A Game Changer for Your Social Media Management: Old & New Tricks

As the years go by and as we witness trends come and go, it seems that social media platforms continue to persevere and thrive—even when brought to the brink by a new, billionaire CEO. Social platforms rarely change, but the trends surrounding them and the content that dominates the search feeds continues to evolve.

For a business owner looking to maximize the potential of every marketing dollar and capitalize on social media as well as other digital channels, staying up to date on new trends is essential for success. Sometimes, that means shifting your strategy, investing in artificial intelligence, and trying something new.

Other times, it is imperative to stick with what works, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing today—we’re sharing the old and the new social media best practices you need to use in 2023.

Here’s what you need to know to take your social media strategy to new heights. 

Build a Winning Content Calendar

First up, we have a best practice that will always be a powerful tool for any social media strategy. A content calendar is a crucial part of your social media efforts, as it helps you plan your content in advance, ensure posting consistency, and avoid the last-minute rush. What’s more, proper project resource management ensures that your campaigns are all going to schedule, your team is taking care of their tasks, and you have a system to track clients and collaborators.

There is nothing worse than missing out on the opportunity to keep your followers engaged and capitalize on the momentum that good and frequent social media content creates. It only takes a small inconsistency or break in your posting for people to lose interest and forget about your brand. This disinterest may not be for good, but you will need to work extra hard to regain their interest and trust.

In order to have consistently interesting content to put in your calendar, don’t forget to regularly repurpose content from your live streams and events, your long-form articles, and your videos. Make sure to optimize and adapt these content types as snippets, reels and interesting posts on every platform.

Your content calendar should include a mix of different content types, including:

• Catching and compelling messaging
• Educational content
• Videos (short and long form)
• Relevant links
• Promotions
• Images and infographics
• Live events

You can also plan your content around upcoming events and holidays, and use relevant hashtags to increase visibility.

Personalize the Brand’s Voice and Presence

Social media provides an opportunity to humanize your brand and connect with your audience on a more personal level. In fact, this opportunity is one you can’t afford to pass on moving forward, because humanizing your brand is one of the most powerful ways to generate leads and grow a loyal following.

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Personalization is the key to creating a lasting relationship with your followers, and is a social media trend that will never disappear. Why? Because the social media realm is too saturated, too competitive for the no-name brands to stand a chance. 

With that in mind:

• Use your brand’s unique voice and personality in your social media posts to create a positive experience for your audience. 
• Respond to comments and messages in a timely and personalized manner to foster a sense of community and build trust.
• Ensure brand consistency between social posts and other channels like your website, email, and even influencers.

Leverage User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) has always been an excellent way to create a sense of authenticity and build social proof. After all, people don’t just want to hear you talk about yourself—they want to see their peers putting trust in your brand as well.

Encourage your followers to share their experiences with your brand, and then feature their content on your social media channels. Don’t forget to integrate UGC in your social media ads as well in order to maximize the value of each ad and build social proof with your target customers.

Effective UGC can include:

• Customer reviews
• Images
• Videos
• Shout-outs on social media
• Product tips and tricks

Maximize the Use of Social Listening Tools

Social listening has been around for a while now, but we still do not use it as much as we should. This technology allows you to monitor the conversations about your brand in the social media space, your competitors, important topics, and industry and customer trends.

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If you use them correctly, social listening tools can be invaluable in shaping your social media strategy in a competitive industry. You can then plug the information you gather into your Instagram tools, your Facebook analytics, or your combined social media dashboard to get in-depth insights for every platform. 

This process allows you to stay ahead of any potential issues or concerns and respond appropriately, if good PR is one of your top priorities, for example. It can also provide insights into what your audience is interested in and what they’re talking about. 

Simply use these insights to inform your content strategy and stay relevant to your audience, while documenting your processes in SOPs. This approach will help you streamline your social media management and create a well-organized strategy. This step is essential in giving all marketing experts in your organization the tools and processes they need to create winning campaigns.

Leveraging All Social Communication Tools to Engage Your Audience

Social media offers a range of communication tools beyond posting typical content, including live streams, polls, stories, and direct messaging. These communication channels help engage your audience and create a sense of community. 

For example, you could use polls to gather feedback on new products, or use live streams to showcase behind-the-scenes glimpses of your business. The possibilities are virtually endless, but keep in mind you must adapt to each platform.

You can engage your audience with better TikTok video ideas that delve deeper into your brand’s story, for example, and then follow up in the DMs asking your followers what they thought of the video. If your post was a product video, then engaging in the DMs is the perfect opportunity to give them a special discount as well.

On Facebook, on the other hand, you can engage people with live events and generate leads through direct sign-ups. Whatever the platform, you can follow up with an email and engage with viewers directly, taking the conversation off the platform and into a more personal space.

Integrating Social Media with Other Marketing Channels

Speaking of other communication channels, keep in mind that the best way to maximize your social media investments is to make your social channels work with other digital marketing efforts. You always want to give people a reason to engage with you outside of social media as well, so leading them to blog posts, product pages, and events is a great way to maximize results.

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All of the content you’re trying to tie in with your social media efforts needs to be relevant and optimized for your audience. If you are leading people to a blog post on your website, then make sure that the blog post is pertinent to the current trends, issues, and pain points that they’re trying to solve.

If you have influencers and guest writers contributing to your website, make sure their content passes an AI content detector. Publishing AI generated content can be detected by search algorithms causing lower content visibility with time. Moreover, this misstep can ruin your reputation on social channels and beyond. 

Combine different marketing tactics with social media, and ensure quality, consistency, and originality in all messaging and content.

Creating and Executing Specialized Social Media Campaigns

Specialized social media campaigns can help you promote specific products, events, or causes. For example, you could run a social media contest to generate buzz around a new product launch or run a charity campaign to raise awareness for a cause. These campaigns can increase engagement and build brand loyalty.

Of course, there’s always a catch. One of the mistakes marketers make is that they make specialized campaigns and content too long and too complex. Now that so many people are participating in a digital detox and using a screen time calculator to find out how much time they’re wasting online, they’re not as likely to sit through content that doesn’t immediately get down to the value proposition.

The window of opportunity to engage your audience when it comes to specialized offers, products, or campaigns in general is very narrow, so make sure to:

• Define the key goals of the campaign
• Know the core values of the product
• Know exactly why your audience should care about it
• Keep all specialized content (text, images, videos) short and to-the-point
• Always sweeten the pot at the end, offering a special deal just for them

Over to You

The social media world might constantly change and evolve, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some tried-and-true best practices you can use to execute winning social media campaigns. That said, you also have to keep up with the trends and the times, and that means that you should complement the old tricks with some novel tactics.

By combining the best practices we covered today, you’ll be fully equipped to take your social media management to the next level in 2023. Go ahead and make this year your best year yet on all social channels.