Social Media, “I Have No Idea What I’m Doing.” A Guide for Beginners.
October 2018 Main Street Matters
Written by Hope Stokes, Director of Brand Management, Amarillo Convention & Visitor Council
Managing your Main Street program’s or small business’ social media can be a scary and overwhelming task, especially if you are a one-person show. With constant updates to algorithms and platforms, it can often seem like once you get a hang of things, you are pushed back to square one. Everyone that dwells within the social media world is right there with you when it comes to the frustrations of staying up-to-date and managing multiple platforms for your program. Have no fear! Since this is such a common issue, there are many resources and tools that can help alleviate some of the stress that comes with managing social media. Today, I’m going to answer some of the most commonly asked questions I receive regarding social media, and give you tips and tricks on how to help you successfully manage your organization’s social media during 2018-19.
What social platforms should I be using?
*Crowd chants in unison* “ALL OF THEM!”
Wrong. For a business with limited resources, it can be incredibly overwhelming and next to impossible to manage six-plus social media profiles. Best practice is to go with Facebook first and build from there. Facebook performs well for all demographics and is the king of the social media world. Yes, there are more “older” people on Facebook, but the younger audience is still alive and well on the platform. Once you have your Facebook squared away and building followers, move on to the next platform that best fits your target audience’s demographics. Here are a few stats on what people you can find on each platform:
When should I be posting?
It’s always important to understand that your audience isn’t the same as everyone else’s and should be treated as such. If you have some history built up on your platform, you should look at the free analytics that every platform provides on your audience’s activity. From there all you need to do is post when your audience is most active! Remember that as your following grows, so will your analytics. Be sure you are constantly monitoring your page /profile’s analytics, so you are catering to your current audience at all times. If you have just started or don’t have enough data on your followers yet, start posting at the average optimal post times as shown below, and adjust your post times as you grow your audience.
How do I create “good” content?
Great question! Content is king when it comes to social media, plain and simple. If you don’t have good relevant content, then no one has any reason to follow you. The first step to having good content is understanding that there are different standards for good content on each platform. One rule that exists across all platforms is that text-only posts are a bad idea. There’s simply too much content with beautiful graphics and images for someone to care about your post with nothing but text. You need to have eye-catching images and graphics with your posts for people to pay attention. It’s perfectly acceptable to paste a link that pulls in metadata (images and text from the website you’re linking to) to check off the image criteria on your Facebook posts.
With Instagram, you’ll need to be a little more creative. Instagram is all about pretty pictures, so you’ll need to make sure your images are cropped and edited appropriately so they look nice. Use the editor that Instagram has gifted you with. It will help to make your images pop, but don’t go too crazy—people don’t like something that is obviously fake. As far as Twitter goes, infographics, and images work great. People go to Twitter for information, so they are less concerned with a beautiful photo, and more interested in an image or infographic that supports the information you are feeding them.
If you aren’t a photographer or Photoshop expert, here are a few tools that can help you build great content at little to no cost:
Canva (my favorite!)
Pagemodo (helpful for building header images and infographics)
Adobe Spark (Photoshop for dummies)
How do I successfully manage a contest through social media to help build my following?
I’m so glad you asked! Promoting contests through your social media is an excellent way to shine some light on your profile and gain some followers. “Promoting” is the keyword in that last sentence. On Facebook, you should never be running a contest solely from your social channel, because there’s way too much red tape and room for error. Facebook has very strict rules about contests and they are not messing around when it comes to the consequences for not following these rules. They will permanently delete your page for not abiding by their rules. Asking people to like, share, or follow you to enter a contest is strictly forbidden. You see it all the time, but those people are subject to deletion at any time. SCARY! The best practice when it comes to Facebook contests is to run the contest from your website, and promote the contest by encouraging people to enter it by linking to your website from your post. Don’t forget to place a disclaimer in all your posts promoting the contest stating that your promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with Facebook. Here is a full, comprehensive breakdown on how to promote your contest through Facebook.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is a little more relaxed. You can find their guidelines here. They still require a disclaimer, but do not have specific bans on asking people to follow you or tag friends. Since they are owned by Facebook, I would not say it’s farfetched to assume that they will start being stricter on contests in the near future, so keep an eye out for updates to their promotion guidelines.
Twitter is like the cool uncle when it comes to contests. They do not require any lengthy disclaimer, though you must inform people that you are running a contest across all platforms. Their main beef with contests is that they don’t want you spamming people, and they don’t want people creating multiple accounts to enter your contest multiple times. You can see their full list of contest rules here.
I’ve covered a few of the most frequently asked questions I receive regarding social media, but I’m sure you have many more questions! Since managing social media is a challenge for everyone, even the experts, you can find excellent articles and blogs about social media across the internet. All it requires is a simple Google search. Some of my favorite sources for social media help are Sprout Social (Meltwater), Hubspot, Social Report, and Hootsuite.
Remember, even though the social media world is a scary place, it is doable! There is an entire community of people working together across the globe to conquer the social media realm, and we are all relying on one another to make it happen. Happy socializing!