Author: Claire Winslow

Use these top 10 social media marketing best practices for small business to build your brand and generate a profit using social media.

Every business owner knows that marketing is an essential part of building your brand. Yet, as a small business owner, it can be hard to compete with the big dogs who can pour thousands of dollars into a national marketing campaign. However, traditional marketing is expensive, hard to measure, hard to change, and often a one-way form of communication.

There’s another (dare I say, better?) way to market in the new media age that allows direct, quantifiable, targeted messaging delivered directly to your target audience–social media marketing.

Social media connects your brand with an attentive and relevant audience that is open to your messaging and ready to engage. It also offers cost-effective ways to funnel cold traffic into profitable actions. With a smart social media marketing strategy in place, businesses can harness the power of social as an extremely useful marketing tool.

Here are our top 10 social media marketing best practices for small business:

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1. If you build it, keep it up. If you can’t keep it up, delete it.

When first launching your social media presence, it can be tempting to create a profile on every social media channel available to you. Keeping up six different profiles with individually optimized content sometimes is not realistic. It’s better to have a limited, streamlined presence rather than spotty coverage all over the Internet.

2. Focus on 2-3 platforms where your demographic lives.

Not every audience is on the same page–literally.

Knowing where your audience lives online is a valuable piece of information in creating your social media platform strategy . Want to focus on a younger audience? Twitter and Instagram are good platforms to start with. Looking for an older, professional audience? Consider creating a LinkedIn profile. Need to curate your online reputation management? Google and Yelp are where you should live. Being able to tailor your strategy to your audience will save you a considerable amount of time and effort down the road.

3. Google yourself and your company from a private browser. The first page is your current online reputation.

Using Google Chrome’s Incognito mode or Safari’s Private Browsing mode with a single Google search provides a quick snapshot of your online reputation. Don’t like something that you see? Feel like something is missing? Now you know what to work on with your targeted strategy.

4. Research marketing rules of your industry, especially if it’s highly regulated.

Each industry has its own specific rules and regulations governing marketing and advertising. Knowing precedent can save you from various headaches, including getting your ad rejected on Facebook or even possible legal action. Examples of highly-regulated industries include financial services, healthcare, education, government, law, alcohol, and the oil and gas industries.

5. Don’t leave your social media marketing execution up to an intern. Your social media presence is the public representation of your company.

It can be the knee-jerk reaction to assign the young person on the team to cover social media. Though they might be a digital native who understands the difference between Tik-Tok and Instagram Reels, having a more senior member of the team guide strategy and execution will pay off in the long run. Social media is often the first place a potential consumer will encounter your brand, and an experienced team member leading your social media plan can help ensure it’s a good one.

6. Use the “4-1-1 Rule of Marketing” (or similar) to develop a content calendar.

The 4-1-1 Rule of Marketing is:

• 4 pieces of curated content created by others in your industry
• 1 piece of self-serving, promotional content to drive sales/traffic
• 1 piece of original creative content produced internally

For example, using this cadence as a guide for creating a content calendar would include sharing one piece of content promoting an upcoming special offer for your company with a direct call-to-action, one piece of original organic content, such as an infographic or specialized blog post, and four additional pieces of content, including retweets or reposts, industry updates, or article shares.

Whether you use this “rule” or something else, the bottom line is simple: Social media marketing is still about being social and organic social audiences don’t always want to be pitched. Instead, offer them more value by diversifying your content with more exciting and relevant information that builds engagement, connection, credibility–and yes, even sales–over time.

7. Use Facebook Blueprint to gain a solid foundation in social media marketing.

Facebook Blueprint is a library of online courses that allows you to “explore self-paced and step-by-step tutorials that can help you build your digital marketing knowledge and bring your business online.”

Consider it a free online marketing school. Love it, use it, and let it demystify the many facets of social media marketing for you.

8. Use Canva to make simple graphics.

Quality in means quality out. Creating high-quality content is a great way to develop your audience and increase engagement. Using a simple graphic design tool like Canva is an easy and effective way to create content for your feed.

9. If you blog, write for SEO.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is one of the single most important ways to get your online presence noticed. Writing “search engine-friendly” content will help give you a leg up in the competition.

Tips include:

• Keep content to 300 – 2,000 words
• Include at least 3 hyperlinks per post
• Add at least one picture
• Use keywords regularly, but be careful not to spam your audience.

10. Don’t boost posts without a strategy. Use Facebook Ads Manager to target your specific audience.

Facebook Ads Manager is a useful and powerful tool to help identify and build audiences. Creating core, custom, and lookalike audiences will deliver your content to people who are most likely to interact with it. Knowing your audience’s locations, demographics, behaviors, and interests can inform an audience segment as far-reaching or focused as you need. Keeping these audiences in mind throughout your social media advertising strategy, including any boosts, will help you get the most “bang for your buck” with your advertising budget.

From choosing your key social media platforms to executing your social media plan and reviewing your social media analytics, these best practices can help inform your social media plan, set S.M.A.R.T. social goals, and reap the benefits of social media marketing.

From MySpace to Tik-Tok, the social media landscape has a history of fast change, with new platforms entering the marketplace just as quickly as others leave (RIP Vine). Many social media managers, CMOs, and small business owners often feel pressured to take advantage of the hottest trending channel or risk being a late-mover.

But an ineffective social media platform strategy can be costly, demanding, and downright exhausting.

With so many social platforms and evolving digital marketing trends, where do you even start developing an effective social media channel plan that’s still agile enough to maximize future growth opportunities? Just remember your ABCs.

Here are the top 3 considerations for building your social media platform strategy.

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A is for Audience.

Where is your target audience already most active and engaged online? To answer this question, use your existing audience personas and social platform demographic data to develop a fact-based channel plan.

For example, if you have an eCommerce brand that appeals to customers under 35, consider Instagram as part of your social media mix. If you’re targeting 18 to 24-year-olds partial to bite-sized video content, Tik-Tok might be your frontrunner. And if you’re a B2B organization that would benefit from engaging with working professionals and taking part in a broader industry conversation, LinkedIn could be your primary platform.

Understanding who your ideal customer is and where to meet them where they’re already consuming social content will help you drive social ROI now and identify potential growth opportunities in the future.

B is for Bandwidth.

Social media has become one of the most effective digital marketing tools, but having a brand page is very different from maintaining an active and profitable online community. When identifying your core social media platforms, it’s important to (honestly!) decide how many channels you can manage at once.

When you need some extra support, here’s an easy breakdown of what a simplified social media team looks like:

• The Social Media Manager develops strategy, generates content calendars, and oversees content creation, scheduling, and approvals.
• The Copywriter is responsible for crafting post captions and supplying text for graphics. Sometimes, they’ll implement your hashtag strategy, too.
• The Graphic Designer creates and curates all social media graphics and imagery using brand standards to ensure a consistent visual identity.

Whether you’re a One Person Show or one of many savvy social media marketers on your team, remember that you do not need to be everywhere at once! Choose 2-4 strategic platforms , set social media goals that translate into real business value, and identify how each team member will contribute to these objectives–then continue on your way to social media marketing success. ✔️

C is for Content.

With the who, what, and where settled, next, you need to figure out what you’re going to say.

Each social channel has a preferred format (or two) for sharing and consuming content, and each one has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, too. As a social media marketer, it’s your job to understand how this platform nuance should inform your channel strategy.

Here are a few common content pillars for some of the most popular social media sites:

• Facebook: Linked content, like blogs, company or product news, brand marketing, local marketing, including community events and sponsorships, Live video
• Instagram: Product imagery, carousel (aka “swipe”) posts, social graphics (e.g., Did You Know?, FAQs, Q&A, quotes), User Generated-Content, Behind-the-Scenes or “A Day in the Life,” employee stories or “spotlights”
• Twitter: Real-time updates and breaking news, customer information and service, media and news, events, including sponsorships, peer or influencer retweets
• YouTube: Utilitarian videos (e.g., How-To, Instructional, Steps), experiential marketing, customer stories or testimonials, text-based instructional videos, meet the team
• LinkedIn: Industry news, company updates, employee milestones, press and media, original company data, customer success stories
• Tik-Tok:Trends or #HashtagChallenges, Before and After, Tips and Tricks

When developing your social media platform strategy, your ABCs – Audience, Bandwidth, and Content – will help you find your audience, establish realistic social goals, and generate platform-optimized content. And who knows, with a smart, data-driven channel plan in place, you may even start looking forward to the next time someone starts a question with, “Should we be on…”

Performing a Facebook ad account audit is the perfect way to understand your advertising performance-to-date better.

Whether you’ve just joined a company, brought on a new client, or feel like your own campaigns may be lacking something, a Facebook ad account audit is the perfect way to understand your advertising performance-to-date better–and make data-driven choices when optimizing future campaigns.

You can’t fix it unless you know what’s broken, right? During your account deep-dive, identify what’s worked well and what hasn’t really worked at all. Think of the entire account as a split-test to uncover the top performers.

So, where do you start?

How to (easily, quickly, and effectively) Audit Your Facebook Ad Account.

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First, audit your Facebook Ads account by taking a deep-dive into your social media advertising performance-to-date.

1. Look at your platforms and placements.

Are the best platforms included in your paid social strategy? Maybe there’s an underperforming platform you can cut. Identify exactly where your ads are delivering and decide if these platforms and placements are doing the best job of achieving your overall social and business goals.

2. Check out your ad creative content and format.

Are photos, videos, and carousels being used? If so, what worked best? If not, what can you test in the future?

3. Figure out who you’ve been talking to.

Are your audience demographics consistent with industry research or proven performance data? How do they compare to Facebook Audience Insights for similar interests or competitors? Your ideal customer avatar?

Are you using a variety of audience types, including core, custom, and Lookalike? Is there a significant amount of audience overlap between similar segments? Are you using data to inform top-funnel targeting with Lookalikes or only relying on core, or saved audiences instead?

Speaking of saved audiences, how do your interest targets look? Have you considered adding in any competitors? Are there other categories that could help find your target audience?

Next, make a list of Action Items.

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Your ad account audit is complete–woot!–and you have a pretty good understanding of the who, where, what, and how of your previous paid social campaign performance. As you review your notes, make a list of action items you need to complete before launching optimizations.

For example, do you need to create new or edit existing audiences? Should you develop new split-tests to improve performance? Can you work with your designer to mix up ad creative with new formats and designs? What do you need to create to get a more well-rounded creative bucket?

Finally, take a peek at the competition.

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Even though you have a better overview of your own accounts, you shouldn’t stop here! Your next step is to look at what your competitors are doing; they may have a new (or *gasp* better) way of doing things. You won’t have transparent access to their ad content, audiences, or campaign performance like you do for your ad account, but you can still sleuth out a few things that probably work well for them.

Look through their brand pages to see what type of organic content is working well for them (and what isn’t). Don’t forget to scroll through their website and see how it compares to yours–believe it or not, having an optimized website, especially on mobile, can affect your campaigns’ effectiveness.

There is also a helpful tool called Facebook Ad Library, which will show you all active ads for any Facebook page–pay dirt! ? While it won’t provide a full breakdown of things like campaign objective, or audience targeting, Ad Library does give you enough information to understand what your competitors are doing with platforms, copy, creative, calls-to-action, ad format, and more.

From here, you’re ready to move forward by applying what you’ve learned from your audit and competitive analysis to produce the most effective social media advertising campaigns possible. Now, go forth and advertise!

In a new format, old social mediaposts can find new life. Use these 4 tips tosave time andwork smart whencreating content for social media.

For those of us in digital marketing, it can feel like there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. And until science catches up with Harry Potter and “Time-Turners” become a thing IRL, social media managers have to find creative ways to build fresh, engaging social media posts on a time crunch.

Luckily, sometimes the best, freshest social media content is actually old content.

If you have a great piece of content — whether it be a compelling photo, info-packed blog, or awesome video — there are countless ways to repackage and put a new spin on it.

In a new format, old content can find new life. You can increase your reach, inspire engagement, and build authority on a given topic — all while saving resources and maximizing your social media content strategy.

Here are four ways to repurpose your social media content.

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1. Make a video.

According to Social Media Today, video remains the top-performing content format across the board. Video generates more engagement than still photos on Instagram, and LinkedIn users are 20x more likely to reshare a video than they are any other type of content.

Not all of us are cinematic geniuses, but with the variety of easy-to-use tools on the market, creating good social content with video is easier than ever. Canva has animation features and great stock imagery options that can turn your standard graphic into a video. Lumen5 is super easy (and fast!) to use, especially for info-packed videos. Even turning a collection of photos into a slideshow from iMovie or your phone can be enough to spark higher engagement.

2. Show, don’t tell.

As a copywriter, this one kills me to say, but it’s true: sometimes an image can tell your story better than words. If you’ve got a great blog or piece of website copy, chances are it’ll make an even better infographic!

Distill your content into a few neat bullet points, open up your design tool, and voila! an infographic is born. (This blog itself would make a great infographic, right?)

3. Share a link.

Everyone has different ways they prefer to engage with social media content. My best friend devours true crime podcasts and documentaries, but as a writing-minded person, I learn best by reading. If our favorite brand puts out a podcast or video on their new products, my friend would be the first person to watch — whereas I’m more likely to click on a link and read about it.

Link shares are often one of the most straightforward ways to share content, and they’re also one of the most effective! (Some of us are cool, visually-minded people while others are self-proclaimed nerds who love to read. ??‍♀️)

4. Embrace the throwback.

Sometimes, repackaged content doesn’t even need a new format. Analyze your content reports for your best-performing content and build a best-of series that spotlights everything great your followers might have missed the first time — or would appreciate seeing again.

If you’ve got a great piece of content that’s outdated, you can always go back and freshen it up to be relevant again. Sometimes editing an old blog or infographic is quicker than writing a whole new one!

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When you’re thinking creatively with your content planning, the possibilities for any one piece of content are endless. Save time, work smart, and you’ll (almost) never feel burned out on creating content for social media again!

Optimizing your website improves the quality AND quantity of traffic going to your website through organic search engine results.

At Best Practice Media, we are HUGE fans of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for big and small businesses. Optimizing your website improves the quality AND quantity of traffic going to your website through organic search engine results. Still not convinced? We discuss five ways we believe SEO will help your business flourish organically.

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SEO brings in more targeted traffic to your website

A great SEO campaign can bring targeted web traffic with high conversion potential. This is because SEO is a high-target marketing tool that uses keyword analysis. This lets you know how big a “market” is, how many people are searching for that exact keyword, and just how competitive the industry is, and we can even find the intel behind keyword searches. There is so much you can discover just by analyzing keyword searches alone! (we have been down that rabbit hole many times).

Without SEO, it would be challenging to find websites within a specific business sector using search engines alone. The practice of understanding the intricacies of your industry, relevant trends, and search terms mean that you can fully optimize your website to bring in targeted traffic and the most relevant audiences every time.

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SEO improves your website’s user experience

Implementing SEO on your website has an added benefit because it will bring an improved user experience for your site visitors. Of course, you should always have user-friendly approaches at the front of your mind whatever you do to your website! Many SEO strategies align perfectly with this.

An SEO strategy that looks at quality components and meets the searcher’s intent requires a positive user experience. User benefits can include technical aspects of your website, like improving page speed so your website loads faster to creating valuable and engaging content. This provides an improved user experience and can help your website rank better. What’s not to love?

We know that in the past, SEO was seen as a way to improve ranking and nothing more. Still, today, SEO also puts a significant emphasis on providing quality, RELEVANT information to users that actually answers their questions as well. This collates with Google and answers questions rather than just being a search engine. Now, it looks to find the answers to a user’s query via the SERPS (search engine results page). Google wants users to experience fewer clicks and get the information they want quickly and effectively. These days, customers and site visitors know exactly what they want when typing in their search queries, so if your website doesn’t cater to what your audience is looking for, Google will know, and you may get left behind.

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SEO increases leads, traffic and conversions

As mobile traffic continues to rise and dominate, local search has become integral to any small or medium-sized business’s success. Local SEO looks at optimizing your product or service for a specific vicinity so that people wanting that product or service in your area can find you quickly and efficiently when they search online. Local SEO will focus on particular towns, cities, regions, and even states to establish the best medium for your brand messaging on a local level.

The goal of any great SEO strategy should be to drive more qualified traffic to your business’s website and generate leads and conversions. A good plan will increase your ranking in the search results and improve the odds of a potential customer finding your business and getting them to click through to your website. But you don’t want any old traffic. You want the right traffic for your service or product.

So how do you get the best traffic? We need to be strategic with your keywords and other parts of our SEO strategy. Rather than focusing on generic and broad keywords to be seen by the most people possible, we spend time researching and determining the right keywords that will be the most relevant and effective for YOUR business. Getting the right kind of traffic means that when users click on your website, they get what they want and are, therefore, more likely to convert.

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SEO is more affordable than ads

While SEO optimization is not free, we can all agree that all the best things cost…something, right? SEO is a relatively inexpensive means of benefiting your brand in the grand scheme of things. More importantly, if done right, the payoff will be considerable (and that’s where we come in!).

You should try to see SEO as more than just a marketing cost. It is actually more like a business investment. You see, SEO done well will hold water year after year, and like many things in life, it will only get better the more attention and investment it gets

Not only that, but SEO is just as quantifiable as ads and paid searches. You can measure it with analytics and tracking. We use this data to keep you fully informed of how your SEO is performing because, at the end of the day, it’s a given that data never lies. SEO done right is a long-term strategy that isn’t a quick fix. It works hard, and it works well long-term to bring target traffic to your website day after day, year after year.

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SEO builds brand loyalty, trust, and credibility

If you think about it, your website is often the first thing your online audience sees. This is where you get your chance to shine and generate valuable leads, sales, and other essential conversions. It is where you can show your audience your expert knowledge and build trust and credibility through your content and user experience. This cannot be made overnight; authority and credibility are earned and built over time (just like in real life) and is part of your long-game strategy.

Any website that ranks highly on search engine results will typically be considered trustworthy and high-quality by search engines, which then, in turn, boosts the credibility of your business. Authority can be accrued over time because of factors such as:

• Positive user behavior
• Machine-learning signals
• Natural links
• Optimized on-page elements and content.

Establishing that your brand is an authority on a particular topic/industry or product takes patience, effort, and commitment. It also means offering a service or quality products that allow your customers to trust your brand. You also have to ask how often you make it past the first page on a Google search results page. Most of us rarely do, so it is essential to climb your way to in search result rankings which will, in turn, add more trust and credibility to your brand.

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Is SEO right for your business?

Have we managed to convince you that SEO is right for your business? It’s a no-brainer, right? We believe your business will benefit from SEO because organic traffic is inarguably the most prominent traffic source for any website. Then take a search engine-optimized website, and it stands a much better chance of making use of all this traffic and potential conversions than a website that doesn’t use SEO. By implementing SEO best practices in the short and long term, you create a better user experience, a more significant brand reputation, and greater visibility in search engine results.

No matter whether you are creating graphics or creating memes, you want an easy-to-use tool that helps you to create the very best images and graphics for your business.

Finding a great design app or website where you can get creative is essential when it comes to your brand and your social media strategy. Whether you are creating graphics, editing photos, or creating memes, you want an easy-to-use tool that helps you create the best images and graphics for your social media posts. Below are 5 of the best-hidden creativity tools you can use for non-designers and designers alike that you may want to try and why:

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VistaCreate

Pros – Free and paid subscriptions are available. Very easy to use.

Cons – They don’t have as many templates, fonts, and graphics as Canva.

VistaCreate is an online graphic design platform perfect for small business owners. It can help your brand create professional visual content for social media and other marketing channels. You don’t need any design skills to make full use of VistaCreate. There are over 10 million users across 192 countries, with over 100 million created designs and 5000 new templates added monthly. There are many templates to choose from on any topic and theme, as well as royalty-free videos, vectors, and images. There are some useful editing tools, such as background remover and logo maker. Social media scheduler and a resizing tool, to name but a few!

VistaCreate comes with ready-made design presets that you can customize. It also comes with various design formats for digital use, marketing, social media, print, video, documents, and letters. In total, there are 78 design formats to choose from.

You can use VistaCreate as both a mobile and web application, and you can edit projects that you started on the web app on the mobile app and vice versa. You can use VistaCreate for free and VisaCreate pro, which gains you access to all of its features.

Sketch

Pros – License payment once per year. Great for exporting graphics in multiple formats.

Cons – It is for Mac users only.

Sketch is a vector-based graphics editor app that is made for macOS specifically. Many consider it a competent alternative to Photoshop. It features thousands of WordPress themes and plugins, UI elements, web templates, and more. You gain unlimited access to a growing variety of millions of web and creative design assets by having an Envato Elements membership. You pay for the app once, and then you can use it as much as you like without any further costs for a whole year. You can continue to use the app after the year, but you will not receive any new updates unless you repurchase the license. Being vector-based means that every shape you draw can be resized in any dimension without losing sharpness.

Gravit Designer Pro

Pros – Has a free version and also comes with a free trial. Easy to use the all-in-one tool. Great cloud storage capacity. Can use on any browser,

Cons – Needs more vector image choices. The offline version requires a pro plan.

Gravit Designer Pro is a cloud-based vector graphics app that can help your business create anchors, built-in web pages, styles, and symbols to create wireframes and mock-ups. Everyone on your team can manage editing photos, adjusting colors, adding filters, blending, and creating lighting effects. It also comes with vector illustration tools so you and your team can create shapes, points, lines, and other elements. You can ensign and export multiple file formats, including JPEG, PDF, and SVG, and it has a built-in asset library. Great for social media posts, it means you can add stickers, frames, icons, emojis, and illustrations across many graphics to create unique and engaging posts.

Pixlr

Pros – It has a free version and a photo editor, and you can purchase individual templates.

Cons – the free version has many adverts. Some of the filters are not of great quality.

Pixlr features three parts, Pixlr C, where you can create many design projects; Pixlr E, for advanced photo editing; and Photomash Studio, where you can create visual assets. There are many professionally made templates to choose from, and you can create Instagram stories, resumes, YouTube banners, presentations, and more with thousands of free templates. A bonus of Pixlr is that you can animate any design with just a few clicks! You can edit photos, remove backgrounds in a single click, and create collages from pre-made templates. It is free to use, and you can sign up for their premium software for as little as $7 a month. There is a 30-day free trial to see if you like it first. You will notice that the free version has ads, but if that is something you don’t mind, the free version is excellent for social media posts! You will see that some of the templates are premium users only, but it allows you to buy individual templates for $1 rather than having to commit to going premium.

Figma

Pros – Free-to-use graphic editing software that works in any browser and operating system.

Cons – Some find it hard to use if not already knowledgeable about vector-based software. Doesn’t have as many features as other vector-based software.

Figma is a web-based app where you can edit graphics such as designing social media posts, mobile apps, wireframe websites, and much more! It works differently than many design software as it is web-based, so you can use any computer or platform to use it, and you don’t have to buy multiple licenses. It also has a free plan where you can actively create and store three projects simultaneously. This is great for small teams, and you can learn, experiment, and work on smaller projects, all for free. It is also suitable for new designers as you can make templates from scratch, but if your design skills are limited, there are pre-made templates and plenty of other resources to get you started and grow more confident. The Figma website also has many video tutorials to teach design exercises, especially if you are new to UI and UX design.

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There are many more hidden tools that are fantastic for creating designs, these are just some of our favs! Look out for our next hidden tools series for more great apps and software you can easily use for your marketing team!