Best practices 2019 for brands on Instagram and Facebook

Knowing how to use social media in the most efficient way is essential if you want to grow your brand, no matter if you’re a social media manager or an ecommerce manager.

Because if people engage with your brand on Instagram or Facebook, there’s a chance some of them will become returning customers. And that’s what you want, isn’t it?

Here are our best recommendations for brands who want to improve their game on Instagram and Facebook. Don’t worry, Youtube will be covered in a separate article. Stay tuned!

Do this on Facebook

🎭 📈 Infotainment — the perfect balance
Infotainment is the perfect crossover of information of entertainment, where your content is not too lighthearted but not too heavy either. Especially on Facebook, content that is both educational and entertaining at the same time often works best. Think shareable!

⚙️ Join and start your own groups
Being active in Facebook groups is often a great way to increase engagement and interest in your brand and business. But avoid selling too hard and talking only about your products or services. Encourage members to discuss a variety of topics related to your niche or industry.

🎬 Video for best performance
Video generates higher engagement and better organic reach that images or text, due to Facebook’s algorithms. Producing and editing a video can be a little more time consuming than posting a regular article, but there are a lot of tools and apps that simplify many steps in the process.

📹 Live on a regular basis
A lot of brands are already doing this, and if you have the resources, doing live video on Facebook will definitely give you ROI. Facebook’s algorithm favors posts that generate discussions. And since live videos in general tend to lead to conversations and discussion among the viewers, there’s a great chance your live video will be more successful when it comes to organic reach than any of your other posts.

If you’re deciding between doing a live broadcast or a regular video, do it live if you can.

✂️ Shorter posts tend to perform better
According to a recent report, shorter descriptions generate better results when it comes to Facebook. Let the post do the talking instead. Of course, this is the general recommendation, but try it yourself before you decide anything. Every brand and audience is different.

But it definitely makes sense — your audience is bombarded with content on Facebook and oftentimes won’t spend time reading a long description. Focus on making the photo or video itself captivating and interesting.

👉 Think shareable
On Facebook, you want people to comment and share your content. Stay away from engagement bait or clickbait such as “You won’t believe what happened next” or “Like this post if you’re an Aquarius”. But do realize that just posting statement about your new campaign or a new product, probably won’t result in a lot of interaction. What would make your followers want to share your content?

According to a 2011 study by the New York Times, people share content online for these five reasons:

• to delight others with valuable & entertaining content
• to identify and present ourselves to others
• to foster relationships
• for self-fulfillment
• for spreading the word about issues, products & brands

If you‘re like most people, you probably don’t share a lot of information on your own personal Facebook account from business pages. So keep yourself in mind and ask yourself “Would I share this if I didn’t work at this company?” And if the answer is no, chances are your post won’t get much engagement from your customers either.

Do this on Instagram

📣 Always reply to @mentions (and do it as fast as possible)Social media is about conversation. Make sure you always reply when someone comments on your posts, and do it as fast as possible. Online reputation management is about replying in a good manner to all kind of comments, even negative comments. Never delete negative or unwanted comments, as it will often fuel the fire.

#️⃣ Use niche hashtags
Try using some of the less common hashtags when posting your content, to increase chances of having your content trending within that particular hashtag. Don’t stick to only the most generic and overused hashtags, as your content will probably drown in the flood of posts. This is true especially if you have a rather small following on Instagram.

💬 Engage in others’ content too (they will engage in yours)
Think of engagement as doing someone a favour. By helping someone else, chances are they will help you some other time. Keep tabs on the most important hashtags for your brand and continuously follow what’s trending in each topic. And try to engage in the content by commenting and liking relevant posts. But don’t comment if you don’t have anything to say, as it might be perceived as spammy. Try to use at least 4–5 words and be specific.

❗️Appeal to emotion
Engagement is everything on Instagram. And while getting people to like your post is not that difficult, getting comments is a lot more challenging to most business accounts.

For your followers to comment on your posts, they need to be emotionally invested in your content. What makes them angry, touched, happy, sad, energetic, inspired, surprised?

Stay away from clickbait, but don’t be afraid of being a little challenging. Boring content won’t take you anywhere.

👥 Tap into communities and tribes
Think small. Analyze your target audience and define what your key tribes are. Don’t focus on large communities, unless you’re a global brand with a huge following. Instead, focus on the smaller communities where you can be seen and heard and reach your core customers.

For example, if you’re a streetwear brand, stay away from large hashtags such as #fashion and instead define what other interests your customers might have.

If you think your customers might be into hiphop music, try to find niche hashtags related to hiphop. When you do find your niche communities, don’t spam them with posts and nonsense comments just to get attention. Be a good commenter and engage in your customers’ content in a real and genuine way.

📸 Have a nice feed and engaging visuals
A visually appealing feed essential. Try to have recurring elements and a certain pattern. Why this is important? Simply because people want to know what they get. Create a test account where you can try different feed layouts. You can also skip the layout and instead choose one filter which you use for all your posts. Other quick tips:

• Think about the composition. Don’t always place your main object in the center of the image for example.
• Take photos in daylight if you can. Avoid sharp shadows, unless it’s a look you actually want.
• Remove clutter and distracting objects in the background.
• Don’t strive for perfect and don’t edit too much. Again, reality isn’t perfect and your customers probably don’t want perfect either. They want something visually appealing, but also something real and genuine.

✔️ Include a CTA in your posts
A caption doesn’t have to be just a description. If you can, try to include a call to action (CTA) as well. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the classic “link in bio”, it can be something simple also such as asking a question. But don’t be too pushy, it can get the opposite effect and cause your readers or viewers to question your motives. Conversion is one goal with content marketing, but backlinks are also important.

📍Tagging, mentions and geotags
Geotagging your location on Instagram is a highly undervalued way to generate traffic and reach a wider audience than the people that are already following you. Normally, getting new followers can be a big challenge, so geotagging is something you should definitely get into if you want to grow your account. And honestly, who doesn’t?

Tagging other people in a photo or video is another great way to extend your reach. Make sure you only tag relevant accounts and avoid tagging the same accounts each time, as it can be perceived as spammy. You can also use @mentions in the caption.

⏱ Use Instagram Stories
The ephemeral format is great for engaging your audience as it allows them to swipe through the frames, pause or click and tap through them.

You can now also use Stories for advertising. When you utilize the interactive nature of Instagram Stories when you create your ads, you’ll get the most out of this feature.

So get started with Stories! Do it on a regular basis and at different times during the day since your followers might be in different time zones.

👩🏻💻 Get started with UGC
Finding it difficult to post new content every day? This is something a lot of marketers are struggling with, and indeed — it’s true that it takes a lot of time and resources to constantly produce new, high-quality content for your Instagram feed.

A good way to solve this is to tap into your community a little bit more. Find the content that your customers are already posting and re-post in your own channels, after asking for permission. There are several tools out there which enables you to curate content and manage rights requests in a fast and easy way.

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