A large social media fol­low­ing can be a pow­er­ful tool for any small busi­ness but not many are will­ing to put in the work. Social media doesn’t have to be a chore, armed with the right infor­ma­tion your busi­ness can become a social media superstar.

In this arti­cle we’ll show you how to get a leg up on the com­pe­ti­tion on each of the big 3 social media net­works — Face­book, Twit­ter, and Instagram.

Exper­i­ment with these 70 social media mar­ket­ing strate­gies, ideas and exam­ples for your small business.

Facebook

1. Com­plete your about page

Com­plet­ing the about page of your busi­ness page is cru­cial. Your Face­book busi­ness page can often be the first place your vis­i­tors arrive on after a Google search. Make sure all of your dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion is in order includ­ing your web­site, social links, and con­tact infor­ma­tion are filled out.

2. Face­book contest

A Face­book con­test is a fun and engag­ing way to grow your Face­book audi­ence. The right prize and an excit­ing theme can give your busi­ness just the boost it needs.

3. Change/update Face­book cov­er photo

To high­light a new pro­mo­tion, con­test or give­away change your cov­er pho­to to make every vis­i­tor aware.

4. Pin a post

After shar­ing an update about a new blog post, pro­mo­tion, give­away, prod­uct etc. pin the post to the top of your Face­book news feed so it’s the first post vis­i­tors see.

5. Test link formats

Exper­i­ment with the way you share links with your Face­book audi­ence. Shar­ing an update with the entire link can pro­vide anoth­er CTA for read­ers to click but remov­ing the link can help the post look more clean and refined. Test and see.

6. Albums or sin­gle posts

Does your Face­book fol­low­ers engage more with pho­tos post­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly or in album for­mat? Test out both and see which for­mat gar­ners more engagement.

7. Face­book video

Video is soon to be the major­i­ty of all the con­tent post­ed on Face­book in the near future. Get in before it becomes too sat­u­rat­ed. Video pro­duc­tion is much eas­i­er and low cost than it was years ago. A sim­ple video record­ed on your cell phone even can cre­ate more engage­ment than a writ­ten update.

8. Face­book Live

Shar­ing live video is quick­ly becom­ing the for­mat of choice for many big brands. Live video has many dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions. An inside look, a live show, or a big event are only a few of many pos­si­bil­i­ties for live video.

9. Q&A’s

Face­book media comes in all shapes and for­mats mak­ing it a per­fect way to hold a Q&A ses­sion with your fol­low­ers. Post a start date and time for ques­tions. Then post an update to request ques­tions from your fol­low­ers. Answer those ques­tions live, pre-record a video, or just sim­ply write in some replies. The choice is up to you.

10. Keep your updates short

Atten­tion spans are in short sup­ply these days, espe­cial­ly for those click­ing from page to page. Keep your Face­book updates short and snap­py to have max­i­mum effect. Research shows that longer updates don’t receive as much engage­ment as a quick one-lin­er. Exper­i­ment and see what length works best with your audience.

11. Quote your blog post

Take the best quote from the blog post you’re about to share and include it in the Face­book post. A com­pelling fact or piece of data for exam­ple, is enough to cre­ate curios­i­ty and cre­ate action from your followers.

12. Cus­tom Face­book tab

Did you know Face­book allows you to cre­ate your very own cus­tom page right on your Face­book page? What that page does is entire­ly up to you. Use it to col­lect emails for your newslet­ter. Run a Face­book give­away. Answer cus­tomer sup­port ques­tions. The options are endless.

13. Share from Instagram

Stud­ies have shown that post­ing pho­tos from your Insta­gram page to your Face­book feed receives high lev­els of engage­ment. This is because it involves both of the biggest social net­works on the plan­et. Once you’ve post­ed a pho­to on Insta­gram, click on the options to share it to your Face­book page OR set it up so that it is done auto­mat­i­cal­ly with each new post.

14. Share con­tent more than once

Your organ­ic reach on Face­book has dwin­dled in recent years (if you haven’t noticed). This means that only a small per­cent­age of your fol­low­ers see the con­tent you post every­day. A post that has per­formed rel­a­tive­ly well can be post­ed again a few days lat­er. Post­ing repeat con­tent only ensures that more peo­ple see the great stuff you’ve created.

15. Post at the right times

In your Face­book insights you can see when most of your audi­ence is online. Post dur­ing those times to reach as many of them as possible.

16. Mon­i­tor your insights

Don’t for­get to keep your Face­book insights in mind when devel­op­ing the con­tent you post. You’ll be able to see the demo­graph­ics (age, sex, loca­tion, etc.) and tai­lor the con­tent towards that group of people.

17. Test con­tent with ads

Not sure about what con­tent res­onates best with your tar­get audi­ence? Test them with Face­book ads! A few dol­lars can help pro­mote a few of your blog posts to a wide audi­ence and see what receives the most engage­ment. By pro­mot­ing blog posts with vary­ing top­ics for exam­ple, you’ll see what your audi­ence likes the most. That way you can focus on cre­at­ing more of that type of content.

18. Use looka­like audiences

When it comes to Face­book ads, cre­at­ing looka­like audi­ences from pre-exist­ing email lists or past ad cam­paigns can be a pow­er­ful tool. A looka­like audi­ence is an audi­ence sim­i­lar to one that you’ve already had suc­cess or inter­ac­tions with, which makes them more like­ly to be inter­est­ed in your business.

19. Sched­ule your posts

Stop post­ing Face­book updates one at a time. Sched­ule all of them at one time and free up your time for oth­er things. This can be done when you cre­ate a post or in the pub­lish­ing tools sec­tion of your Face­book page.

20. Post on the weekends

Just because you have the week­ends off doesn’t mean your audi­ence takes it off too. You’re miss­ing out on valu­able engage­ment on the week­ends! Sched­ule con­tent for the week­ends to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going.

21.Live chat with Messenger

Sup­port and vis­i­tor ques­tions can now be han­dled live with Facebook’s mes­sen­ger either right on your Face­book page or with an embed on your website.

22.User gen­er­at­ed con­tent (UGC)

We can all agree that cre­at­ing high-qual­i­ty, high-val­ue con­tent can be time con­sum­ing and resource inten­sive. But it doesn’t have to be. You can work smarter, not hard­er by get­ting some help from your fol­low­ers. User gen­er­at­ed con­tent (UGC) are things like pho­tos from fans that use tag you in their pho­tos, or sub­mis­sions you’ve received from a con­test. Share that con­tent with your fol­low­ers and involve them in your brand’s story.

23.Quotes

Peo­ple love quotes. You see them on almost every social media chan­nel and Face­book is no excep­tion. Research a few quotes relat­ed to your indus­try and style them in your look and feel for easy con­tent that will last months.

24.Fill-in-the-blank

A fun lit­tle way to engage a few of your fol­low­ers is to post a fill-in-the-blank type update. Ask your fol­low­ers to fill in the blank of a quote, pho­to cap­tion, or mem­o­rable song.

25.Caption this

Pho­tos always need a cap­tion or some sort of descrip­tion. Get your fol­low­ers in on the action by ask­ing them to sub­mit their own captions.

26.Questions

The whole point of social media is to be social right? Have con­ver­sa­tions by ask­ing ques­tions to your audi­ence. A ques­tion needs an answer after all.

27.Poll with reactions

Get your audience’s opin­ion on a hot top­ic or trend­ing news sto­ry with Face­book reac­tions. The recent reac­tions fea­ture on Face­book posts are a great way to poll fol­low­ers. ‘Yes’ can be the hap­py face, while ‘No’ can be the angry face. See how your audi­ence feels with Face­book reactions.

28.Source exclu­sive discounts/promotions

Give your fol­low­ers a rea­son to fol­low your Face­book page with source exclu­sive dis­counts and pro­mo­tions. Exclu­sive dis­counts or pro­mo­tions only for fans of your Face­book page are a great way to encour­age fol­low­ing and to make them feel special.

29.Cross-promote

Get all of your social chan­nels involved in the action by cross-pro­mot­ing your con­tent on each plat­form. Adapt and recy­cle posts from one chan­nel to anoth­er to reach the audi­ence on each network.

30.Add humour

A lit­tle bit of humour can make a big dif­fer­ence. Humour cre­ates an emo­tion­al reac­tion, hap­pi­ness, and is some­thing that peo­ple are inclined to include in their life. I fol­low the Denny’s Face­book page for exam­ple, not because I like Grand Slams, but because their con­tent man­ages to bright­en up my day a lit­tle bit more.

31. Add a page CTA

Direct peo­ple towards your con­ver­sion goal with a Face­book page call-to-action. Have a new ebook? Offer­ing a new ser­vice? Your CTA will direct your Face­book page vis­i­tors to it.

32.Respond ASAP

Respond to your Face­book com­ments and reviews as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to show that you’re active and respon­sive. Respond quick­ly and Face­book will mark you as “very-respon­sive” which will encour­age more vis­i­tors to respond and engage with you.

Twitter

33.Complete your bio

Hav­ing a com­plete, infor­ma­tive, and snap­py Twit­ter bio is impor­tant. It’s the only sec­tion where your vis­i­tors can get to know a lit­tle about you and what you do. It’s also the sec­tion that links back to your web­site so make sure to direct folks to the right place.

34.Tweet out questions

Twit­ter is large­ly a plat­form for hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions, so start one by pos­ing a question.

35. Be conversational

Don’t just share arti­cles and retweets, be con­ver­sa­tion­al. Include your­self in oth­er con­ver­sa­tions or start one of your own. The tone of your tweets deter­mine if and how a fol­low­er will respond.

36.Buffer your posts

Tweets gen­er­al­ly have a real­ly small lifes­pan, about 3–8 min­utes. After that they pret­ty much dis­ap­pear into the abyss. That’s why it’s impor­tant to report or Buffer your tweets more than once to make sure your fol­low­ers see it. Pop­u­lar tweets, espe­cial­ly, should be reshared mul­ti­ple times to max­i­mize the engage­ment it receives.

37.Tweet at the right times

Know when the major­i­ty of your audi­ence is on Twit­ter and tweet dur­ing those peri­ods to max­i­mize engagement.

38. Polls

Look­ing for some feed­back? Opin­ions? Or just some fun con­ver­sa­tion. Pin a Twit­ter poll to the top of your feed so that any­one who vis­its your page can have their say.

39.Tagging

Tag­ging the orig­i­nal poster or the author is crit­i­cal because tweets often get lost in the fold. Don’t depend on high pro­file influ­encers to see that you’ve shared their con­tent, give them a heads up by tag­ging their account each time you share.

40. Tag author when shar­ing direct­ly from a blog

When shar­ing a blog post direct­ly from a com­pa­ny blog, make sure to include the author in the tweet. Typ­i­cal­ly, pre-pop­u­lat­ed tweets will not include the author’s Twit­ter han­dle so make sure to include them when you share.

41. Periscope

If you’ve man­aged to build up a large fol­low­ing on Twit­ter, exper­i­ment with live Periscope video. Engage with your fans in real time to fur­ther strength­en your rela­tion­ship with them.

42. Use a Twit­ter fol­low­ing app

A Twit­ter app like Crowd­Fire pro­vides a host of oth­er Twit­ter func­tions to help you grow your fol­low­er count. You’ll be able to see who’s fol­low­ing you back, who to fol­low in your niche, who your com­peti­tors fol­low, and much more.

43. Join trend­ing hashtags

Twit­ter will show you the trend­ing hash­tags of the day, join in on rel­e­vant con­ver­sa­tions. The more you attempt to be social the more you will get noticed by peo­ple in your industry.

44. Use your busi­ness dashboard

Acti­vate and man­age your Twit­ter account from your Twit­ter busi­ness dash­board. The busi­ness dash­board pro­vides addi­tion­al ana­lyt­ics and sched­ul­ing fea­tures to help you opti­mize your efforts.

45. Make lists

When you fol­low hun­dreds, or even thou­sands of peo­ple on Twit­ter your news feed can get rather crowd­ed. Twit­ter lists allow you to curate select­ed users and orga­nize them into bite-sized lists that you can actu­al­ly han­dle. Make lists of high-pro­file busi­ness and influ­encers. If you ever decide to use Twit­ter ads you may want to adver­tise to those lists first.

46. Link your Twit­ter and Insta­gram accounts

Instant­ly share your pho­tos from Insta­gram to Twit­ter by link­ing your accounts. As we men­tioned before, cross-pro­mo­tion is a great way to get more expo­sure for your content.

47. Pre-pop­u­lat­ed tweets

To receive more shares and tweets for you con­tent include pre-pop­u­lat­ed tweets in your blog posts and email newslet­ters. Extract quotes and data from those tweets and make it easy for your read­ers and sub­scribers to share with a sin­gle click.

Instagram

48. Cre­ate a unique hashtag

A unique hash­tag that to use with every post you share is meant to orga­nize all of your con­tent under one search­able tag. Your fol­low­ers can then par­tic­i­pate and join in on the con­ver­sa­tion by using the same hashtag.

49. Opti­mize your bio

An opti­mized bio com­plete with a track­able link is impor­tant for every pro­fes­sion­al Insta­gram page. A short descrip­tion, relat­ed tags and hash­tags, and a link to a web­page of inter­est is all you need.

Pro Tip: Ecom­merce stores can make their Insta­gram feed shop­pable with tools like Like2Buy. The app takes your Insta­gram feed a hosts it on a sep­a­rate page with links that redi­rect to your prod­uct pages.

50. Hash­tag contest

Hold a hash­tag con­test to get all of your fol­low­ers in on the fun. Pick a prize to give­away, lay out the rules, and cre­ate a unique con­test hash­tag for par­tic­i­pants to use. Gen­er­al­ly the rules require par­tic­i­pants to use the hash­tag, tag 3 friends on the post, and share the con­test post. Mix and match these rules or cre­ate your very own and watch your fol­low­ing grow quickly.

51. Max­i­mize hash­tag count

Each post shared on Insta­gram is allowed a max­i­mum of 30 hash­tags. Why not use them all? Using the max­i­mum amount of hash­tags will allow your pho­tos to be seen by more peo­ple search­ing Insta­gram. BUT make sure you’re only using hash­tags that relate to your busi­ness niche and avoid using gener­ic pop­u­lar hash­tags (e.g. #love, #cats, #dogs).

52. Insta­gram stories

Insta­gram sto­ries are meant to keep your engage­ment with your audi­ence going. Because it’s not wise to post 20 times a day, Insta­gram sto­ries allow you to post quick and casu­al updates for your fol­low­ers. Use this tool to give them a lit­tle insight into what you’re doing or work­ing on right now. It’s a fan­tas­tic way to build a stronger rela­tion­ship with your followers.

53. Direct messages

The direct mes­sage fea­ture on Insta­gram is often for­got­ten but can be used to mes­sage influ­encers and request fea­tures. Tag­ging high pro­files Insta­gram pages can often go unno­ticed for exam­ple, send a direct mes­sage to give them a heads up so they can return the favour.

54. Insta­gram live

Insta­gram live is new fea­ture, much like Facebook’s it gives your fol­low­ers a real-time look into your activ­i­ty. Giv­ing your fol­low­ers a live feed of activ­i­ties like events, new prod­uct release, or just a behind the scenes builds a stronger relationship.

55. Go behind the scenes

Because of Instagram’s visu­al nature it can be dif­fi­cult for B2B busi­ness­es to build much trac­tion on it. Instead of try­ing to post­ing com­pelling pho­tos and videos, Insta­gram can be a great tool for behind the scenes con­tent for poten­tial employ­ees and part­ners. It adds per­son­al­i­ty to the brand and strength­ens the rela­tion­ship brands have with their followers.

56. Tag influ­encers in the comments

Along with max­i­miz­ing your use of hash­tags, don’t for­get to tag relat­ed influ­encers and busi­ness­es in your posts to alert them.

57. Tag peo­ple on the post

Along with tag­ging peo­ple in your descrip­tions, tag them direct­ly on the pho­to itself. It sends them an alert and includes them in their own “pic­tures of me” sec­tion on their profile.

58. Sep­a­rate hash­tags in anoth­er comment

If you’ve max­i­mized your 30 hash­tags it can make your posts look a lit­tle crowd­ed, albeit rather spam­my. To get around this, include your hash­tags in a sep­a­rate com­ment after you’ve pub­lished it. The hash­tags will get hid­den inside the com­ments and not inter­fere with your orig­i­nal post.

59. Insta­gram sto­ry links

Insta­gram sto­ries now have the abil­i­ty to include out­ward links to exter­nal sites. Orig­i­nal­ly it was only your bio link that could redi­rect traf­fic but now a link in a Insta­gram sto­ry can do the same.

60. Link your Face­book and Insta­gram accounts

Link both your Face­book and Insta­gram busi­ness accounts togeth­er to share your con­tent in one cohe­sive cir­cle. Each post pub­lished on Insta­gram can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly shared to Face­book. Link­ing both accounts can also lets your Face­book ads be shown on Instagram.

61. Embed on your website

Instead of man­u­al­ly upload­ing all of your Insta­gram con­tent to your web­site embed your entire pro­file. Web­sites host­ed through Word­Press can down­load a sim­ple Insta­gram plu­g­in to have their entire embed­ded on their web­site. This way web­site vis­i­tors can browse and become your Insta­gram fol­low­ers as well.

62. Use the right dimensions

Now that we all have high qual­i­ty pho­tog­ra­phy tools that fit in the palm of our hands there’s no excuse for poor qual­i­ty pho­tos. Post in the right square, land­scape, and por­trait dimen­sions, Insta­gram users notice things like this. Accounts with well exe­cut­ed pho­tog­ra­phy gen­er­al­ly out­per­form accounts with grainy, blur­ry photography.

63. Edit with a third-par­ty app

The default fil­ters on Insta­gram cer­tain­ly get the job done. But if you’d like your pho­tos to stand out from the crowd it’s best to use a third-par­ty app with bet­ter pho­to edit­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Apps like VSCO and SnapSeed are only a few of hun­dreds of excel­lent pho­to edit­ing apps.

64. Fol­low-back

If you’re attempt­ing to grow your fol­low­ing it’s impor­tant to fol­low oth­er accounts. We’d all love to have a stel­lar fol­low­er ratio but it’ll restrict you from grow­ing quick­ly. Unless you’ve got some­thing entire­ly unique to offer an audi­ence then it’s impor­tant to return the love.

65. Fol­low who your com­peti­tors follow

Fol­low­ing the same peo­ple who your com­peti­tors are fol­low­ing is a quick way to get the atten­tion of those in your indus­try. Because they’re fol­low­ing your com­peti­tors, it’s like­ly that they’ll be inter­est­ed in what you have to offer as well.

66. Host a takeover

Con­nect with a pop­u­lar influ­encer in your indus­try and host an Insta­gram takeover. A takeover involves an influ­encer post­ing con­tent of their choice for a pre­de­ter­mined amount of time and con­nect­ing with their audi­ence. It’s a fun and inter­est­ing change of con­tent for your fol­low­ers and encour­ages those fol­low­ing the influ­encer to fol­low you as well.

67. Con­nect with influ­encers for features

Not ready for a takeover? No prob­lem, con­nect with a pop­u­lar influ­encer and request a fea­ture. Admit­ted­ly this could mean pay­ing them or send­ing them free prod­uct but it will allow you to reach their audi­ence with ease.

68. Geo-tag your photos

Don’t for­get to include a loca­tion when pub­lish­ing a new post. A geo-tag includes your con­tent amongst all the oth­er con­tent tak­en with­in that area.

69. Sched­ule with Lat­er or Buffer

It’s no longer nec­es­sary to post your Insta­gram pho­tos indi­vid­u­al­ly each time. With apps like Lat­er or Buffer you can sched­ule each post and have them sent to you at the time of your choos­ing. All you need to do is press publish.

70. Set up your busi­ness account

Reg­u­lar Insta­gram pages have always lacked any use­ful data or ana­lyt­ics. Now with Insta­gram busi­ness accounts you get access to help­ful data and ana­lyt­ic data that can help you improve your con­tent. Post­ing times and demo­graph­ic data can help you plan and release your con­tent at the right times to reach your desired audience.

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