10 Social Media Hacks You Need to Know- Like Now
April 17, 2016
The Social Media landscape is ever changing, and to be honest, that’s one of the many reasons why we love it! Social media has forever restructured the way businesses communicate with their customers. What used to be a one-way dialogue is now a two-way conversation between company and consumer, allowing for opportunities to establish real, meaningful relationships.
As a business owner, schedules can get busy, and it can be hard to keep up with the latest and greatest that social media has to offer. That’s what we’re here for! Over the years, we’ve built up a repertoire of tips and tricks that can be used by any business. These hacks are easy, and can be implemented with any social strategy.
Here are 10 tricks to help you do your thing on social media:
Pinterest:
- Utilize Secret Boards
Let’s be honest, we all love a good secret every now and then. Marketers know that every idea is not always ‘publish’ ready, and since Pinterest gets us, they rolled out ‘secret boards’ a few years back. However, not everyone knows about them!
Secret boards are the perfect tool for an idea or social campaign that is still in the development phase. What’s great about these boards is that they can be used by an individual or a group of collaborators, making it easy for your team to work on a project without giving anything away to the public. But that’s not all! Using secret boards is also great for coordinating product launches, planning events, gaining competitor insights, profiling your customers, and inspiring your team.
- Take Advantage of Rich Pins
You’re probably asking yourself ‘What are rich pins?’.“Rich Pins are Pins that include extra information right on the Pin itself. There are 6 types of Rich Pins: app, movie, recipe, article, product and place.” quoted directly from the social platform. The main differences (advantages) of rich pins are: they automatically update with your website, they have a higher visibility on the home feed, and they ease the shopping experience by providing readily available information.
Facebook:
- Target Posts to a Specific Audience
If you’re looking for ways to improve engagement, then Facebook targeted posts are the way to go. With Facebook targeting, you are now able to tailor a post to cater a specific audience. Hosting an event in Los Angeles? Target your post to only reach people in the LA area. The social network also lets you target based on a wider range of options including: gender, age, relationship status, educational status, language, and interests.
Twitter:
- Use Search Operators
Are you looking for something specific on Twitter? With the help of Twitter’s search operators, there is now a more efficient way to find specific information. While the social channel is praised for its access to real-time news and updates, sometimes you just want to see tweets from a specific person, on a specific subject or on a specific date. This is when you would utilize search operators.
Below is a list of supported search operators for Twitter.
Image courtesy of Buffer.
- Create a Twitter List of Your Competitors
One of the easiest ways to keep tabs on others in your industry is by curating a private Twitter list of your competitors. See what type of content they’re sharing, who they are interacting with, and which practices they use that have proven results. This list will come in handy when you need a little inspiration, are performing a social media audit, or just want to stay ahead of the game.
LinkedIn:
- Say Yes to Sponsored Updates
Delivery engaging content to the right audience is vital to any inbound marketing agency. However, we all know how hard it can be to distribute content efficiently and effectively, which is where LinkedIn Sponsored Updates come to play. Sponsored Updates are LinkedIn’s marketing solution that allows you to create targeted ads which push directly into the LinkedIn newsfeed. These updates are great for B2B marketers who want to promote their message to others outside of the company page following.
- Take Advantage of Negative Targeting
Negative targeting allows you to exclude a specific audience from your LinkedIn ads, this is one of the best ways to ensure that the users seeing your ads are the most relevant.
Tip: Use negative targeting wisely. Otherwise, you could exclude an entire audience of potential customers by assuming they may be irrelevant.
Google+:
- Create Targeted Circles
It seems as if we are constantly hearing about brands struggling to see results on Google+ that are similar to the social media giants, Facebook and Twitter. While it may take a little extra effort to establish yourself on this platform, it is definitely worth taking the time. Google+ offers a few features that aren’t available on any other social network, one being targeted circles.
When it comes to sharing your content, targeted circles are one of the best approaches for reaching out to specific members of your audience. By creating segmented circles you can help qualify your followers in order to provide them with content that’s most relevant and beneficial to them.
- Change the Formatting of Your Posts
A fun feature of Google+ is the ability to format your fonts within a post. This is an easy way to draw attention to your post and make your content and main point stand out. By simply adding a few symbols within a post, you can bold, italicize, or strikethrough by following the format below.
**Disclaimer- Do not include a space in between the symbol and the word or else the post will not format properly.
Instagram:
- Include a Link in Your Bio
As of right now, the only clickable link you can showcase on your Instagram, is in the bio. Since you can’t link on an Instagram post, your bio becomes prime real estate for including a link to your website. While there has been talk of Instagram releasing clickable links to the masses, this feature is only available for advertisers…for the time being. Shout out to Instagram for making some serious strides, though. We are all extremely tired of seeing the phrase “link in my bio!” in the caption.