A Few Social Media Hacks for the “not really beginners”

Social media hacks? What? Once upon a time Social Media was used only to make friends or to keep in touch with classmates. And now Social Media is the number one platform for growing your business audience. Owning and simultaneously working on your social media platforms in this day is a no brainer. Once you set realistic goals, your activities should aim at reaching the right demography of people, creating brand awareness, driving valuable traffic and conversion and act as a collector of insights from your market segment. 

’What platforms should my business be on? How often should I work on my social media platforms and what exactly should I be doing there?’ are some of the common questions a lot of people ask me. There are plenty of platforms to choose from. Choosing the most popular ones and picking the ones that your target market hangs out at, should be the ones that are the best for your business. 

Answering the first question, what platform should I be on… Being the most widely and commonly used, Facebook and Twitter seem to be the most popular among all the social media out there with the most number of active users. If you offer products or services, Instagram and Pinterest are great graphic oriented platforms where you can show off your stuff and also share tiny bits of information in a micro blogging style.

If you are a professional looking for contacts or subcontracts, or aiming to be hired by corporations for your services, LinkedIn will bring you a lot of business contacts. If you are a blogger looking for lots of exposure and insights from fellow bloggers, Blog Engage, Tumblr, Digg, Google for Business, Technorati, Medium, Quora, Reddit and Biz Sugar are all awesome platforms. Also use Blogger Outreach tools like Inkybee, Tomoson and Pitchbox.

Secondly, what exactly should I be doing in there? It’s funny how a lot of people think all you need to do is just post some thing a couple of times a week and reply to people who might comment. Unfortunately, if you’re serious about growing your audience that would be barely enough. Each platform has its own culture and algorithm and different sets of rules apply to each space. Let’s go into detail about what to do, how much to do, when to do, and where. 

What are social media hacks and why do I need to use them?

Hack is any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency. Social media hacks help you with just that. Use these knowledge skills to win your social media game.

Let’s start with Facebook.

Almost the grand uncle of social media, here are ten hacks to Facebook user engagement.

1. With over 2.6 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2020, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide.
2. Post relevant material two times a day every business day and if you are up to it, once at least on the weekend.
3. Add no more than five hashtags per post. If relevant, pick one of those hashtags from the day’s trending topic.  
4. Post material that educate people on your brand without sounding like a sales person. It’s OK to go off topic once in a while, but as a rule 80% of the time, stay in tune with your brand.
5. Publish no more than 3 posts a week that are promotional in nature.
6. Never forget to add a call to action.  i.e. like this post, comment below, click this link, etc.
7. Find and like at least 10 pages every week, that run businesses that are complementary to yours. Actively comment on posts of at least one or two pages every single day.
8. Always acknowledge and reply to the comments you received on your post.
9. Collaborate with other influencers and host a Facebook contest at least once a month. This activity ensures faster growth of your following.
10. The best times to post on Facebook are:  Noon to 3pm on weekdays and 2-5pm on weekends.

Twitter totally rocks the social landscape.

Those who use Twitter regularly simply love it. Here are ten hacks to mastering 2% of Twitter.

1. You can now frame a tweet in 280 characters as an upgrade from 140 characters a year ago. You can still beat it by cramming over 280 words in a graphic poster. But don’t tweet a text book page, people will lose patience and unfollow you.
2. You can tweet 5 to 8 posts today and you can make them a mix and match off business posts, social, picture, promotional or personal.
3. The life of a tweet is 18-24 minutes. Pin your best promotional tweet to the top so it remains evergreen.
4. You can sort the tweeters you follow into lists and this organize your feed. Ex: people who tweet about animals, people who talk about holistic care, friends and family, workmates, corporate, marketing tweets…
5. Hashtags are a must in the unwritten law of Twitter. Use relevant hashtags, create a post for the trending hashtag, try not to make it a lame one.
6. The best way to be seen on Twitter other than actively tweeting is, retweet 3 to 5 people every single day, follow 10 to 15 new people every single day.
7. Stalk and track twitter activities of your competitors without following them by adding them into private lists.
8. Shout out to other people to help promote them as well.
9. One top secret egg I recently hatched to find prospects easily on twitter: Search user created lists using this search string – site:twitter.com inurl:lists
10. The best pockets of time to engage on Twitter are: 12-1pm and 3-4pm. Grab these sweet tweet pods of time, stay consistent and make sure you watch your analytics.

I intended to write about 6 different platforms and 2 of them ate my whole day. How about, tell me what you think about this post and I will present the rest of this on Thursday? Do long, then..