50 Social Media Best Practices Every Business Should Follow

Social Media Best Practices: When we say social media, it is not merely restricted to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat. There are various social media channels that include platforms like blogs, forums, photo-sharing platforms, social gaming, business networks, microblogs, chat apps, as well as social networks. In 2017, it was estimated that nearly 1 million new people joined social networks every single day.

However, in 2020, social media took a whole new turn with a huge increase in the number of active users on different social media sites. 

Why Social Media Marketing Become More Important for Businesses?

Without any doubt, that makes it clear that social networking is one of the most popular online activities worldwide. It has made social media one of the most profitable, viable, and effective marketing channels for businesses worldwide.

According to statistics, over 70% of small businesses utilize social media as a marketing channel. It is primarily because of the huge reach of these platforms, and the immense potential such marketing campaigns have. 

According to statistics, right now, there are over 3.6 billion active social media users across the globe. Among different social media platforms, Facebook is considered the most popular social media platform with over 2.5 billion monthly active users.

If we look at the global social media penetration numbers, then in the year 2020, almost 48.3% of the global population were social media users. The numbers are projected to increase to 56.7% of the global population by the year 2025. 

Quite evidently, social media marketing has become one of the most popular marketing techniques for businesses across the globe. In the next part of the article, we have discussed the basics of social media marketing and 50 of the best and most effective social media practices that every business should follow in 2021.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or a marketer, these tips are essential for the best results of your social media marketing campaigns. 

What Is Social Media Marketing All About?

If it comes to a formal definition of social media marketing, then it is the practice where different social media platforms and websites are used for business promotion. You can use different social media platforms to promote a product or service, and this entire practice or procedure is known as social media marketing. 

Social media marketing is a great channel to reach out to existing customers, enhance engagement with them, as well as enhance the reach of a business to its target audience. 

Businesses and marketers are using these channels extensively for connecting with their target audience, building brand recognition, increasing sales, as well as driving website traffic. When it comes to the best social media practices, what is worth mentioning is the fact that every social media channel is different.

Each of them has their own ways of working, guidelines, post types, and essentially require different kinds of strategies and techniques for maximum success and effectiveness.

From creating a strong social media presence across the most important channels to understanding strategic and tactical best social media practices to gain maximum success and earn the highest ROI.

Let us look at these practices that can help you plan and execute a far more superior, effective and successful social media marketing campaign. These will surely be your best shot at enhancing your brand’s social media presence and increasing your influence.

50 Social Media Best Practices

Make use of a social media calendar

It might be one of the most fundamental things about social media marketing but still one of the most important ones. With a social media calendar, you can keep your complete social media marketing schedule organized. A social media calendar will help you in the following ways:

• Save your time
• The marketing team will be accountable for deadlines. 
• You can make strategic use of your time and resources and post in a more organized manner. 

Set your goals

This might just be a life rule, but whenever starting a venture or a campaign you must set a few goals and work towards achieving them. You must always start a social media marketing campaign by setting a few goals. This will help you in the following ways: 

• This makes your target more specific. 
• It makes your efforts and results more measurable. 
• They will also be aspirational. 
• It will help in making better use of time and will make the campaign more time-oriented.

Proper social media image sizes

As we know that different social media platforms have different guidelines, so you must choose the right image sizes for posting on different platforms based on the requisites. Here’s a brief guide for social posting on different sites:

Here’s a more detailed guide on it.

A platform-specific content strategy

Once again, every social media platform is different and you need to build a specialized content strategy for each. What works on one platform may not work on another. This will help you by: 

• Saving your time by knowing what to do when you start. 
• Understanding the reasons behind the good or bad performance of your campaign.
• Supporting the overall management efforts. 

Choose The Most Appropriate Social Media Channels

Not every social media network will be suitable for your business and neither do you need to be on all of them. Choose the ones most effective and appropriate for your business. Review the purpose and strength of each platform and its demographics and choose the ones most suitable for your business purposes. Consider a few important aspects like: 

• Your business objectives and tactical aims like driving website traffic, conversions, increase brand awareness, sales, establish brand authority, etc
• The potential of the platform in achieving those.
• The presence of your target audience on the platform. 

Establish a brand tone for social media

Be it professional, funny, sarcastic, or anything else, you need to establish a specific tone and voice for your brand on the platforms. It will help in better connection and engagement with your audience. Keep in mind:

• Your brand voice and message.
• The target audience and their vocabulary
• What your audience expects from you

Handle negative responses with sincerity and empathy

Even the biggest brands face criticism from their audience and the success of your brand will depend on how you handle criticism and negativity. Make sure you are sincere about such responses, reply promptly, appropriately, and with empathy. 

Choose a time to post when a majority of your audience is online

This is where social media analytics come into play. Look into the time frame when a majority of your audience is online and post during those times for maximum visibility and reach. 

Too much or too little can be counterproductive when it comes to posting frequency

It has been noticed through a Sprout Social survey that 34.9% of all unfollows happen due to too much posting. You need to balance your posting intervals and find the perfect posting frequency, which is neither too much nor too little.

Quality over Quantity Always

When it comes to social media marketing, quality is of paramount importance and you need to always focus on quality over quantity. Some social networks require a high volume of content while others need little, but the quality is a must on all of them. 

Consider Automation

Try to automate as much of the processes as you can. Manually doing something is less productive if it can be done through automation. It will help save time and resources. This may include things like: 

• Scheduling social media messages
• Social media templates to fill in messages 
• Re-sharing content at suitable and optimal times

Be engaging and do not just be too formal and corporate

Your audience will surely lose interest if your content is boring, formal and dull. Keep in mind that you are communicating with real people and your content must be relatable, relevant, and interesting for them.

Blend promotional and inspirational

This will be a great tip for platforms like Instagram and Pinterest as the audience on these platforms are more inclined to inspirational and aesthetic content.

Too much promotional content can make you lose the audience and according to a study by Hubspot, 45% of people will unfollow brands because they post too many promotional items.

Combine promotional content with inspirational ones to strike the perfect note! You can mix up your content and make use of content types like: 

• Job postings

• Company culture posts
• Community news
• Industry news
• GIFs
• Branded content
• Informative blogs 

Don’t make use of slangs or jargons unless it’s relevant and necessary

According to studies by Sprout Social, 38.4% of people will unfollow brands if they use slang or jargon. This means that you must never use slang or jargon unless it is relevant to your brand and absolutely necessary. 

Competitor analysis

The golden point of marketing is knowing about who you are going against. The field of social media is highly competitive and you need to research your competitors, study their strategies and then make plans to surpass them through revamped social tactics.

Social media and PR disaster management plan

It is called having a backup and you must make a social media disaster or PR disaster plan. One wrong step can throw your brand into a swift downward spiral and having a plan in hand can help counter such situations.

It will help mitigate long-term damage during a crisis. Involve PR, social media, management as well as customer service during such a crisis. Prepare for the following: 

• Standard responses during a crisis
• Pre-drafted apologies
• Have some press contacts in hand
• Have all the login information in one place and make it easily accessible for your team

Track Engagement

Engagement is the objective of all kinds of social media marketing campaigns. Make sure you track them properly and act on them based on your campaign performance. 

Claim usernames even on platforms you do not use

It may sound absurd but if you ever plan on being active on a social media platform that you have not used previously, having your brand username in hand will be very convenient. It can be used to easily direct your audience to that platform. 

Host social media contests and giveaways smartly

These are a big crowd-puller, and you must host social media contests smartly. It can help in considerable audience growth as well as enhanced engagement. 

Do not rely on automated cross channel posting settings

Instead of relying on automated cross-channel post settings, you should manually tailor each post for a particular network. 

Extensive hashtag research

There will be a lot of tools for this one and make sure you do in-depth research on the hashtags you are going to use. Relevant and trending ones can be used in proportions. 

Induce humor in your posts

Funny content is always a hit and you must put in the right amount of humor in your content for better reach and engagement. Be it a post or be it a reply, a comment, or something else, you must do it properly and carefully, or else it can be a total disaster. 

Limit Employee Access

It will help in better management and avoiding any unprecedented disasters. Make sure that the company’s social media accounts are accessible to only a limited number of employees. 

Optimize your social media profiles

Along with great content, you need to make your profile presentable and attractive as well. From usernames and bios to headers and descriptions, you need to optimize them to uphold your brand image. 

Do not indulge with trolls

Trolls will be constant and being a reputable brand, all you need to do is simply ignore them.

Platform Specific Best Practices

Facebook

1. Post albums for more likes and use short captions for better engagement rates. 
2. Use videos of lengths between 2 to 5 minutes to strike conversations and opt for the vertical format videos. 
3. Go live for over one hour on your brand page! 
4. Add a description of over 300 characters with your videos to increase engagement.
5. For paid marketing, place the majority of ads on Facebook. It will ensure the highest CTR with lower costs per click.
6. Use hashtags sparingly. Too many hashtags can decrease CTR. 
7. Keep your posts concise and crisp. According to data gathered by CoSchedule, 111 characters is ideal. 
8. Do not include call-to-action or make your posts sound like ads. 

Instagram

1. Prioritize Instagram over Twitter and Facebook for posting as it has a better engagement rate.
2. Make use of carousel posts. For instance, use more slides for one such post. 
3. On Instagram as well, videos get the most comments. It is the best way to make conversations. 
4. Short captions with emojis are standard for success. 
5. Include more videos into your regular story posts and story ads for higher CTR.
6. If you have more than 100K followers, you must use 6 hashtags in the first comment for better engagement, impressions, and reach. If you have less than 100K followers, you can hide the hashtags in the caption. 
7. Make use of location tagging on your posts. It is especially good for local businesses. 
8. Tag influencer accounts when sharing their posts or relevant content. 

Twitter

1. According to statistics, successful brands post over 195 posts per month. 
2. Ensure higher engagement rates by posting videos with short captions of under 10 words per tweet. 
3. Include images in your tweets as well.

Pinterest

1. Use popular, trending, and evergreen pin descriptions. 
2. Use inspirational content.
3. Create themed boards. 

LinkedIn

1. Use a professional tone
2. Instead of promotional content, share informative industry news
3. Keep your “About Us” section updated  

Final Words

That brings us to the end of the list of best social media practices! In the end, along with the fifty tips listed above, we have a bonus tip for you! Keep your eyes open to modern trends and optimize your content based on trending topics. It will help you to enhance reach and engagement.

With these 50 best social media practices for businesses, you can get the best results for your business in 2021. Make sure to implement them appropriately and achieve great success, business growth, and high ROI for your social media marketing campaigns.