create upsell opportunities
It’s better to execute well on one or two goals than to dilute your efforts by trying to do too much.
2. Only measure what adds value. Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker famously
remarked, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which
half.” Unfortunately, some CMOs and marketing professionals still feel that way, even though so
much of digital is measurable. Remember what your parents taught you: Just because you can do
something doesn’t mean you should. For social media marketing, just because you can measure
something doesn’t mean it has value, so only track what truly adds value to your business.
3. Go beyond vanity metrics. It feels great to measure your growing number of fans,
followers, and subscribers. Views, likes, shares, and tweets are clear indications that your
audience appreciates you. But marketers are under increased pressure to demonstrate ROI from
social media. Are Facebook likes translating into web form completes? Are Twitter campaigns
reducing acquisition costs of search-engine marketing? Have reporting tools closely monitor
content performance and engagement. Not only does this provide insights, it enables you to
target your most responsive audiences across social networks and geographies.
6. Gain insights about favorite products and services. As you listen to the chatter
on social media, you may discover certain features or products that customers can’t stop talking
about, for better or for worse. Take it a step farther. Don’t just listen; track and measure these
conversations over time. This ability to run R&D studies in real time should change the way
you market.
7. Create a central dashboard. One of the problems with measuring social is that data
comes from everywhere. You may have some data directly from social networks, some from
third-party tools, and some from internal analytics teams. This can slow down your analysis. Try
compiling all data into one central dashboard for easy viewing. You can use numbers, charts,
graphs, and so on, but putting everything in one place ensures you aren’t missing anything while
removing redundancies and superfluous information. Bonus: This makes presenting data at a
meeting a whole lot easier.
9. Stay flexible and social. Flexibility is a unique advantage of social media; if you
suddenly want to change the direction of a campaign, it requires very little time and effort.
That’s why regularly conversing with those who have a hand in your social campaigns is critical
for your success. These meetings may lead to a change in direction, tone, or even the data
you’re using to measure. Constantly reviewing the right data is just as important to your
success as publishing the right content.
10. Consider every available measurement tool. Use all your available resources
to calculate data. Whether that means using prepopulated spreadsheets from third-party tools,
looking at social network analytics sections, or even whipping out a calculator and crunching
numbers the old-fashioned way, never skimp on measuring your data. It’s the only way to know
whether you’re on the right path with your social media efforts — and it can greatly impact the
way you operate moving forward.