Social Media Best Practices: Our Picks

It’s really understandable you want to be the master with your social media networks. But, we have some bad news - there is no shortcut or magical way to achieve social media success. Sometimes it involves hard work and time to find your way to win the social audience's engagement and interest. However, with these 23 social media best practices, you could finally improve your performance and get more leads. No matter what industry you’re in, this article contains tips everyone should know.

Why do you Need Social Media Best Practices?

As the name suggests, social media best practices are proven activities that have worked for many companies and can help interest and engage customers or even encourage them to take the desired action.

If you apply them to your social media accounts, there is an excellent chance that your audience will resonate better with your socials. But, of course, not every practice will necessarily work with your audience because different messages work on people, and each target group likes something different; for example, something different will interest a teenager, and something different will be enjoyed by a mother of two in her 40s.

So if you don't have an idea for your social media platforms, but you want to make a difference and affect your audience more, we bring you this article. We give you up to 22 examples that can positively influence your social accounts. We’re sure you'll find something you'll like there!

23 Best Social Media Practices

#1 Set Goals

Let's start with the basic advice, which is to set goals. It's impossible to win on the right social media networks if you don't know which direction you want to go. Specifying your goals will allow you to put some things in order and clarify what you want to focus on. Therefore, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bounded.

#2 Research your audience

Another good practice is to define the target audience. Understand who you want to reach and who will contribute to meeting your goals. Defining your target audience will allow you, among other things, to better understand your customers, tailor your offerings to specific customer needs, or accurately design the customer's purchase path. In the end, you’ll have a better customer experience that can result in better loyalty and retention.

#3 Be Aware of your Competitors

Don't forget about your competitors - identify the key players in the industry, see who is doing best, follow them and learn from their mistakes. Maybe your competitors won't threaten you because you've found a niche market. But you may also enter a highly competitive sector where it will be hard to break out. Therefore, discern the situation.

#4 Choose the Right Social Media Channels

Choosing the proper social media channels is also a key tip. Only those channels that appeal to your target audience can bring significant results. If the most interest is on Instagram, that's where you should mainly focus your attention. If you bet on LinkedIn, the likely results will be poor.

#5 Experiment with the various Social Media Content

Don't focus exclusively on one type of posting because you will close yourself off to other possibilities. On the contrary, experiment and see what kind of relevant content is most appealing to your audience. Posts, affiliate video content, stories, or maybe interactive posts such as quizzes, polls, Q&A sections, or contests? Start combining and reap the benefits!

#6 Nail your Social Media Strategy

A social media strategy is like a guide that will make it much easier for you to reach your chosen business goal (which you can set while creating your business plan). It can be more or less detailed, but it must be clear to you. If you prepare it diligently, you will certainly not get lost, and you will know how to find your way in any situation.

#7 Establish the Coherent Style of your Messages

Try to maintain your social media accounts consistently. You can use AI content writing tools to help you create better and faster content. For example, use a coherent writing style, create relevant graphics, and develop an attractive brand image, such as in your feed on Instagram. This will help you be remembered by your audience, set you apart from the competition, and simply be more appealing to followers!

#8 Plan and Schedule Posts

Planning and scheduling posts in advance will also help you a lot. Having well-planned social presence results, among others, in better efficiency. What's more, you'll see how your next month's postings look, for example, and be able to decide right away whether to change or edit something. This will make your social media plan even more ideal.

#9 Post at the Best Times

Try publishing content at the correct times. For example, if your audience is more active after work, you can publish social media content around 5 PM. However, if they are more involved in the morning, publishing posts in the afternoon is not a good idea.

#10 Recycle Best Posts

In the past, you may have noticed some social media posts were extremely popular. Make use of them again! By using tools like FeedHive, you can find posts that have been particularly successful in the past and are perfect for recycling so that new followers will see them immediately. You can use such a solution, especially on your most important social media platform.

#11 Use Engaging Social Media Questions

Using engaging social media questions is another good practice. Sometimes, you need to encourage your audience to increase social media engagement, and such questions are great for this task. Moreover, they increase customer engagement and satisfaction, translating into an overall perception of your brand and social media accounts.

#12 Create your own Images

How about creating your own graphics to spice up your content, introduce unique elements that no one else has and boost your social media strategy? Stock photos are fine, but they can be used by your competitors as well, and then you'll score a blunder by publishing the same pics. Therefore, bet on something original, take some time, and create, for example, a fantastic infographic.

#13 Take Inspiration from the Best in your Field

As the best players in your field are fighting for the same audience that you are, take some time to research their social media campaigns. This will help inspire your own content strategy. Maybe they are running some activities that their customers love? If so, why not take an example from them? It can be a simple way to boost engagement on your socials.

#14 Use Hashtags

This practice is also crucial to achieving success on most social media platforms. Namely, it's high time to start using hashtags finally. This will allow you to reach people who haven't yet hit your account because relevant hashtags will lead them to you. They are the ones that group content together and, as a result, will allow you to expand your reach. And if you don’t want to write them manually, you can use a hashtag generator.

#15 Use Ready-Made Post Templates

Do you have a blank in your head and no idea what to publish? No, that's no longer a problem because you have many (honestly, many) ready-made social media post templates at your disposal. They come in various formats and styles and are perfect for social media posts, including Facebook posts, explainer videos, infographics, Instagram stories, etc. So feel free to use them whenever you can't develop your own post ideas. After all, that's what they're for!

#16 Reply to Comments and messages

Also, remember to respond to comments and messages. This is a great way to keep in touch with your audience and bring them closer to you. If you will have dozens or even hundreds of comments and messages, it is logical that it will be challenging to deal with answering them all, so at least answer the most interesting ones. Even if the comment is negative, it deserves a response, too, because this way, you can soften the atmosphere. Just remember always to be polite.

#17 Post in Appropriate Frequency

It will also work great to publish with enough frequency so that, on the one hand, you don't bore your followers and let them forget about you, and on the other hand, so that you don't inundate them with the amount of information. Of course, both scenarios are not optimistic. Therefore, choose the right publishing frequency with care.

#18 Cooperate with Influencers

If your budget allows, consider working with different influencers. The right collaboration can increase the quality of your profile and quickly garner the influencer's audience. However, pick influencers wisely and pay attention to, for example, their audiences, reach, social media platforms they use, and the content they create, so you don't work against your brand.

#19 Ask for feedback

It's also a good idea to collect your audience and customers’ feedback directly what they think of your social media presence, how your content compares to the competition, etc. What you create on social channels is for customers, yes? So instead of wandering around in the dark and experimenting, you can simply ask them what kind of content they expect from you or what areas you can improve.

#20 Take Advantage of Trends

If a trend stands out significantly from the rest, don't let it pass by your social media account! It's a quick way to create content that is viral and will circulate in the community for some time. And again - social media trends can bring you the interest and more engagement from other groups, for example: escape rooms, memes, NFTs, are all popular trends with highly engaged audiences.#21 Don't be Afraid of Social Media Tools

Another great social media practice is using the right tools to automate your work significantly. Many of them can plan, schedule, predict the best time to publish, and much more. Such systems have not only essential but also advanced functions, with which it will be much easier for you to manage your social media presence. For example, Instagram content scheduling tools are a must for anyone who’s serious about growing their Instagram following in both fast and a sustainable (and predictable) way.

And other social platforms come with their own dedicated tools you need to investigate before choosing.

#22 Track your Daily Social Media Performance

And last social media best practice - don't let things get out of hand, so track your daily activities and measure them accordingly. This way, you will constantly improve your content strategy and strive for perfection. And as a result, you will finally be able to outperform your competitors and satisfy your regular and potential customers better than them.

#23 Target the Offline Audience as well

The potential of social media users is huge, but it does not include everyone. You should strive to target the offline audience as well. The way to do that is through QR codes. QR codes do a fantastic job of getting people online and onto your social media pages. All you need to do is generate a QR code and place it in a relevant location.

Let FeedHive help you!

To improve your activities on every social media channel, you don't have to act alone. The above social media best practices will prove essential for you, but you'll get even more out of them if you use different social media tools, including FeedHive!

FeedHive is a comprehensive, all-in-one social media tool that enhances your work in this area. You no longer have to rely solely on your skills or delegate all tasks to your social media team because our tool with AI will do a lot for them!

Use pre-made templates, recycle social posts, generate hashtags automatically, preview the grid of your posts on Instagram, and, most importantly, schedule posts in advance and post them to your social media! Many unique features, such as predicting your post's performance, social media analytics, or finding the best time to post, make it take seconds and a few clicks instead of spending hours on your work.

And speaking of analysis, FeedHive will also help you with that. You can track your growth and engagement and have a clear overview of your social network. Nothing will escape your attention, and you can optimize your social media marketing efforts and adjust your marketing strategy on the fly.

What do you think? If you want to explore more features, visit FeedHive, or take advantage of the free trial period.

To sum up

Working on multiple social media platforms can be an enjoyable task, but when done without any social media content strategy or valuable methods, it may remain a daunting job. We hope our article will help you improve your performance and prevent you from making many mistakes again.

Don't forget to follow all the best practices and take advantage of FeedHive, as it can be handy. So sign up and get started with your 7-day free trial.