Here is the rest of the article from my previous two Blogs…

6. Initiating Conversation With Intentional Engagement
This social media best practice sort of ties in with #5 as well, but we’ve given it its own bullet point because we think it’s that important: initiate conversation with your target audience.

By nature, social media is an intimate space. It gives you a direct peek into people’s lives and behind the scenes of businesses- so don’t be afraid to be personable in the way you communicate with users.

The same way that users can use hashtags to find your posts, you can use hashtags to find theirs.

For instance, if you run a car wash, try searching hashtags around #carwash and see what you find! Finding tweets from people that say “Man I sure could use a #carwash!” gives you the perfect opportunity to reply to their tweet, and start making a sale.

There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of businesses in the world; make yours stand out by “listening” to your customers online. Show your customer base that you care and that your ultimate goal is to solve their needs.

Liking your customer base’s content, commenting @ them and overall engaging with them increases their trust in your brand, boosts your brand awareness, and brings you one step closer to increasing your revenue.

7. Monitor Daily
The more you begin to grow your followers and engagement, the more regularly you’ll need to check your account. At LYFE, we monitor for our clients daily M-F!

Responding to comments and messages in real time is key to ensuring good customer service and building trust in your brand.

Facebook even keeps track of your response time for you on the admin level of business pages. Users can see this status as well. 

You can even set up automated messages that trigger when your page receives a message.

Even if it’s something as simple as, “Hello and thank you for messaging us! A team member will get back to your shortly,” that allows your response rate to stay immediate 100% of the time, and it gives the user instant reassurance that they will be responded to.

In your monitoring, you’ll also want to make sure you respond not only to the positive comments, but to the negative comments too. This is an integral part of reputation management for your business. 

Complaints can definitely appear in your social media comments or reviews, so you want to make sure you handle them in a timely and professional manner so as to keep your brand in good standing.

You’ll also want to check for spam or vulgar comments. Negative or spammy-looking comments that have nothing to do with your business can and should be deleted as soon as possible so as to keep your page clean and free of them.

Outside of your organic content and pages, the last thing you’ll want to monitor are your ads.

Running social media ads does not mean setting them up and then just letting them run. You should be checking them daily and optimizing them to ensure they’re spending the budget properly and meeting your goals- just like what we at LYFE do for our clients.

8. Retargeting
Retargeting may be the last point on this list of social media best practices, but it’s by far one of the most important.

It’s extremely rare that customers make a purchase or form completion upon the very first time of hearing about your company.

It’s important to have several touch points with the customer in order to warm them up to your brand and turn them into a closed customer. In order to do this, you’ll need to retarget them.

And the good news is you can retarget just about everything we’ve talked about so far! Remember earlier when we said you can create specific audiences based on engagement, video views and more? This is where that comes in handy.

For instance, you can create an audience of people who have engaged with your ads, or watched a video, and exclude people who have already converted to make sure you’re bringing in new customers.

But that’s not say that you can’t retarget existing customers as well- go for it! Retargeting your existing customer base is an easy way to make repeat customers out of them.

Now You’re Prepared
Those are the 8 social media best practices. Your social media campaign should not rely on any one method, but should more so lean on a combination of methods that work together in one cohesive digital marketing strategy. With the right message finding the right audience, you’re bound to be successful on social media. Need an experienced digital marketing team to handle your social media marketing for you? Contact us today! Our team of experts use all the social media best practices, and then some to make your campaigns successful.

I hope that you all enjoyed this article just as much as I did! https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/social-media-best-practices/

Here is more of the article from my previous Blog…

3. Boosting Posts
Now that we’ve discussed how important it is to post daily, let’s make sure your audience is seeing those posts!

Did you know less than 10% of your Facebook followers see your posts organically in their News Feed? The same general rule applies to Instagram and Twitter as well, but Facebook in particular is a very “pay-to-play” platform.

It’s hard to follow social media best practices if your audience isn’t even seeing your content.

So how do you ensure that your audience sees your fantastic daily posts? Boost them! (Or promote them as it’s called on Twitter).

Boosting a post is the equivalent to sponsoring it; you’re putting ad dollars behind it to give it more reach. Within the ad platform, you can select the audience you want to serve the post to. This can either strictly consist of your Facebook following, new people who haven’t liked your page yet, or both!

Either way, boosted posts optimize for post engagement, giving you the most bang for your buck in terms of reach, comments, likes, and shares on your daily content.

4. Using the right creatives
Using the right creative is essential when looking at social media best practices. Did you know that people respond best to visuals because they remember 80% of what they see?

So be sure your brand is making a good impression with your visuals! It’s super important to make sure all of your visuals are fresh, high-resolution, bright, “non-stock-image-y” looking photos.

This is especially important on Instagram given its visual nature and grid profile look.

Outside of the look of the visuals, you want to make sure they’re sized properly! Different platforms, types of posts and paid posts all have different size requirements.

For instance, an Instagram post could be 800×800, whereas a LinkedIn post needs be 1200×627. It’s super important to pay attention to the size because poor sizing could lead to a high-resolution photo appearing pixelated.

Not to mention, any sort of errors that appear in your social media (whether it be the wrong photo sizing or a grammar error) can lead to a lack of trust in your brand from your followers. And a lack of trust can eventually make you lose out on potential sales- and we don’t want that!

In addition to your posts and organic content, you’ll want to be specific with your ad creatives as well. Facebook and Instagram both have the 20% text rule for any ad creatives (including boosted posts).

This means there can be no more than 20% text on the ad image or video thumbnail, otherwise, the ad will not run!

Since boosted posts are considered advertisements, you’ll want to try and think about your content in advance; if you plan on boosting a post, make sure the image with that post isn’t covered in text.

The last thing to remember when it comes to using strong creatives is to use videos- especially with ads! Videos outperform static images 9 times out of 10 on social media, and they’re great at getting a point across in a matter of seconds. Be sure your videos tell the same message with and without sound though. Because most people watch videos on mobile and often have the sound turned off. 

5. Growing Followers (Organically and Paid)
It doesn’t matter how much you invest in your content and ads if nobody is seeing them! Growing your followers is crucial to growing your brand awareness and potential customer base.

So how do you do it? Well, there’s two ways: organically and with paid ads.

As we mentioned earlier, Facebook is a pay-to-play platform. Unless you’re a famously well-known brand, like Nike for example, it’s nearly impossible to dramatically grow your Facebook followers without the use of ads.

Facebook has the Page Like ad campaign that gives your target audience the chance to like your business page from that ad. At that point, they will see a percentage of your posts moving forward.

That is just about the only way to significantly grow your following on Facebook, but thankfully this is not the case on other “organic” platforms as we call them!

On platforms like Twitter and Instagram, you can grow your followers without having to necessarily pay for them.

LYFE Marketing performs mass following strategies to gain targeted followers for our clients, and we also utilize the help of hashtags.

Hashtags are public searchable words or phrases (that do not include spaces or punctuation), and when you use them in your posts, your post will then show up for that hashtag. The more hashtags you use, the more routes people have to find your post, and therefore your account!

Using hashtags increases follower interaction because you are able to reach more people. Be careful though! There is a such thing as too many hashtags depending on what your audience likes to see. Find that sweet spot.

I was reading up on Social Media Best Practices and I found another web article that I wanted to share with you guys today…

If you’ve tried your hand at managing various social media accounts for your business, then you know that your workload can add up quickly! And it would be a little relief if you had some advice on social media best practices to help you out. 

Between posting content, running ads, and responding to messages in real-time (not just on one platform but on 3 or 4!), managing social media can become a full-time job. Thankfully we offer social media management services to help you out there.

The two biggest problems that most businesses face are that they either don’t have enough time to manage their social media. Or if they do, they don’t have the knowledge or experience to manage it well and use social media best practices.

Social media management can sometimes appear easy to take on at first due to the easy user experience on any given platform. But handling social media for a business is a lot different and more intricate than it is for a personal account.

All of the sudden, followers and engagement become more than a vanity metric: they’re opportunities for leads and sales.

Engagement is now crucial for you to capitalize on for the growth of your company. Posting everyday is no longer just a fun hobby but a necessity to keep your followers engaged and invested in your brand.

Plus, many users who have never used social media for business probably don’t know this, but most all social media platforms have a backend user experience specifically for businesses.

These platforms such as Facebook Ads Manager, Twitter Analytics & Ads, Instagram Business profiles and others can take a while to get really experienced at. But they are essential to growing your business social media accounts!

So how do you implement social media best practices with all of your accounts? Which tools and strategies are a waste of time, and which are truly effective?

We’re going to answer this question and more. Because today we’re covering the 8 social media best practices you should incorporate into your campaigns.

1. Conversion Ads
If you have any sort of checkout process set up on your site, or if you capture leads of any kind on your site, you’ll want to invest in conversion ads.

We talk more about conversion ads in depth in this blog. But we’ll cover the basics here too because it’s one of the absolute top social media best practices!

Many advertisers make the mistake of running Website Traffic Ads. You may be wondering how it’s a “mistake” if you’re directing users to your website, but you have to take Facebook’s algorithm into account.

If you run a Website Traffic Campaign, then Facebook is going to show the ad to users within your target audience who are likely to click, and that’s it – not actually convert.

Do 3,000 link clicks to your site matter if none of them convert? No, of course not.

Even if you change the optimization from link clicks to landing page views (which is supposed to show the ad to people who are likely to click and wait for the page to load), you’re still not optimizing for conversions.

A conversion ad is presented to people within your target audience who are likely to click and convert! And at the end of the day, that’s what we value the most right?

Optimizing for conversions within your ad campaign is definitely one of our recommended social media best practices you want to follow for success.

Like we mentioned previously, a conversion ad campaign is best when you want to track sales or lead form completions on your site. This can include anything from a vast ecommerce store to a simple contact form.

You’ll need to install a conversion tracking pixel in order to run conversion ads. And that can take a little extra setup, but it’s well worth it!

Outside of laser-targeting people who are already likely to convert, the second major benefit to a conversion campaign is its trackability. You can track everything from video views to engagement to clicks and finally sales. And you can create filtered, funneled audiences based off of this information.

Having this data allows you to send specific ads to specific audiences and continue moving them down the sales funnel until they’re a closed customer.

Unlike older, more traditional forms of advertising such as billboards or even TV commercials, a social media conversion campaign gives you the ability to follow your customer’s journey and see if your marketing efforts directly paid off or not!

2. Posting Daily
This is one of the biggest social media best practices: post content daily.

Social media is a 24/7 arena, and users are always hungry for new content! If you’re not posting new content on all of your social media platforms every day, then you risk the chance of losing both engagement and followers.

Not only does it stunt your potential for engagement from your current audience, but you’ll probably see fewer new followers come in as a result as well.

In the few brief seconds that someone makes a decision to follow your social media account or not, one of the first things they’re going to look at is how active the account is. 

If the last time you posted was 3 days ago (let alone 2 weeks ago or more), you’re losing a good percentage of potential followers. So don’t miss out on a single opportunity! Post daily.

Another way to follow social media best practices and ensure your accounts look active is with any real-time updates. This will look different across different social media platforms, but this could include publishing Instagram Stories, live-tweeting, or live-streaming on Facebook, for example.

As you publish daily, be sure to keep up with real-time events and holidays also to reinforce your relevancy and up-to-date branding as a business!

In addition to the obvious, bigger holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July etc., be sure to pay attention to any smaller holidays that are relevant to your business.

For instance, if you run a dog-walking business, then you’ll want to capitalize on National Dog Day (which is August 26, for those wondering). This drive-in theater chose to capitalize on the holiday and target their dog loving customers.

Not only will this help gain traction with your specific audience, but it will make your account appear current and active which is a must!

I will continue to post the rest of the article from Lyfemarketing.com in my upcoming Blogs.

8 Social Media Best Practices You Should Incorporate Into Your Campaign

8 Social Media Best Practices You Should Incorporate Into Your Campaign

I wanted to use this blog to finish up talking about the 5 Social Media Best Practices according to the website Sprout Social. I really found this article extremely helpful and I hope you guys find it helpful to. When talking about best practices four and five the article went on to say….

4. Research Competitive Analysis

Competitor data provides insights into smarter decision-making and better strategizing. There’s no need for copycats, but researching and analyzing competitive analysis keeps you one step ahead.

What Competitive Analysis Teaches You

Having the right tools makes all the difference. With Sprout Social, we provide in-depth competitor analysis tools for your most essential networks. Competitive analysis is essential to understanding your industry, who’s talking about you and who has the most engaged audience.

What to see who’s taking over the market for a specific Instagram hashtag? Use Sprout’s Instagram competitor report to stay informed and ahead of the competition’s branded and non-branded keywords. Tracking this data can teach you insights into your brand such as:

• Who’s Talking About You: Is it influencers, competitors or industry leaders? Monitor your brand and conversations involving you on social.
• Industry & Breaking News: What’s happening in your industry this second? Are you mentioned? Are your competitors?
• Content Driving Engagement: Is there a trend in your competitor’s most successful content? Is there a subject your industry can’t get enough of on social?
• Leaders in Shared Voice: Who leads the industry with the highest shared voice among your competitors?

Stats to Track for Competitive Analysis

Tracking the appropriate metrics helps you measure and monitor content performance for better campaigns in the future. Here are some of the most essential stats you can track through Sprout Social:

• Media Sent: Total amount of content sent.
• Most Used Hashtags: Hashtags your brand has used the most.
• Likes: Total number of likes from all content.
• Comments: Total number of comments from all content.
• Engagements per Media: Total amount of engagements on average per post.
• Followers Gained: Total amount of new followers over a selected time frame.
• Follower Growth: Total growth of followers between a selected time frame.
• New Users Followed: Total amount of new users your brand has followed in a time frame.

5. Engage, Interact & Humanize

Last but not least, the most essential social media best practice is your willingness to engage. No one wants to talk to a robot or receive an automated message on social media. Engage with your audience and send real responses to interact and humanize your brand.

Our Sprout Social Q1 2017 Index discovered 30% of millennials engage with brands on social on a monthly basis. Younger generations are becoming savvy to the idea of directly reaching out on social to connect with brands. And it’s up to you to ensure people get a response.

If you don’t respond, you lose money. Roughly 30% of social media users go to a competitor if you ignore their message. That’s important to know because 34.5% of people say social media is their top choice for customer care communication.

That means you have to focus your attention on Tweets and Facebook messages to ensure your audience can interact and engage.

How to Improve Engagement

Not sure how to put more effort into your social media engagement strategy? Follow these simple five steps to improve interactions and humanize your brand:

• Step 1: Give more to conversations than what’s asked from users.
• Step 2: Be entertaining with engagement but not over the top.
• Step 3: Inspire your audience to talk, engage and converse.
• Step 4: Listen more to those talking about you.
• Step 5: Provide resourceful information to your audience.

While all of the points that were mentioned are extremely important and can help someone build and maintain their social media pages. I personally feel that the fifth and last best practice is the most important. Unless a person engages with their audience, they will not grow or maintain their social media pages. Unfortunately, this is something that I had to learn the hard way through personal experience. Anyway, I hope you all find this three part blog that I did as helpful as I have found it. I want to leave you with this quote that I stumbled on recently. The quote was said by David Alston and it says…

“Social media is not a media. The key is to listen, engage, and build relationships.” – David Alston

Stay tuned for more blogs on the topics of social media and Social Media best practices throughout the course of this upcoming week. I hope that you all Have a great week and a wonderful Easter spent with your loved ones!

Website Source: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-best-practices/

Hello Everyone!

In my last Blog I talked a little bit about the first couple Social Media Best Practices according to the website Sprout Social. I told you guys that I would be posting the rest of this information in my next blog so here it is… I hope you all enjoy and that you find it helpful.

The second best practice that was stated according to Sprout social is: 2. Consistency is Key to Your Brand Voice. The website went on to say “

Defining your social media personality isn’t uncommon, but you must keep it consistent. Maintaining your brand voice helps boost engagement, trust and reliability. Without consistency, you give a lot of room for error in communication between your brand and customers.

In fact, an Oracle report found 43% of social media users only interact with brands to get a direct response to a question or issue. This means people will often come to your brand for a simple question or concern. The key is to be consistent with your brand’s messaging and voice.

Why are users so cautious with your brand? It’s due to the fact so many people have felt tricked or swindled about information on social media channels. Contently found roughly 66% of internet users have felt deceived by a brand through sponsored content, video or social post.

You lose the trust of your audience when you change your brand voice and you’ll see it first in your follower count. Our Sprout Social Q3 2016 Index discovered 41% of social media users have unfollowed a brand due to posting irrelevant information. This means you have to diversify your content without being too promotional.”

It is important to remember not only how to make your brand voice unique, but also how a business can maintain their brand voice on social media. The website goes on to talk about a few areas to stay consistent with in order to maintain your voice and presence on social media. These areas are:

• Replies
• Call to Action Phrases
• Captions
• Social Media Bios
• Direct Messages
• Visuals (Text on Visuals)
• Ads & Promotions
• Hashtags

If you go on to read the article on this website it talks about the third Best Practice. The third best practice is…

3. Leave Bae & on Fleek to the Teens

The website said,

“As we mentioned before, there’s a thin line between being a comical and offensive brand online. One way to avoid being in the news headlines for your social media is to not jump on the latest trends before doing your research.
Unless you manage social for companies like MTV or Teen Vogue, your brand really has no business using trendy slang or internet terms. This makes you seem out of touch and hurts engagement.
annoying actions brands take sprout index example
Don’t believe us? The same Sprout Q3 index discovered 38.4% of social media users said using slang or jargon was the most annoying action from a brand. To add to it, 29.9% said they would unfollow a brand for using slang or jargon on social media.
Being an embarrassing brand on social isn’t as hard as you think. The same index found 71.3% of people have unfollowed a brand due to embarrassment. It’s actually pretty easy to seem out of date on social, so always treat your audience with respect.
What Slang Says to Customers
Whether it’s bae or on fleek, your brand only hurts audience engagement when you go the route of using slang on social media. Here’s a few things it says to your audience when you use slang:
You‘re out of touch with your demographics. This comes off as abrasive to several users. Most know they’re being marketed to, so respect your audience by avoiding gimmicks to reach them.
You’re willing to risk funny for cultural insensitivity. You might not realize certain slang, jargon or social memes are meant for certain cultures. Abusing them for marketing purposes can turn off an audience immediately.
You’re pretending to be something you’re not. It’s always a great social media best practice to be yourself. That means follow your brand values, know your core audience and steer clear of quick marketing ploys that could turn off your current customers.”

These are all very important things to keep in mind when looking at and evaluating how you approach your social media. If you are looking to grow your business voice or just your personal voice on social media, then it would be smart to apply these Best Practices. I will be posting about the last two Best Practices in tomorrows blog. I hope you all enjoyed and stay tuned for the last two Best Practices.

Website Link: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-best-practices/

I wanted to start this Blog as an informative page for a class that I am currently enrolled in. The class is STCO 422 at Liberty University and I will be posting information on the subject of Social Media, specifically Social Media Best Practices. Social Media has become an extremely important thing when it comes to business in 2019. A good social media team can make or break a company, as well as expand the reach and growth of a company. Social Media Best Practices is defined as the study of the best way to improve and run a social media page. I was doing some research today and I found an interesting article on the website Sprout Social. The article was titled “5 Social Media Best Practices Every Marketer Must Follow”. In this Blog I will be posting the first practice that Sprout Social mentions and then will be posting the other four practices as the class goes on next week. According to the article, the first practice is to Define Your Networks or Themes. It later goes on to state “Each network provides unique outlets to your audience. How you use and set up your social media themes gives viewers insight into what to expect out of your channels. For example, some of the most popular businesses on social media have a specific theme or notoriety for their channels. Target highlights it’s bright and summery colors on Instagram, but this doesn’t mean each channel has to be exactly the same. In fact, it’s much more the opposite. Most businesses prefer to use Twitter as a social customer care tool, while Instagram is more for creative, audience building techniques.” The article went on to give a list of brands that have their themes mastered on Social Media, including companies like Casper, AskPlaystation, AirBNB, and Microsoft. The article went on to talk about the different types of themes stating, ” User-generated Content: Encourage users to submit their own content to post on your Instagram account. Urban Outfitters regularly uses Instagram to promote various levels of user-generated content. This helps boost trust in your community and shows there’s a human behind the username. Humor/Lighthearted Content: Brands like Casper, Denny’s and Hamburger Helper rely on being the comedian among the crowd on Twitter. Just look at what Wendy’s is doing with their fan asking for a year’s worth of free chicken nuggets. However, there are huge pitfalls to this theme, so be cautious. Engagement Driven Questions: What’s one of the best ways to garner a response from your audience? Ask questions! It’s simple and easy to do whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or even Instagram. Just remember to be present and ask thoughtful questions that will actually drive engagement. Behind the Scenes Content: Instagram is perfect for brands to take users behind the scenes of their company. Instagram Stories is the ideal tool to show your audience a more raw and authentic real-time look into what makes your business unique. Highly Visual Images or Videos: How do some Instagram accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers without selling anything? More likely than not, their content is highly visual and absolutely engaging. If you don’t have an artistic eye for Instagram, find someone who does. Products in a Unique Light: So most people know your business name, but do they know what you do? Use unique product shots or customer testimonials to showcase your brand in a new light. GetStat, a search analytics tool, uses GIFs and industry stats to highlight unique findings for users.” As I said, I will be posting the remaining practices as I continue to post on this blog. I hope you enjoy and find the information helpful!

HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS https://t.co/4SrfHmEMo3—
Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) April 06, 2017

Can you guess the secret ingredient? Inside-Out #Easter Egg Recipe: bit.ly/2oimLPM. https://t.co/XGwiUBPocO—
Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods) April 15, 2017

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-best-practices/ – Here is the link to the website

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton