We dug up social media tips directly from the platforms themselves to help you maximize the time you dedicate to digital marketing
As we work to improve our own social media performance, we did some research to learn some social media tips for the two platforms we use (Twitter and LinkedIn). As we perused different resources, we uncovered some interesting tips we thought our members might want to put into practice as well. (We also offer some insight into how we’re doing in terms of implementing these tips on our own.) Check it out!
Social Media Tips: Maximize Performance on LinkedIn
1. 20 Posts Per Month is Recommended
Posting 20 times per month on LinkedIn allows you to reach 60% of your followers and tends to be the sweet spot. Posting less often means you reach fewer people; posting more often doesn’t cause harm, but it also doesn’t bring more reach or engagement for the extra time and effort you put in. Based on this advice, we backed off a little bit on LinkedIn posts; we had been posting a few times day.
2. Post at Least Once a Week
If you post less than once a week, LinkedIn’s algorithm restricts content; your posts won’t be seen by as many people. If you haven’t given LinkedIn much thought yet, creating a plan to post at least once per week is a good place to start. NSCA was already doing this, so we didn’t make any changes based on this information.
3. Post During Work Hours
Not surprisingly, LinkedIn says that most platform engagement occurs on weekdays during work hours. When trying to reach a B2B audience, like integrators do, posting between 8am and 2pm is recommended. We always assumed this was the case, but it’s nice to know it’s actually true. Based on this data, we chose to stop posting on Sundays. Sometimes we still post on Saturdays, though (admittedly, those posts experience lower engagement).
4. Avoid the Spam Filter
The platform has a built-in “spam filter”: It looks at grammar, how often your page posts content, how many people you tag, how many (and what kinds) of links are used, etc. From there, it decides whether your post is spam, low quality, or clear/high quality. To make it around those spam filters, you need to use good grammar, use only one link (see tip No. 7), tag five or fewer people, and make sure the post is easy to read. We thought this was great information, so we’ve been trying to focus on tagging (it can be easy to forget) since that seems to be the area where we could improve the most among these suggestions.
5. Encourage Early Engagement
Engagement within the first 60 minutes is key to the most people possible seeing your post. LinkedIn’s algorithm boosts content that receives the most activity within this timeframe, sending it out beyond your first-degree connections. How well your post performs within the first hour determines how far outside your network your post will be promoted.
Once a post goes live, let key people know (coworkers, industry colleagues, etc.) so they can like, share, or comment. Or tag people who may have something to say about the content, are quoted or referenced, etc. When you tag someone, their connections and followers can see that content, too; your audience naturally expands. If someone engages with the post that contains those tags, then the engagement is also seen by that larger audience. To help this along on our own channels, we’ve had discussions about making sure our internal team is aware of the content being posted so they can like, comment, and share if they choose to do so. And if we forget to tag someone important, they can do so when they comment on or share the post.
6. Share Your Employees’ Content
If you manage your company’s LinkedIn page, try mixing things up. People like seeing the faces behind the organizations they do business with. If there’s a post you’d like to share, ask a senior leader within your organization to post it to their personal profile first and tag your organization. The type of content in the post can help guide you to who might be the best person to share it. Once that’s done, find and share the post on your company page. We haven’t done too much of this yet. The social media comfort level within the NSCA team ranges quite a bit, so this will likely be something we try in 2022. We do have a few team members who take the initiative to do this on their own (without being asked), so we always try to share those posts!
7. Limit Outbound Links
LinkedIn recommends not including outbound links in a post; the platform doesn’t give these posts as much weight. Instead, try posting your text/image and then including the outbound link (to a blog, article, video, webpage, etc.) as the first post comment. Why? The reason is self-serving: LinkedIn doesn’t want its users having easy access to links that take them away from the platform. This information came as a surprise to us. Most of the content we post is published through a scheduling platform, which makes this method a little difficult (you can’t schedule comments using a dashboard). But we’re working on other ways to make it happen. (This also explains why we were seeing more users commenting on their own posts!)
Social Media Tips: Maximize Performance on Twitter
1. #DoNotOveruseHashtags
We’ve all seen them: Posts that include 30+ hashtags. That strategy may fly on Instagram and Facebook, but it doesn’t on Twitter. The platform advises that you use no more than two hashtags in a post. When you use more than two, engagement drops by an average of 17%.
Unlike other platforms, it’s recommended that your hashtags naturally fit within a post so it doesn’t feel forced, lose its intended purpose, or seem simply tacked on at the end. Also, keep hashtags short. Long hashtags are hard to read, and research shows that hashtags under 24 characters work best. (And don’t use spaces or punctuation!) Based on this information, we’ve tried to be more strategic with our hashtag usage. Over the past few months, we’ve done performance comparisons between posts with and without hashtags … and we currently don’t see much of difference.
2. Use Emojis 😊
When you tweet, use emojis from time to time. Those posts perform 25% better than tweets without. They are more memorable, are more relatable, convey tone, add personality, and allow communication beyond what words can provide.
Emojis should be relevant to the content you post, of course. (Example: If you’re tweeting about a company-sponsored lunch that involves pizza, then a pizza emoji is great. If you’re tweeting about a new partnership, then probably not so much.) NSCA tries to do this when appropriate, but there seem to be a few emojis we rely on more than others (🙌 and 👇, for starters). We should probably branch out!
3. Post Frequently and Daily
Twitter recommends that you tweet at least five times per day for best results. There are obviously some power users out there—even in our industry—who post more often than that. Unlike LinkedIn, there’s no harm in doing this on Twitter if you have the time, but that level of commitment isn’t required to keep your brand’s presence active on Twitter. We’ve been doing this for a while (posting at least four times a day during the week), so we didn’t make any changes based on this information.
4. Use “Quote Tweet” Instead of “Retweet”
Instead of hitting that “retweet” button, try to make the “quote tweet” option your go-to instead. This allows you to add your own thoughts/remarks to a tweet before you retweet/share it. When people see your reaction to a piece of information, they’re more likely to chime in with their own thoughts as well, which can increase engagement. We’ve been doing this for a while, too, so we didn’t make any changes based on this information.
5. Keep it Short
Even though Twitter increased its character limit from 140 to 280 in 2017, it stands by short tweets: The platform states that tweets containing between 70 and 100 characters attract the most attention. Character counts include links and hashtags, so plan accordingly. This is a good tip to keep in mind, and we try to do so. We haven’t noticed much of a performance difference between our short and long tweets, but we still try to keep them as short as possible.
We’re sure there are lots more social media tips like these out there, but we thought these were helpful, interesting, and easy for integrators to implement. Try some of them out and let us know what happens at memberservices@nsca.org!