SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
revised November 2020
We recently wrote a social media marketing how-to guide for our clients. It was 14 pages long! This comprehensive guide covered tips and tricks for using LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Today’s world is unfortunately still a place where you can buy followers and likes. However, writing this how-to piece was a good reminder of how much we can do, for free, to connect with our audience online. So I’ve decided to post a portion of this guide here for everyone that needs help navigating through the wilderness that is social media marketing.
Back to the Basics
To begin, let’s get back to the basics: What to post, where to post, how to post and when to post it. Other big questions we get:
- How do we use hashtags and on which channels?
- How can I mention a person, brand or organization?
- Can I schedule posts?
- Should I use emojis?
- What should I be posting?
We’ve got answers to these social media questions, along with many more.
While writing this social media marketing how-to guide, we spent our time focusing on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. All three social media platforms are typically up and running for most clients we work with.
Therefore, we could do screen shares and walk them through the best practices for each social media platform. If you’re new to managing digital marketing for your business, and want to know what outsourcing your social media marketing costs, check out our Services page.
Schedule your content in advance
You can always post immediately on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but we recommend setting aside 1-2 hours every Monday to set up and schedule your posts. Why? Because this gives you a chance to be more strategic with your social media marketing.
Other tips for planning out your content in advance:
- Use a Content Calendar- whether in Excel, Google Sheets or through a scheduling app like Hootsuite.
- Set up a theme for each week, working backwards from important events for your brand, or in the outdoor industry, or upcoming holidays.
- Share similar posts across several platforms, moving them to different days and times
- Share curated content from like-minded athletes and outdoor brands
- Easily replicate posts that performed well
Facebook Marketing
Facebook’s Business pages are now managed under Business Suite. Here you can see all of your Business pages if you are an Admin on more than one page.
In addition, Facebook and Instagram notifications are combined if your accounts are linked. Therefore, you can see all of your messages and comments in one place if you choose to use Business Suite. This can become confusing, especially if you typically have a lot of engagement with your posts! We recommend checking this on your desktop as opposed to your mobile to make it easier to see and respond to messages that are just coming in for Facebook.
Need help with Facebook Business Manager, which is what you’ll want to set up if you plan to run ads? Check out our latest Facebook and Instagram advertising post!
Once your Facebook Business page is set up, viewing your insights on Facebook is easy. The amount of data is enormous, and you can set filters to see day-to-day performance, or for a given date range. You can also view your reach and your past posts to ensure your social media marketing is on point.
In addition, you can set up pages to watch so you can see how you’re doing compared to the competition. As data-lovers, we’re always excited to comb through the numbers each week!
How to Post on Facebook
One of the best pieces of advice we can give in regards to social media marketing is to schedule out your social media posts. With Facebook, there’s a few ways to do this.
Use Facebook’s Publishing Tools to create your posts and schedule them. There are several applications, like Hootsuite, where you can manage all of your social accounts in one app. This is by far our favorite time-saver when it comes to social media marketing!
Interested in using Facebook Live and their new Facebook Live Producer? Read our latest post on Going Live with Facebook and Instagram!
When to Post on facebook and how often
Use your Facebook Insights, go to Posts, and there you can see when your fans are online. Furthermore, you can see which days and times might work best to post.
Lastly, you can see previous post performance here as well. This will give you an idea of which style of post is performing best.
How often should you post on your Facebook page? We recommend that clients aim for 2-3 Facebook posts per week, and either before 10am or after 4pm.
What to write or what videos you should record
Need ideas for content for your Facebook social media marketing strategy? Grab a piece of paper and write down the top 10 questions you often get asked about your outdoor brand, product, service or organization.
Turn these into blog posts or video posts, store ’em on your website and share a link to one of these each week in your Facebook posts. Keep in mind, video content is still king, so get comfortable using video and set up a YouTube channel!
In addition, once a week we’ll share a link to content we’ve curated from like-minded outdoor brands or outdoor industry publications. As an example, we’ll share relevant stories from publications like SNEWS, Bicycle Retailer and Outside Magazine. Pro tip: have the content come to you via tools like Google Alerts.
Make sure you @ mention the publication by using the @ symbol and then their Facebook Page. Only Facebook Businesses can be tagged, not individuals.
Need more content ideas? Check out our latest blog: How to Use your Website to Generate Better Leads.
Hashtags and Link Sharing Tips
With Facebook, we recommend using no more that 3 hashtags in the post, if you want to use them at all. They are clickable, but the jury is out on whether or not the hashtags actually help your Facebook post reach more people. Here’s more on Hashtags from Sprout Social.
For link sharing, Facebook lets you share direct clickable links in a post. To keep your post looking clean, once you add the link in, you can actually delete it and the media portion of the link, with hopefully a great image, will remain.
If there is no image attached to the link, you can add in your own image. However, this image when clicked, will not take viewers to the actual link. Pro tip: When creating a blog or new webpage, ensure you include a social sharing image for the piece for this very reason.
Facebook Stories
Facebook Stories is great place to share videos, reminders or new announcements. To use Facebook Stories:
- Click on your avatar (logo)
- Click Create story
- Setting is either Normal or Boomerang
- Take a photo or video, or upload a photo or video from your Camera Roll
- You can also set up your Instagram Stories so that they push directly to your Facebook Stories as well
Instagram Marketing
First, set up a business account for Instagram. You’ll now have the option to add a Contact button, your address, directions to your business, direct messaging options, all appearing in your profile. You can leave the address portion out if you offer an online product or service.
With a business account, you can then view Instagram analytics. Click the hamburger (menu) at the top right of your Instagram profile page to get started. You can also view Instagram Insights by clicking on the ‘X profile visits in the last 7 days’ on your profile.
When checking in, we recommend viewing your notifications first by clicking on the heart icon at the bottom of your profile page. After checking all new notifications, click the house icon and then in the upper right corner you’ll click the paper airplane icon. This will allow you to see any direct messages. If you’ll be posting regularly, get in the habit of checking these daily as many folks will reach out with a direct message.
There are many paid services that will give you deeper insights into your Instagram posts and improve your social media marketing. But when you’re just getting started, stick with the Instagram platform for your Insights.
Furthermore, you can check your Insights easily through the mobile app, but keep in mind you’ll only see about 7 days of data that compares to the previous 7 days.
How to Post on Instagram
Once again, we recommend using a tool like Hootsuite to schedule out your Instagram posts. This will save you a considerable amount of time in your social media marketing efforts. Otherwise, posting is done from the app on your phone. Not on a computer, although you can like and comment from a computer.
Want your post to have spaces or text breaks? The best advice is to write the copy outside of the Instagram App, so using Hootsuite or in your Notes section. Here’s more tips on getting those spaces or line breaks into your Instagram post!
When to Post on Instagram and How Often
Just like with Facebook, click on your Insights to see when the majority of your audience is online. We find mornings are often best on Tuesday to Thursdays, and then anytime Sunday.
How often should you post on Instagram? We get this question quite a bit. We recommend no more than 3-4 posts per week. However, this may differ based on your business’s goals and the time you have to dedicate to Instagram.
In addition, the Instagram algorithm is based on machine learning, so it’s constantly changing. Factors that affect how many people will see your post include the interest people have in your post, timeliness, relationship, and engagement, among others. Read more here on Later.com about How the Instagram Algorithm works.
If you follow our recommendations about planning out your social media marketing content by using a tool like Hootsuite, you can then be more strategic with your Instagram posts.
For example, if a client has a big event coming up next month, or a sale, we’ll start talking about it now, scheduling a post once a week about the event. We’ll use photos from last year’s event, or images of the items that will be on sale.
What to Share in Your Instagram Posts
Seeking content for your Instagram posts is always time-consuming. Especially if you are not producing fresh videos and images each quarter. Here’s more ideas on how to work with photographers and videographers and what this might cost.
Answering your most frequently asked questions is a good place to start, and we’ve written at length about this in our last blog post. Link sharing? It doesn’t work the same with Instagram as you cannot have a live, clickable link in your post. However, you can use an app like Repost to share someone else’s post.
Therefore, your best bet is to select a dozen photos each month that represent the content you plan to share. If you do not have the best images or graphics to represent the theme you’re going for, try Canva or UnSplash for free images.
Adding a location to each post, unless you’re not sure where the photo was taken, will allow users to click on that location and see more posts from there. Secret location? Best not to share.
As with any social media marketing, you want to be sure to stay on brand. Be consistent with the tone and style of the message. Use the same filter, the same set of emojis, the same look and feel to each post. And then there’s hashtags.
using @ mentions and Hashtags on Instagram
Hashtags originally started on Twitter, but have now become the norm across most social media platforms. Instagram allows for 30 hashtags in a post or comment, 10 in an Instagram story. By using a hashtag, or set of hashtags, your post could be seen by more people who are searching the hashtag and do not follow you, yet.
We often place these hashtags in the 1st comment to avoid the post looking cluttered, or by adding spaces or line breaks, and placing the relevant hashtags after the space.
What are the best hashtags to use? This should be based on your industry, and the product, service or mission of the organization. Hashtags like #exercise or #optoutside are hugely popular, with over 15 million posts each using those hashtags.
However, if you niche down to #backcountrysnowboarding this may be more effective in getting your post viewed by more people who do not already follow you. Here’s ‘the Ultimate Guide to Instagram Hashtags in 2020′.
For mentions, same as Facebook. Use the @ symbol and then the Instagram handle of the person or organization you want to mention. You can mention someone in your text, or your can tag them in your photo.
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are great for sharing previously recorded or live videos, reminders, funny happenings or new announcements. These are similar to Facebook Stories in how you set one up:
- Click on your avatar (logo) in your Instagram profile, or the camera icon if you’re scrolling through your feed
- At the bottom of the screen the setting is Normal, letting you record an image or video, or upload one from your photos.
- Add a hashtag, location, gifs, text, and send it out to your public feed, or share in private.
- Want to get more creative? Swipe over to Boomerang, Layout (that’s where you see 2-6 photos on a Story), Superzoom (those cute hearts though), Hands-Free, Create (for text only pieces) or Live.
- Thinking about Going Live on Instagram? Read our blog on How to Go Live with Facebook and Instagram first!
- You can also set up your Instagram Stories so that they push directly to your Facebook Stories as well
Advertising on Instagram
Interested in going beyond social media marketing and ready to get started with Instagram Advertising? Check out our post that walk you through Instagram Advertising through Facebook.
It’s a step-by-step approach that will get your Instagram ads up and running for as little as $5 a day!
Twitter and Why You Should Be Tweeting
Next stop on the social media marketing trail? Twitter. I am often amazed when I hear things like, ‘Do we have to have a Twitter account?’ ‘Can’t we just focus on Instagram and Facebook?’
Well, yes you can. But, with over 330 million monthly active users, it’s in your best interest as an outdoor brand to tweet. There are millions of athletes on Twitter that could use your product, services or support your non-profit!
We’ve also found than most journalists use twitter, so it’s easier to connect with them here than via email. We can also DM or direct message them to pitch an idea.
Twitter used to be limited to 140 characters in a tweet, and has now grown to 280 characters per tweet! If you’re a clever writer, you can actually fit quite a bit into each tweet, including links, emojis and hashtags.
Twitter also offers free analytics which you can view from a computer. Unlike Instagram, you can see several months of data. Therefore, you can dive in to see your impressions, engagement rate, your top tweet and top mention.
How to Tweet
As with other social media marketing channels, there are countless blogs and how-to’s on using Twitter. One of my faves is Mom This is How Twitter Works by Jessica Hische. She makes me laugh out loud.
You can tweet from your phone or computer. And again, using a scheduling tool like Hootsuite will help you stay organized and reuse content you’ve created for other social media channels.
Once you have the app installed and your profile setup, click the feather at the bottom of the screen to create a new tweet. 280 characters will feel limiting at first, but you’ll soon the get hang of being concise.
What to Share on Twitter
Here’s a few tips of what you might want to share on Twitter:
- Links to content you love (retweeting, with or without a comment from you)
- Links to your website (sharing blogs, new offerings, products)
- Current events and outdoor industry happenings
- Tips and resources to help others in your niche
using hashtags on Twitter
We recommend no more than 3-4 hashtags at the end of your Tweet. Just like with Instagram, hashtags are helpful in showing your post to people outside of your followers that are searching the hashtag.
Other Stops on the Social Media Marketing Roadmap
From TikTok to SnapChat, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Social media marketing channels keep growing. Even Venmo allows you to like and comment on when people you know pay someone for something.
I don’t quite care how much Jen paid Lucy for her Thai food, but you can imagine this information on Venmo is useful to a company trying to determine your spending habits.
Want to find out what channels your audience likes to use? Ask them!
Why Small outdoor brands and non-profits Need Social Media Marketing
I often find managing social media is an afterthought for many small organizations. They do not have the time nor the resources. They’re packing up from a long day at work, they jump on, post a photo and head home.
Instead, be strategic! This is an important part of your outreach, so treat it the same as answering emails or organizing a fundraising event.
Here’s some more tips to make social media marketing a success for your small business:
- Assign a social media marketing manager or hire one!
- Collaborate with your team to determine what you should focus on for the week
- Use a Content Calendar to plan
- Use a tool like Hootsuite to schedule posts across all of your social channels
- Assign content creators for the month and give them a range of topics or blog ideas.
More social media resources:
Final thoughts: OWN it
One of the biggest mistakes we see is when someone in your organization does not own social media marketing for your brand. This person should not only be posting, but also planning and generating content. They should also be engaging with brand ambassadors, and other like-minded brands.
In the end, it’s all about engaging with your audience. You need to share videos that are of interest to your followers, mention your partners, respond to comments, tag your volunteers in photos and use hashtags that will help people find you.
Until next time, happy posting!
– Meredith