Social Media Secrets You Need to Know Right Now | Breaking Down the Algorithm
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Show Notes
I am really excited to talk about social media today. I think we all know the value of social media when used correctly for our businesses. It can help us grow our following, build networks, sell our product or our service, and it's just fun, right? We would all be lying if we said we didn't sit down and scroll on social media for at least a little bit every day. But, I want to talk about the difference between just being on social media to have a presence there versus using it strategically for your business. So tune in to the full episode, because you are going to walk away with a lot of practical tips that you can implement today to take the stress out of planning your social media content and to actually see social media working for you.
How Not to Use Instagram
#1 DO NOT COLD DM
If you are still reaching out to the girl that you never talked to in high school to try and get her to try out your new beauty product or slim-fast shake, let’s put an end to that, OK? I know for me it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Cold DMing your product is not an effective marketing method anymore. You might be thinking, “oh, yeah, MLM’s”… but sadly, this is happening in all sorts of industries. Take the time to get to know people. Build the relationship, show up consistently, share success stories, focus on the value your product can bring to someone’s life and eventually, your inbox will be flooded with leads and you won’t have to drop in with a copy and pasted sales pitch.
#2 DO NOT POST WITHOUT PURPOSE
Are you ever scrambling to post content because it’s been a few days and you know it’s important to show up consistently, so you find a photo on your iPhone that's a little bit blurry because you didn't take it with the intention of using it for social media, but you don't have anything to post today so you use it anyway. Don't do that! You need to post with purpose. Don't find random images just for the sake of getting something up. Quality does matter and I do believe that the quality of your content is really important, more so even than quantity. Your feed and the way that it's curated is what makes people decide whether or not to click that little follow button. When somebody lands on your profile for the very first time, if they see a combination of some blurry random photos and then some maybe professional photos and some stock photos, there's going to be no cohesiveness there. I think, you know, we are so as human beings, we are drawn to things that are aesthetic and pretty. Not that your feed has to have the most beautiful color palette and everything has to be on-brand every time. It doesn't have to be that way. Don't think perfection is the standard here, but the quality is.
#3 YOUR CAPTION SHOULD RELATE TO THE PHOTO BEING SHARED
If you want to tell a story and maybe you're using a landscape photo, that's just really pretty and it's going to work well on your feed, just at least reference the image or what the image is of. I think people are craving relevant, relatable content. They're craving you to talk to them about what you're posting. So if I post a website design of somebody who does brows in Miami, then I need to share the story of the person behind this website. People are so worried about filling their feed with really pretty photos, but they're not spending enough time on the actual caption. And the caption, in my opinion, is what's going to get you the engagement that you're after? The engagement is actually what's going to help you grow your following at an exponential rate.
How to Use Social Media
#1 SHOW UP CONSISTENTLY
Can we talk about the algorithm for a second? Because I want to just calm you guys down by saying the algorithm is not this big, bad, scary monster. The algorithm is simply there to judge quality content. So, if you are posting quality content consistently, the algorithm is going to be your best friend. So here's how it works. When you post something on social media, people start liking it, people start commenting on it, people start saving it. This is all telling Instagram, “hey, this person just posted something really good that people are liking. We should show it to more people.” So engagement needs to be the goal.
We are creatures of habit. I don't know about you, but I know for me I get on social media usually around the same times every day. I follow, like, and interact with usually the same handful of accounts every day around those times. So in order to show up consistently for people, you want to post around the same time every day. That is how you're going to grow faster because people want to know when they can expect you and what they can expect from you.
#2 ENCOURAGE YOUR FOLLOWERS
I am all about organic growth. I have never been in follow groups, I don't get in those little pods, and I really don't do giveaways. So those are always where you can grow really fast. But, depending on the type of business you have, faster growth may not necessarily mean better. For me, the quality of my followers matters to me so much more than the quantity of them. That's because as a web designer and a brand designer, I can only take on so many web design clients and so many brand design clients every month. So depending on what you do, the way this might look different. But, if you are in a business selling a product or a service where quality really does matter more than quantity, don't worry so much about that follower count. Worry about the content that you're posting and what type of follower that's going to attract. If you grow too fast there's a good chance that you're going to alienate some of that follower count with what you're posting, because it's just not going to be relatable to everybody.
#3 BOOST YOUR ENGAGEMENT
So how can you get people to comment and like your photos and even more importantly, save your photos? The very first one, ask questions. So at the end of the caption leave a question to encourage people to respond, even if it's something as silly as, hey, what are your weekend plans? Anyone doing anything fun this weekend? People love to talk about themselves, we are all just created that way. We love to talk about what's going on in our own lives. So ask people to share their experience in whatever topic you're posting about that day. I think that's a really good way to get people commenting. Another way would be to ask a question asking them to tag people. So I see this a lot, working with a lot of female business owners, tag a fellow girl-boss, tag a working mama who's just crushing it right now, or who needs some encouragement. Again, that is a really good way to get your content in front of more people who otherwise would not have seen it.
Instagram story has a lot of features to make this easy for you. So use those question stickers where you can ask a question and people get to respond. Another great way with Instagram stories is to use polls because people love to vote. Either way, as long as you're getting people to engage, to actually spend a little bit more time looking at your content, that's going to play into Instagram's algorithm and therefore it boosts you up in the feed.
#4 GENUINE COMMENTING
Another piece of advice I want to give you when it comes to engagement is that engaging with other people will help them engage more with you. For example, when you take the time to comment on people's posts with a genuine response. I hate when people are commenting on your post simply just to get in front of your followers. You know that because they clearly didn't take the time to read the caption. If you take the time to comment, take the time to read what you're commenting on and make sure that your comment has something to do with what they took the time to post about. When you're going on commenting on other people’s posts with sincere comments, that is going to not only have other people who happen to be reading the comments in that thread come over and check out what you're doing on your account, but it's also going to help you have more people come and comment on yours.
#5 STRESS-FREE PLANNING
What I do at BrandWell is create category pillars for my content. So my category pillars, or content categories, are website design, logo designs, behind the scenes, mood boards, the podcast, branding tips, and my why. That's seven different content categories that I can choose from every time I am crafting a post for social media. Doing this takes a lot of the guesswork out of it for you. If you've ever gotten on the app with the intention of posting and you're like, “what the heck do I post?” Having categories that you can just look at your list and say, oh, you know, I haven't shared a behind the scenes post in a few days. That's what I'm going to share today. It's also going to help you build some consistency with your audience. And what's beautiful about that, if you start sharing one of these categories every day on social media, after about a month or so, you can look back on all of that content and you can actually see what your audience is most drawn to. Evaluate your content categories, see what's performing best, and then share more of that, because the whole goal is to create more shareable, save worthy content.
More content category ideas:
+ Creating tips for saves and building your authority
+ Share yourself on your feed for emotional connection
+ Sharing client success stories for social proof and to build trust
+ Video content to build engagement
#6 REMEMBER TO BE RELATABLE
When you are using social media, you have to be a friend, you have to be an educator, and then you can be a marketer. You're not using social media solely to talk about your business and to sell your product. At the end of the day, you have to show that there's a real person behind the squares, that’s posting that content. That's what's going to be relatable.
MY TWO FAVORITE APPS
Planoly - for content planning, feed layout, writing out captions, and schedule posts. If you have the app on your phone it will even send you reminders.
2. Lightroom Mobile - use a preset for a more consistent look on your grid.
That is all of my advice on how to use social media strategically for your business to post with purpose in a way that builds engagement and therefore boosts you up in the algorithm so you can get your content in front of more people and grow your business. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe and review. It means so much to me.
KEEP BRANDING WELL,
Victoria
