Scoping out popular platforms

Dozens of social media platforms are available, but they’re not equally effective for all brands. Explore and evaluate your options, and choose one or more platforms that best serve your branding goals (see Chapter 4). In this section, I introduce some of the most popular social media platforms, all of which you should consider.

You don’t need to be active on all platforms to execute a successful social media brand strategy. You can start with one platform. What’s most important is that you have a strategy, execute it, and maintain continuous engagement — meaning that you post content regularly and engage with your followers, fans, and others. You’ll get more bang for your time and effort by committing to one platform than you will by making sporadic efforts on multiple platforms.

If you choose to focus your efforts on only one or two social media platforms, you should still create an account on every platform covered here and claim your brand’s handle before someone else has a chance to claim it. (Your handle is your user name or business or brand name, and it should reflect your brand’s identity.) You might start with one platform and expand to others, in which case you’ll want a branded handle on each of those platforms. For every brand I create, I claim handles on all the platforms I might eventually use, even though I choose to be active on only a select few.

Choosing different metrics for different platforms

Whenever you implement a marketing campaign, you should use metrics and analytics to gauge its success and figure out what’s working and what’s not. Take the same approach when building a brand presence on any social media platform. The only tricky part is choosing the metrics that most accurately reflect performance and success, such as the following:

• Number of followers, friends, or fans is always a key metric, but having lots of followers on Facebook or Instagram is more important than having lots of followers on Pinterest, because the number of times your brand appears on users’ Pinterest boards is more important.
• Number of shares for specific content is always important, because shares reflect not only how impressed users are by the content you posted, but also how effective your word-of-mouth advertising is — a good gauge of organic marketing.
• Content metrics, such as percentages of photos, infographics, audio, video, and text you post or original content versus shared content, can vary from one platform to another. Instagram is highly visual, for example, so certain content metrics may not apply.
• Audience metrics such as gender, ethnicity, age, and education and income levels may be more important on more-diverse platforms such as Facebook and Twitter than on less-diverse platforms such as TikTok.

These are just a few examples of some of the social media marketing metrics you may want to consider: engagement metrics (clicks, likes, shares, comments, and mentions); competitor metrics (comparative engagement metrics); social traffic (traffic from different platforms to your website or online store); and conversion rates (incoming traffic converted to sales).

Most social media platforms feature metrics and analytics for business users, but a good social media management platform is likely to provide more robust analytics. See “Saving Time and Effort with Social Media Management Tools” later in this chapter for more about social media management platforms.

Optimizing your social media profile

Nearly all social media platforms enable users to create and maintain a business or brand account, profile, or page. Take full advantage of what each platform offers by fleshing out your brand’s profile or page, as follows:

• Add your brand’s logo.
• If given an option, follow your branding guidelines (see Chapter 6) to specify the colors and fonts that reinforce your brand’s identity.
• Include the address of your brand’s website, blog, or online store.
• Include your brand story or a description of your brand or business.
• Add a call to action, if you have that an option. A Facebook Business page, for example, enables you to add a call to action that directs visitors to do something, such as visit your website or call your store.

Consider using Linktree (https://linktr.ee) to create a customizable landing page for your brand that contains links to all the valuable content you want to share. Figure 13-2 shows the Linktree landing page I created for my Girl Gang the Label brand. You can add the address of your Linktree landing page to your social media profiles on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. With a Linktree landing page, you can update important links without having make the changes separately on all your social media accounts.

Posting regularly

Branding on social media requires more than creating a brand or business page or account, adding a profile, and posting relevant content occasionally or sporadically. For optimum results, post something relevant and interesting at least twice a week; otherwise, your friends, followers, and fans will quickly forget about your brand. Steady visibility is key.

To keep yourself on track, create an editorial schedule one or two months out, listing the dates of your future posts and their content. Consider creating a weekly feature centered on a specific day of the week. At Girl Gang, I highlight female-owned businesses on “Female Founder Friday.” Our audience knows that at the end of each week, they can tune in for stories and insights from female entrepreneurs.

Start thinking about regular content you can create and promote. If you have a monthly newsletter, you can post a teaser on social media with a call to action to sign up for your newsletter for more information. In addition to increasing engagement, a newsletter provides the means to capture customer email addresses and other contact info for direct marketing campaigns.

Monitoring and responding to posts

Not monitoring and responding to posts on your social media sites is like throwing a party and then ignoring your guests and letting the event get out of hand. You need to keep an eye on what’s going on and engage with visitors for two important reasons:

• If anyone’s posting comments that are offensive or abusive, you need to remove their comments and report them so that their accounts can be suspended or canceled.
• If anyone asks a question, expresses a concern, posts a positive or negative comment about your brand, or posts anything else that warrants a response, you need to know about it and respond. People want to know that you listen, understand, and care about what they think.

You’re better off committing to one social media platform and doing it right than setting up shop on multiple platforms and neglecting them.

Before posting a response to someone’s comment, consider how your response will reflect on your brand. Make sure that the tone of your response is consistent with your brand and that the content is respectful and courteous.

Choosing your friends carefully

On social media, you’re often judged by the company you keep, so associate only with people, businesses, and brands that align with your brand’s mission and values.

By remaining consistent to your brand’s mission and values, you make your brand attractive and open to associations and partnerships with other brands and businesses. Protect your reputation, or you’ll lose out on such opportunities.

Taking your own photos on a budget

Anyone with a decent smartphone can take respectable photos these days, and uploading them to social media sites has never been easier. If you don’t know where to start, begin by collecting photos from other brands you like, and figure out what you like about them. Do all the photos have people in them? Are the images dark or bright? Are the photos still shots of products, or do they show products in use? Answers to questions like these will help you decide on the composition (setting) and lighting for your photos.

Photography is a complex topic far beyond the scope of this book. You can find plenty of guidance on the topic in Digital Photography For Dummies, 7th Edition, by Julie Adair King (Wiley), along with countless online tutorials on taking everything from product photos to personal branding photos.

Start taking photos, and get feedback from friends, relatives, and associates. If you wait until you know everything and you’re able to take professional-looking photos, you’ll be waiting forever. Here are a few tips I can offer from experience:

• Use a tripod whenever possible to ensure clear focus. You can fix nearly anything in a digital photo by using photo editing software as long as the photo isn’t blurry. (Try taking photos with and without flash.)
• Make sure that the location and context support the brand’s image and values, especially everything in the background.
• Pay attention to lighting and shadows. Use natural light for the best results. If you’re taking photos outdoors, morning or early evening is best unless you’re going for super-bright sunshine.
• For flat lays (photos of a product on a flat surface), incorporate items aligned with things your customer avatar would enjoy. If you have a swimwear line, for example, place sunscreen and sunglasses in the picture.
• Take lots of photos to improve your chances of getting the perfect one.
• Use photo editing software to improve the quality of your photos. Free applications such as Canva’s online photo editor (https://www.canva.com/photo-editor) make it easy to filter, resize, crop, and edit photos for free.

Recording and posting video content

Video is one of the most effective media for building brand recognition and identity. In fact, videos generate more likes, comments, and discussion than static photos or text. They also provide the means to diversify the content you offer.

You don’t need a movie studio to shoot your own video for branding purposes. A smartphone with a decent camera should do the trick. You can use the video editing software that comes installed on every Apple and Windows PC to edit the video and even layer audio on top of it. Then you can upload your video to your social media account.

See Chapter 12 for more about shooting video and posting it on YouTube. The process is similar across all social media platforms. If the platform has a mobile app (as most platforms do), you can use it to upload video directly from your phone to your account.

Shoot all video in landscape mode unless you’re posting it to Instagram, which optimizes the video to be viewed in portrait mode on smartphones.

When posting video, be sure to add a title, description, keywords, and tags, and choose a category if the platform provides a field for adding it. The more descriptive text you can add to the video, the better, because search engines use that text to determine how to index the video.

Hiring content creators

If you can’t get the photo or video quality you need by doing it yourself, or if you prefer to outsource this chore, hire a professional photographer or videographer. Here’s how to go about finding the right candidate for the job:

1. Ask you friends, colleagues, and associates whether they know any good photographers near you, or search sites such as Craigslist, Upwork, or even Instagram for candidates.

2. Vet the candidates by checking out their photos and videos and by contacting their references.

   Faking talent online is easy, so make sure that the person you hire has a track record of producing quality photos and video, preferably for the social media platforms you intend to use.

3. Whittle down your list of candidates based on their rates and the quality of their work.

4. Contract the top candidate on your list.

   Make sure that your contract covers the following:

   • Both parties’ contact info.
   • Rate/price.
   • Deadline/timeline.
   • Ownership of content produced. (Normally, the photographer/videographer retains the copyright and grants you use rights, but this aspect is negotiable.)
   • Statement of who’s responsible for obtaining signed model and property releases so that you have legal permission to show the model and location.
   • Details on postproduction editing and any additional costs associated with it.
   • Cancellation policy.

Have your attorney prepare the contract or review the vendor’s contract before signing anything.

Micro influencer versus macro influencer

Influencers are often divided into two categories: micro influencers, who have 10,000 to 100,000 followers, and macro influencers, who have more than 100,000 followers. Macro influencers are more likely than micro influencers to charge for their services, and they’re likely to charge more, but they’re not necessarily the more effective of the two. A micro influencer with a smaller audience of highly engaged and motivated followers may be the better choice.

When evaluating influencers, consider more than cost and number of followers. Also consider the level of engagement, which is reflected in how followers respond to the influencer’s posts, such as the number of likes, shares, and comments. Depending on the level of engagement, an account with a smaller following may actually reach more people.

Paid influencer versus organic influencer

Another distinction among influencers is paid versus organic. Per-post rates for paid influencers generally are based on the influencer’s number of followers and the social media platform, and they range from single-digit dollar amounts to tens of thousands of dollars.

Organic (unpaid) influencer campaigns, however, can be just as successful for a tiny fraction of the cost — sometimes just a polite request, some swag (such as a branded T-shirt), or a complementary product.

Send a free product or a sample to an influencer, along with a brief handwritten note (including your social media handle) asking the influencer to post a product review. When you give a free product, you can’t demand specific terms regarding the post, as you can with paid influencers, but if you get your product in the hands of influencers and they love it, chances are good that they’ll post about it.

Planoly

Planoly (https://www.planoly.com) enables you to plan and schedule content to post on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. If you’re sharing your social media management workload with members of a team, you can create multiple logins and even manage campaigns for multiple brands (for an additional cost) from a single account. One of Planoly’s coolest features is sellit, which enables you to turn any social platform into a storefront and sell items directly on the platform instead of linking to a separate website or online store.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite (https://www.hootsuite.com) is a social media management platform that enables you to schedule posts across all your social media accounts, access all your brand images directly from the Hootsuite dashboard, monitor social conversations and brand mentions, respond quickly to comments and (with the help of analytics) see what’s working and what’s not.

Tailwind

Tailwind (https://www.tailwindapp.com) bills itself as a smart marketing assistant exclusively for Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest that enables you to automate your designs, schedule posts, and analyze engagement data. One of its most useful features transforms your photos into various branded designs suitable for posting on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. It can also help you team up with influencers on these platforms.

Pinterest works best when you create a schedule and post pins regularly. (A pin is a single item posted on Pinterest, typically consisting of a photo and caption, compared with a board, which is a collection of related pins.) Tailwind makes it easier to batch pins and set up auto posting for your account.

Buffer

Buffer (https://buffer.com) is a simple social media management tool that enables you to plan and coordinate campaigns on most popular social media platforms. You can use Buffer to monitor your social media accounts from a single interface and instantly respond to brand mentions and comments. The software also offers analytics that provide valuable insight into campaign performance.