A social media team’s work is never done. There’s always data to analyze, messaging to refine and metrics to improve for each social platform where you’re active.
Of course, the constant improvement is part of the fun, and we love sharing what we’re working on.
- Launch a new YouTube Series
We’ve done a lot of YouTube videos recently covering our products, and making sure our customers had all the tools we could provide for them to succeed. Late last year, we debuted our first real foray into videos about a product other than our own.
The takeaway: You can use social media to help your customers work with products related to yours—and you can use feedback and analytics to decide which topics to tackle.
- Do more with Instagram Stories
We embraced Stories on Instagram in 2020 for many reasons, including visibility, deeper engagement with our audience and higher click-through rates as people swipe up to learn more about the Stories we share.
We’ve been testing as we go to see what works, sharing cool posts and doing some work with influencers, too. We’ve also kept an eye out for other user generated content, or UGC, that can be turned into an awesome story.
The takeaway: Explore Stories as a way to build stronger connections with your audience and bring them to your blog or website.
- Find audience focus on Twitter
Last year, we did a lot of testing with Twitter and we found that we have a more techie audience on Twitter than we do on Facebook. So, on Twitter we like to share coding tips and other content that caters to people who are building and managing websites.
The takeaway: Understand what your audience wants on each platform so you can deliver it.
- Start a Facebook Group community
On Facebook, meanwhile, our audience is more interested in small business, ecommerce and introductory web development content. It’s also a good audience for discussion and support groups.
We set it up as a place where website owners and web pros could swap tips, get help and share resources at a time when shutdowns made it hard for many of us to get – or give – help through regular channels. Now, the group has 3,600 members and lots of active, practical discussions.
The takeaway: Use social groups to fill a need and build community around your brand.
- Tap into trending hashtags—when it made sense
Hashtags are great for helping people find stuff they’re interested in, which means they can help you connect new people to your brand. However, using the wrong hashtags or too many can undermine your outreach efforts, and the right approach to hashtags varies by social platform.
Sometimes, adding a funny hashtag like #itsprobablydns shows your audience that you understand the kind of stuff they deal with.
The takeaway: Use hashtags to connect, and don’t overdo them.
- Encourage audience to talk about themselves
Social media users usually like having their moment in the spotlight, and we try to offer that. Asking open-ended questions gives your audience a chance to look good by sharing useful or clever answers.
The takeaway: Give your audience a chance to share what they know, to build engagement and learn about them.
- Strategically update old YouTube tutorials
We produce a lot of how-to videos for our YouTube audience, and sometimes the tutorials get out of date. But if those videos are getting traffic for keywords we want to rank in, taking it down could leave a gap for weeks or months until the new video starts ranking well.
To avoid losing the SEO juice from popular videos when they need updating, we create a new video with new info, and then add a card to the old video that directs people to the new one. Over time, the new video replaces the old one in search results and we don’t have a coverage gap on that topic.
- Embraced nostalgia
Over the past year, a lot of people felt wistful for times that felt simpler, more fun, less pandemic-y.
The takeaway: Find out what your audience is nostalgic for and serve it up—as long you can connect it to what you do.
- Give away more swag
How do you thank a follower who gives you a shoutout on social media or perk up someone who could use a boost? In our case, we send them an alligator.
The takeaway: Giving stuff away never hurts on social media.
