The 3 most used social networks in France are, in order, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram. If you want to optimize your online visibility, it is strongly recommended to have an account with one of them. Why?
Today, social networks are fully integrated into the daily life of many individuals and businesses. It is, therefore, necessary to be present in an efficient and professional manner to stand out from the crowd. Many of you want to be more efficient in order to be successful. And, in doing so, you waste precious time finding new ideas.
Faced with this request, I decided to publish my LARGE FORMAT article on good practices in 2020 to allow you to start the year 2021.
1. Determine The Purpose Of Your Presence On Social Networks
To be effective on social media, you need to know yourself why you want to be there! It may seem obvious to you, but it is less so for many professionals already present on social networks.
Inform / Buy / Redirect To Your Site
If you run an online business, ask yourself how the social networks you choose will help you develop your sales:
- Bring traffic to your website,
- Work on your image and your sympathy capital,
- Raise awareness among a new audience,
- Highlight your promotions,
- Present your services
Here are some talking stats about the impact of social media globally. There are 7.6 billion people on Earth. Among them :
- 4.4 billion Internet users (55%),
- 3.5 billion social media users (44%),
- 3.4 billion mobile social media users (42%).
Communication professionals agree that companies are present on at least one social network (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) to increase their notoriety. Be careful, this does not mean that there is no sales marketing objective behind it, quite the contrary.
If you run a Facebook business page, be careful not to be too self-promoting in each of your posts. This practice should be used very sparingly because your audience may quickly unsubscribe from your Facebook page.
Promote Your Store
For stores with a customer reception point, the problem is a little different. Generally, in this case, we rather seek to make known his store, inform about his products and display all the information necessary to allow customers to locate us.
Whether it is to promote your business Facebook page or your Instagram, it is imperative to have a profile that is 100% complete and to be responsive to the messages received. We talk about it a little later in this article.
In this regard, we recommend, if you haven’t already done so, to create a Google My Business account here. Why? It is a free service from Google which allows you to display all the necessary contact details for your customers/prospects (opening hours, address, etc.).
Provide Support To Its Customers
This use of social networks is all the more verified in 2020. The platforms maximize the user experience so that they are quickly satisfied.
If you receive a lot of service requests, you may want to consider setting up a business Facebook page or Twitter account (more commonly used) to respond to your consumers. You would thus show your responsiveness and your ability to evolve with the latest information technologies.
Everything goes very quickly on social networks and it is valid with the patience of your subscribers. Think about it!
A little tip: If you want to dedicate a Facebook business, Instagram or Twitter account to your after-sales service, add the mention in question after the name of your profile.
Work On Your E-Reputation
Who does not want to develop their number of Instagram followers and gain subscribers on their Facebook page? When we take time to be present on a social network, it is also for the people who listen to us and engage in our publications.
Here is a list of some tasks to accomplish to give more visibility to your Facebook business page (also valid for Instagram):
- A 100% complete profile: profile picture (take your logo) and Facebook company cover defined (take an image that represents your company if professional activity). All information on formats in this link. For Instagram, we prefer a square format in 1: 1 resolution. The description should be complete and concise. No long and tedious writing. We try to capture the user’s attention. Favour a list of points. For your Facebook business, put your hours and address if you have.
- Define the main objective: To convince and interest your audience, you must keep in mind the reason for your presence on a social network. This will also allow you to focus on the content to be produced and will prevent you from scattering and losing subscribers along the way.
Ex: You run a bakery. You create a Facebook business account to offer your customers/subscribers privileged content around the manufacture of your products, give information about your news.
- Invite your personal entourage to like your Facebook business page: If you already have a personal account on Facebook and/or Instagram, involve your friends by asking them to come and support your page. These are easy-to-learn subscribers who will support you when you start your business. Why go without?
- Promote interactions with your posts: The more interactions your posts receive, the more they will be deemed relevant by social networks. They will then be highlighted and visible to a greater number of people. How to do? Ask questions in your posts, appeal to the emotion of your followers. You can also organize contests for your Facebook business and your Instagram, for this we recommend the Social Shaker application which allows you to remain in compliance with the policy of use of social networks.
- Be regular. Set yourself a publication rate to get your fans used to find you on social networks. The more active you are, the more you will be able to grow on the different social platforms.
Show Social Proof
You can choose to be present on a social network to strengthen your credibility on the web through authentic customer comments accompanied by notes summarizing the lived experience. Note that the weight of ratings and customer feedback will remain a determining criterion for your social proof in 2021. Consumers who will have access to positive feedback will buy more easily.
For your information, Facebook automatically includes this notification system when you create a company or brand page.
On Instagram, you can invite your customers to use your products, highlight a service received on one of their posts, then reuse it for your own account. What could be more credible than a client who tells his story?
Also read: Know More About YouTube, Engagement And Efficiency
2. Identify Your Audience
For an effective presence on social networks, you have to know who you are talking to. Concretely what type of people will most want to listen to you. This analysis is important because it will determine the ability of these people to engage with your posts and therefore their reach. This data will also be very useful when you decide to run advertising campaigns for your Facebook business and your Instagram since you will already know your segments.
Here are 2 methods to determine your audience:
- Define personas: We start with this method to define your editorial line and build your audience. Personas are typical profiles that correspond to a segment of your target. This work, widely used in marketing, allows you to adapt your speech according to the segment to which you are addressing. Ex: Still in our baking activity, we will have a fairly varied clientele: Persona 1: Students aged 18 to 25 who want pastries to start the day or have lunch at noon. Persona 2: Workers (all professional categories combined) from the 30 to the 60-year-old neighbourhood who want to buy bread for lunch or dinner.
The tool made “generously” available by Facebook allows you to select a personalized audience according to different criteria and to have several interesting information on user behaviour (other pages liked, age, socio-professional category, etc.). To access it, create a free advertising account that you will certainly use later and click on the menu at the top left “audience statistics” on Facebook. For example, you can use this tool to validate the personas found by performing method 1.
3. Study Of The Competitors And Their Methods
Once the audience analysis is done, we will be interested in what is happening around. The goal is not to copy but to be inspired by what works to bring your personal touch. This will save you time on setting up your communication for your Facebook business and your Instagram. Here are some avenues for research:
- Pinterest is your friend: The platform is a gold mine of photos organized by theme. It’s a great source of inspiration for making your own content.
- On Facebook: You can go follow the pages of your competitors to see how they manage their communication. To do this, go to your page then click on the Statistics tab> Publications> Top publications of the Pages you are monitoring> Add Pages. A section called “Page Transparency” (found on the right column of each page) even lets you see current ad campaigns!
- On Instagram ditto: Follow influential accounts in your field to get news and ideas for your next content.
The study of the competitors is also an opportunity for you to make affiliation, partnerships on commercial actions. Think about it, it’s a great booster for your visibility and to gain followers for your Facebook business and your Instagram.
4. Define Your Strategy
This point is O-BLI-GA-TOIRE and as important as the purpose of your presence. Once you know your main goal, you need to think about your strategy. This will allow you to organize your content and diversify it to always interest your audience. Some points to consider:
- Editorial line: ask yourself what tone are you going to use: formal, informal? Type of content: video, image, carousel, gif…;
- Positioning: Are you going to position yourself as an expert in your field or rather as an explorer, curious, amateur.
- Pace of communication: How many posts per month do you expect?
- Choice of social networks: Which social network is best suited for your business? If you choose to communicate only on Instagram: What general atmosphere do you want to convey through your feed.
- Have you thought about bringing in an influencer to boost your communication?
- Are you thinking of carrying out advertising campaigns to boost your social networks?
By answering these basic questions, you can start to create the pillars of your digital strategy and be on the right track for the future. Don’t overlook this part!
5. Define KPIS
All the actions carried out on your social networks must be followed in order to be able to be improved. Depending on the objectives of your Instagram or your Facebook business, you will have to monitor certain indicators more carefully: reach/click/engagement/sales, etc.
Several tools are at your disposal to measure your results:
- Facebook statistics: They will allow you to have detailed figures for each of your publications. With them, you can target posts that have worked well in order to reproduce the winning recipe.
- You must be particularly attentive (ve) to 2 tabs (accessible from a computer). First of all the Publications tab. It’s a goldmine of information as it tells us when fans are online, the types of posts ranked by performance and the top posts from the watched pages. Then there is the People tab which will inform us about the characteristics of your audience (gender, age groups, location). Valuable information to consult regularly to improve your communication.
- Instagram statistics: Similar to Facebook in terms of data, they are divided into 3 categories to be consulted regularly to improve your strategy: Activity, Content, Audience. Please note, you will only be able to access detailed statistics from the mobile version.
- Google Analytics: This tool will be particularly useful if you have a website since it will allow you to track the behaviour of your users from the moment they arrive on the site. You can then optimize your conversion funnel and extend the time spent on your site. Access to Google Analytics here .
- Facebook Pixel: This other tracker is a must-have if you are advertising on Facebook and want to redirect visitors to your website. It will collect their data for you to be able to optimize your next communication campaigns and also re-targeting (display of a promotion at a date subsequent to the last visit of a product page). Pixel link here.
- The My Circle application: With its simplified statistics, this will allow you to understand at a glance all the results for the past week or month.
Also Read: Will Social Reset Happen In 2021?
6. Hashtags On Facebook And Instagram: Impact And Relevance + Best Practices
Regarding hashtags, there is a lot of different information on the internet. You have to put at least 15, in English, in French, with spaces, on Instagram… Let’s take stock!
Hashtags are words preceded by a # without spaces. They usually symbolize an idea, a state of mind at the time you post. #definition
Let’s put an end to the rumours:
- Hashtags are useless: False
- Hashtags increase the visibility of my posts on Instagram: True!
- Hashtags also increase reach on Facebook: False
- The number of hashtags in a post is important: False
- The hashtags must be related to my post: True
- Hashtags are currently of little use on Facebook: True
I hope that these answers will have already removed the doubt on some questions that come up regularly on the web.
What should be deduced from this for your future posts:
- On Facebook: You can put one or two to represent an idea, a feeling at the moment T, to make your presentation a little more fun, but that’s it!
- On Instagram: I recommend putting some on each of your posts to increase the reach of each one and get engagement. You must select these according to your publications and their popularity.
- Here are the hashtags you should have in each post:
- Hashtags directly linked to the photo,
- Hashtags directly linked to the locality (if the local business, event, local interest),
- More general hashtags in the photo ecosystem,
- Hashtags in another language if your audience is also international,
- Hashtags linked to a trend (which can be linked to the photo).
Hashtags provide additional visibility on Instagram for all Instagrammers who have missed your photo. It would be a shame to lose visibility because of an oversight.
Do not take overly popular hashtags, your photo could be drowned in the mass. Instead, aim for niches and technical terms (<30,000 results) to ensure your audience will find your post on Instagram.
7. Advanced Techniques
Many techniques are emerging on the web to boost your growth on social networks. Sometimes they are countered by Facebook’s algorithms because they are considered unfair, sometimes they are part of the game and are tolerated.
Facebook Groups
Groups on Facebook abound. You have surely noticed that when you do a search on Facebook, you have at least ten groups that correspond to your request. Let’s say what is, Facebook groups are popular and loved. Members are comfortable there, speak more freely, and even participate by posting content. You would be wrong to underestimate the impact that groups can have on your business.
There are 2 types of groups:
- The group directly attached to your page: It brings together people who already like your page around a common interest. Whether public or closed, it is visible to those who search on Facebook. The advantage of this type of group is that it strengthens the link with your community while offering better proximity. The engagement of your members is generally better and qualitative. For example, you can ask questions about the next products or services that you want to release. By consulting your audience, you will have a better chance of satisfying your customers.
- The outside group to your page: You create a group administered by yourself. I advise you to create a pro profile, for example, your first name and the name of the company. Even if the group is not associated with your page, it deals with a topic close to your activity and brings value. Ex: I am a house painter, I am creating a Painting: Tips & Tricks group. Thus, I am not talking (now) about my Facebook business and I may interest all the little DIYers looking for tips in painting. The advantage is that I can feed the news of the group with small tutorial videos and let others post to help the community. People tend to fit into this type of group more easily because they feel a little less commercial pressure.
Instagram Pods
What are Instagram Pods? It’s a practice of initiating each of your posts with a group of people who are used to interacting.
Why? In addition to bringing a dynamic to your post, it allows you to show Instagram’s algorithm that your post generates engagement quickly and therefore that it would be likely to interest more people. Therefore, Instagram will make it more visible. In other words, your publication is boosted for free to more people. However, for this to work, the group must react from the first hours. This is also valid on Facebook!
How it works: Join a group that uses this type of practice or create a small group on Messenger (it can be relatives, other entrepreneurs…) ready to exchange interactions on your mutual publications. Then, as soon as you have a post to boost, leave a message on the Messenger group with the link to your post and wait for the interactions. This concept is based on a win-win exchange with the members of your group. And as the world calls the world, you should naturally have more engagement with your posts and gain followers.
Facebook Bots
The use of bots has increased significantly in 2020. The term bot comes from robot contraction. Its objective is to interact in an automated way, according to a defined scenario with humans. It may be interesting to develop one for your Facebook page if you want to:
- Increase your engagement rates,
- Offer a better customer experience,
- Save time on common questions.
Also Read: 5 Exciting New Instagram Features From Their 2020 Updates
8. “Black Hat” Methods To Avoid
Faced with the increase in practices aimed at boosting the visibility of its social networks, platforms like Facebook or Instagram have taken drastic measures that can go as far as outright banning.
Here is a little recap of the manipulations to avoid if you do not master:
- Auto-follow: automatically follow accounts via third-party applications,
- Unsubscribe: automatically unsubscribe via third-party applications,
- Interactions: Implementation of the bot to interact automatically on publications in an automated way,
- Contest: Encourage subscribers to share, tag, comment to validate participation in a contest (especially valid for Facebook),
- Messenger: send promotional messages to all members of a group in which you are a member, massively send the same message to people who do not subscribe,
- Self-promotion: This is not a practice that will lead to the ban on Facebook, however it can lead to the ban of a group to which you belong.
- Purchase of subscribers: To be absolutely banned from your growth strategy!
9. Advertise
To build a meaningful presence on social networks, especially for Facebook and Instagram, you will need to familiarize yourself with advertising.
Why?
Social networks work with algorithms that allow your posts to be distributed to a certain number of people. This is called organic Facebook coverage. Over the past few weeks, the circulation rate was 8%. That is, only 8% of your audience could view your posts. As you will have understood, the platform wants the user to compensate for this lack of visibility with advertising. This will also have the advantage, for a fee, of offering your content to a targeted audience in advance.
How? ‘Or’ What?
To create an advertisement for your social networks, it’s pretty fast.
- You will have to click on the tab of the same name, once on your page. You will be redirected to the Facebook advertising platform.
- You will then need to create your advertising account by following the instructions.
- You will have to configure your first campaign for your Facebook business. To learn more about advertising, you can read my article entitled How to boost your Facebook page in 2020.
Before embarking on an advertising campaign, there is some thought to be done on your audience, your objective, the duration of the campaign. For example, you might want to learn how to boost a post on Facebook, rather than creating a traditional advertising campaign.”
Finally, to optimize your promotion costs, it is necessary to monitor all your campaigns in order to check the progress and adjust elements to be even more effective.
In Summary…
I hope you liked this maxi format and that you will be able to implement the tips presented. As you may have noticed, activating and tracking social media takes time. By promoting quality content and planning your daily operations, you will gradually increase the size of your community. Keep in mind your conversion objective (sale, addition to the cart, visit the site, making contact….) In order to set up your strategy in function and above all to be able to measure your results.
Do not hesitate to bring this article to life by sharing it on social networks so that others can benefit from it. You can also leave your opinion and your favourite tips in the comments.
Also Read: How To Post Photos On Instagram From A Laptop or PC?
