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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
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You’ve finished your website, now it’s time to start establishing your presence on social media. There are a lot of sites out there, but we’ll help you decipher which social media sites will be best for your agency.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Your Social Media Sites
Now that your website is optimized, you can establish your social media presence. Social media is a great way to freely engage with your audience. You can get to know your clients, and your clients can get to know you too!
Rules to follow on all social media platforms:
1. Keep your pages consistent. Create your social media platforms under the exact same name as your agency. For example, if you decide to create profiles for your agency on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, keep your profile name the same on all platforms. This will allow your clients to easily find you no matter what social media site they’re looking for you on. Along the same lines, make sure your profile photo matches on all platforms. We recommend using your agency logo as your profile photo to get started.
2. Create a publishing schedule and stick with it. Keep your pages relevant by posting up-to-date content on a regular basis. (We will outline the best times to post on each social media site below.)
3. Allow your agency’s personality to shine through your social accounts.
You want your social media platforms to be a go-to spot for engagement, and the most engaging content is humanizing content. Social media allows you to show the human side of your business and allows you to build a community that others will want to be a part of. If it aligns with your brand’s marketing plan, stay away from overly formal content on your social media pages. You can share formal ideas, but make them fun to understand and/or interact with. When you sign up for a free bit.ly account, you can edit your shortened links to include your company name or create fun links and edit the link preview that will pop up.
5. Post original content on each platform. While it’s easy to post the same content on multiple platforms, we don’t suggest doing this. On each social media site, you’ll grow different audiences and each audience will respond best with different content. Focus on the best performing content for each platform and spend time developing these strategies.
6. Create your content. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to create a social media post. There are free and lower-priced tools that provide templates and images to create your own graphic. IIAW members have access to Trusted Choice’s “Content to Share” library. These graphics are already created and all you have to do is save and share the images. Another option for creating graphics is to use Canva. Canva offers a free account and also a $9.95 per month paid subscription which gives a wider variety of templates and images. The templates feature a drag-and-drop functionality to make this online program very easy to use. Check it out here.
Now that you’ve gone over some basic rules for all social media sites, let’s dive into each platform and how you can make them work for you.
4. Shorten Links. Social media posts are meant to engage readers and encourage them to visit your website, when possible. Instead of pasting a long link in the body of your post, use bit.ly to shorten the link to make it more visually appealing.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Facebook is one of the best ways to reach your customers and build a
following for your agency. Starting a Facebook business page is FREE and the recognition your Facebook page can give your agency is priceless.
3. When to post to your Facebook Business Page:
What’s a Facebook page without consistent posts? Irrelevant. On average, 1.66 billion people log into Facebook daily and are considered “active” users, according to Core Facebook Vitals. To keep your page relevant to even a sliver of these active users, you will need to post content weekly at minimum. According to Hootsuite, the best times to post on Facebook are between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On weekends, plan to post between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m.
1. Setting up your Facebook Business Page:
As we mentioned before, your page’s name should reflect your agency name. You can add your logo as your profile photo to start. Next, start filling out your page information. The most important info on your page is your website, address, phone number and email address.
2. What to post to your Facebook business page:
To create the most engaging content on your Facebook page, here’s a quick formula:
Photo or graphic (image+text) + a caption in the text box + a link to your website or related website (when applicable) = great Facebook post.
If you decide to add a graphic to your Facebook post, make sure the text on your image does not take up more than 20% of the image. Facebook users tend to ignore images with more than 20% text. If you decide to run an ad later on with this post you will need to keep it under 20% text anyways. If you need more space for information, use the text box to include that. Keep the graphic to a visually appealing attraction to your post.
Once you start posting on a regulated schedule, you can view your page’s analytics by clicking “Insights” on your page. This will show you statistics as to who your audience is, what times they are online and what kind of content they interact with most. This will help to create content better targeted to your followers.
Engaging with your audience:
Facebook is a great outlet to connect with your audience! Keeping your page involved in local and global conversations will allow those outside of your community to become involved in your media presence, plan to take time every day to respond to public comments and private messages on your Facebook page.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
You can find your audience analytics by clicking “Insights” on your page and then, click “People”.
5. Receiving Facebook messages
Facebook is a great platform for customer service. Since Facebook is used 24/7, people will often private message business pages to easily get responses to their questions, comments or concerns. Facebook Business Page messaging is a feature that page admins can turn on and off for their page. Once the feature is turned on, people will expect responses to their messages. Only turn on your messaging when you can commit to responding to messages. If someone sends a message and you read it but don’t respond, that person can see that you’ve read their message and didn’t respond.
For more information about how to use Facebook Business Messaging, visit Facebook’s Admin’s Guide to Page Messaging here.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
You can share content from external sources on your LinkedIn Company Page to show your followers that you are involved in industry news, even if your team didn’t create the content. Always make sure when you’re sharing a link from an external source to add in your own thoughts in the caption to involve yourself in the content instead of just promoting another company’s work.
LinkedIn is a great option for growing your professional agency audience. More than just for finding qualified candidates when you’re hiring, LinkedIn can help get your in touch with other companies and contacts that could be looking for your services.
1. Setting up your LinkedIn Company Page
When setting up your LinkedIn, make sure you’re creating a LinkedIn Company Page instead of a personal profile. LinkedIn Company Pages on average receive twice as many visitors than those with personal pages, according to Hootsuite.
A well-developed LinkedIn Company Page is the perfect spot to establish industry expertise. In addition to connecting with other industry professionals, you’ll have the ability to drive business results, raise brand awareness, promote option positions in your agency and educate potential customers on your products and services. For more information about setting up a LinkedIn Company Page, click here.
Once set up with your Company Page, begin filling out as much information as you can, like your agency’s website, contact information and key leaders at your agency. Allowing other LinkedIn members to see who leads your agency will help to gain more connections both on the platform and in real-life.
2. What to post on your LinkedIn Company Page
The top way to grow your LinkedIn audience is by providing valuable information on your company page on a regular basis. Just like we mentioned with Facebook, each LinkedIn post should contain an image. According to Hootsuite, posts with an image get 98 percent more comments. If your agency has a YouTube channel, link your videos in your LinkedIn posts. Not only do YouTube videos play automatically in followers’ news feeds encouraging them to interact with your content, but it can also generate a 75 percent higher share rate, according to Hootsuite.
To learn more about creating LinkedIn content that will receive great engagement, click here.
3. When to post to your LinkedIn Company Page
LinkedIn is a business tool, so keep your postings to business hours when most people are checking their LinkedIn news feeds. According to Oberlo, the best times to post on LinkedIn are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Stay away from posting on weekends and after typical business hours when most followers have logged out.
4. Connecting with your audience
A big draw for most thought leaders on LinkedIn is to connect with others who are passionate about the same topics. It’s important to respond to comments on your posts to show your audience that you want to be a part of the conversation, not just the initiation of a topic. Encourage your agency’s employees to connect with your LinkedIn Company Page, and when applicable, engage in conversations on your page important to them. Members of your agency are part of your target audience on LinkedIn, so ask them what they’d like to see and tailor your content to what they’re looking for.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
With over 300 million active users, Twitter is an excellent platform to reach new audiences that you probably wouldn’t reach elsewhere.
3. What time to post on Twitter
According to Hootsuite, the best posting times are 12 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. daily. Most people are checking their Twitter accounts at lunch and again after work.
4. Engaging with your Twitter audience
1. Setting up your Twitter profile
Setting up your Twitter profile takes little-to-no time. Remember to keep your name the same across all platforms, add your logo as your profile photo and add a short bio about your agency.
2. What to post on your Twitter
While Facebook and LinkedIn are made for more long-form content, Twitter is the place to keep your messages short and to-the-point.
Tweets have a maximum length of 280 characters.
Like Facebook and LinkedIn, each tweet should contain an image, a link (when applicable) and a short caption. What sets Twitter apart from other platforms is the use of hashtags. Hashtags are a great way to get your tweet out to a larger audience than your followers. Remember using hashtags to keep them relevant to what your tweeting about.
Twitter will show you trending topics and if applicable to your business, it’s a great spot to gain more followers by joining the trending conversations.
To start engaging, follow important industry leaders and get involved in their conversations. Next, make sure to respond to those engaging with your content, when possible. When mentioning followers, brands and other businesses, use an “@” before their name to include them in your conversation. Oftentimes, this will engage those mentioned and their followers too.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Depending on your target audience, Instagram may be a useful platform for you to showcase your agency, the people who work at your agency and your products/services. If you decide Instagram is a good way to engage with your audience, here’s a quick guide for how to develop your Instagram content.
1. Setting up your Instagram Business Account
Setting up an Instagram Business Account is simple! All you need is to enter an email address, your username (same as all other platforms), add a profile photo (your logo) and enter a short bio. After the initial set-up you can connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page for an easier way to share your photos quickly to Facebook.
2. Set up a Linktr.ee account
When you’re editing your Instagram profile, you’ll see that there’s room for only one link. When you’re releasing new information on your website or you want to direct your followers to your other social pages, it might be hard to pick only one link to include in your bio. (Especially, since you cannot link in the captions of your photos.) With Linktree, you don’t have to choose just one link to promote.
Linktree is a free tool to help you optimize your Instagram traffic. Linktree allows Instagram users to share more than one link with their audience in a visually appealing way. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to add Linktree to your Instagram account:
1. Create an account - just go to Linktree and sign up with your Instagram account. 2. Add as many links as you’ll need - click on “+ADD NEW BUTTON/LINK” and paste the desired link. You can name the link however you’d like. For example, if you’d like to add your agency’s website, click “ADD NEW BUTTON/LINK”, then paste your agency’s website and name it “Visit Our Website.” Your website should always be the top link on your Linktree.
3. Past your Linktree link into your Instagram profile. Done!
Some links you should include in your Linktree are: • Your agency website • Your agency’s “about” page * A link to your products/services • A link to your contact page on your website
3. What to post on your Instagram
Instagram is simple! All you need to post is a photo and a caption. Links in your captions aren’t clickable, so instead, direct them to the “link in bio” if there’s something you want them to look at.
To keep your Instagram visually appealing, pick a color scheme and make sure all photos you upload stick with that color scheme. Next, if you decide to add filters to your photos - add that filter to all photos. Great photos are necessary to getting good Instagram engagement - try taking photos with natural light and plan your photo feed in advance.
4. When to post on your Instagram page:
Instagram is a highly used app across the world every day. Later.com analyzed 12 million Instagram posts to find the top 3 global best times to post on Instagram for each day of the week.
Once you get your Instagram account up and running, it’ll be easy to see which time slots work best for your audience and from there you can further tailor your posting timeline.
Monday: 6 a.m., 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. EST Tuesday: 2 a.m. 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. EST Wednesday: 7 a.m., 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. EST Thursday: 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. EST Friday: 5 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. EST Saturday: 11 a.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST Sunday: 7 a.m., 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
5. Engaging with your audience
Compared to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you’ll experience much less engagement. Instagram is used for quick browsing and liking, whereas the other social media sites are focused on conversation pieces. However, when you do receive a comment or private message, try to answer as quickly as possible.
You should follow other accounts that are related to your business. From there, you can interact with their content to get more engagement on your own posts.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Planning out your social media content calendar
Once you’ve set up your accounts, it’s time to start planning out your social media content calendar. While the thought of publishing content at certain times on certain days for each individual social media platform may seem daunting, there are some helpful tools to assist in scheduling your posts.
Tweetdeck - If you’re going to plan your tweets in advance, head to Tweetdeck to schedule them.
Click “New Tweet” in the top-left corner. Then type up your tweet and click “Schedule Tweet” to schedule your tweet in advance. Tweetdeck allows you to see recent tweets from the accounts you follow, your notifications, your direct messages and trending topics so you can plan out current topics to stay engaged in up-to-date conversations.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Facebook Publisher - already built into your Facebook Business Page, Facebook Publisher will let you quickly search through past published posts and schedule posts in advance. You can schedule these posts by clicking “Publishing Tools”.
Hootsuite - connect multiple social media sites through Hootsuite to publish posts across a variety of your social sites in advance. This platform is free to schedule up to thirty posts across a max of three platforms at a time. Hootsuite also allows you to scroll through the newsfeeds of multiple social media sites at once. This will keep your engagement on all platforms easier to have each newsfeed in one place! To schedule a post, you can click “New Post” in the top-right corner.
Then, click “Schedule Posts” and “Create” to start drafting your post. You can then select the time and date you’d like to post on and click “Schedule” to finalize the scheduled post.
Then, select the accounts you’d like to post the same message to, type the message and schedule it for the time/date you’d like it to publish.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Later.com - Later.com is very similar to Hootsuite by allowing you to schedule multiple social media sites at once. With Later you can use a visual content calendar to schedule your posts (this is a great way to make sure the images and graphics you’re using on social media are following your brand standards and using the correct brand colors to keep your sites cohesive. Choosing between Later and Hootsuite is just a matter of preference! Next, a window will pop up asking you to enter the caption you’d like to show with the media.
First, add your accounts to later.com. Then, click on “Calendar” to start your scheduling process. Upload the media that you’d like to be attached to the post, then drag the image/graphic/video to the time and date slot for when you’d like to schedule the post.
Add your caption and verify the time/date is correct. Then, click “Save”.
