Social Media for Brands: 5 Tips to Get You Started

Social Media is known to be one of the best ways for brands to interact with its audience directly. While building a following is key and difficult at times, consistency and the right content at the right time is what will get you the required results. Here are 5 tips to get you started.

Tip 1: Start with a Social Media Calendar

The First step to interacting with your audience on social media is to create a plan or a schedule of posts. Here are a few benefits that will help gain more traction and a following with a well-organized social media calendar:

• Planning in advance helps improve efficiency and reduce the time spent on a daily basis
• The calendar adds a rhythm and order to the posts
• Maintain frequency and ensure punctuality

Tip 2: Identify the Right Time

Social media calendars are generally created on a weekly or monthly basis. Larger companies with enough content, data and resources plan out monthly calendars, whereas the weekly calendar is most popular format among small and mid level companies looking to gain followers.

Now that your calendar schedule has been decided, the next step would be to plan out the days and time to post. The best time, days and frequency vary according to various channels, industry, and the preferences of the company. There is no single proven formula for this. You can leverage a mix of research – based info and your company’s strengths, to arrive at a particular formula. Here are some of the best days of the week and the frequency according to Sprout Social and Coschedule.

Facebook

• Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday
• 9 a.m.to 1 p.m.
• 1 post per day

Instagram

• Tuesday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Monday through Friday 11 a.m.
• 1 – 2 posts per day

Twitter

• Wednesday 9 a.m.to 3 p.m.
• Tuesday through Thursday 9 to 11 a.m.
• 15 tweets per day

Linkedin

• Tuesday through Thursday
• 9 a.m. to 12noon
• 1 post per day

Tip 3: Get the Right Post on the Right Channel

The type of content that works on each social channel differs based on its nature. For example, when on Instagram, your posts need images to tell your story. Here’s a quick look of what we’ve seen:

• Facebook: Links to content in various formats – videos, short form content, etc.
• Instagram: High resolution images with a story around it
• Linkedin: Curated links with information about your industry
• Twitter: While tweets can go up to 280 characters, 33 characters is the average

Again, as mentioned there is no exact right formula for your company.

Tip 4: Bring in the Right Mix of Content

Posts can be your own, curated from various credible sources, or content that promotes your product/service. To arrive at the right mix, you can take your own data into consideration, and map it with an existing formula. Here are the most common formulas followed by firms:

• Rule of the Third: 1/3^rd of curated , 1/3^rd own content and 1/3^rd promotional
• 4-1-1 Rule: 4 own content posts, 1 re-share for every 1 promotional content
• 30-60-10 Golden Ratio: 30% own content , 10% promotional, and 60% curated content

Depending on the formula you choose, you may lean more towards generating your own content, or curating content.

Tip 5: Content Based on the Day

The type of post on a particular day can be tweaked according to the popular mood of the audience, and the channel. For example posting on LinkedIn on the weekends is a bad idea because it is used predominantly on weekdays by most working professionals. Here are a few curated ideas to get you started:

• Monday: Motivation to start a productive week, Monday blues, groggy after a weekend
• Tuesday: Graphic with advice, facts, trivia or titbits related to your industry
• Wednesday: Motivation to power through the second half of the week, focus on personal wellness, growth and development
• Thursday: Throwback to your company’s story and history to enable customers to connect with the company. This is the best day to post on social media and gain traction
• Friday: Best day to share a fun, playful or a happy post from the company – happy customers, staff members, or celebrate the happy onset of the weekend and connect with emotions

While you follow these tips to build your social media presence, it is also important to measure the performance. With DataMyth, you can have your Facebook ad campaigns analyzed within seconds at the click of a button in the near future. At the moment, DataMyth can analyze your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts in minutes.