Social media is forever changing it’s layout, algorithms and features. Instead of sitting there and complaining about the algorithm, your best bet is to learn and work social media in your favour. Whether you’re an influencer or blogger, you can benefit from using social media to enhance your presence online and make yourself known! This post is going to show case some of the most popular platforms and teach you tips and tricks for each social media platform.
Growing your influence can be tricky if you’re new to social media, or it can be increasingly difficult when new updates roll out and algorithms change. Naturally it can be frustrating, but as a social media influencer it’s a great way to keep you on your toes and experiment with new tactics. Instead of throwing your hands up and groaning out loud, take this as an opportunity to challenge yourself and adapt to your new surroundings! Besides, the algorithm changes whether you’re ready or not, so you may as well learn to embrace the change and step up to the plate.
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Table of Contents
Important Reminders
Of course, social media is an excellent way to make yourself known and grow your influence, but it doesn’t define you as a person. Your worth as a person is not defined by how well your social media platforms perform. Social media is a great tool to expand your presence, however it’s not the be all end all. Keep this in mind, as well as few other reminders below.
Your Worth is Not Determined By Your Social Media
Louder for those in the back. Treat social media as a reflection of your work as a blogger and influencer, not a determinant of who you are as a person. Likes and follower counts do not make you worthy. You are already enough.
Being Genuine Trumps all Counts Any Day
At the end of the day, if you aren’t being true to yourself or honest with your audience, it won’t matter how many followers or likes you have. Stay true to yourself and be genuine on social media. Often, your audience can see right through dishonesty and facades you may portray. It’s better to be real, raw and engage genuinely with your followers.
Never Buy Followers
Not only does this hurt your engagement rates (you have a bunch of fake bot accounts who don’t actually engage with you), but people can see right through it. When someone has 20k+ followers, and 200 likes and 4 comments on an Instagram picture, that shows a less than average engagement rate (roughly 10%) than what is expected of someone with that many followers. I could go on forever about the harms of buying followers, but I’ll make it short and sweet by saying they hurt your engagement in more ways than one.
You Must Give to Receive
If you had hopes and dreams of hopping on social media, dropping a post and hoping the whole world would flock to it, I’m here to burst your bubble. Social media engagement is a two way street. Make sure you’re taking the time to interact and build genuine connections with your followers, and take the time to like and comment on their photos! Not only will you build a more genuine connection with your followers, you will actually get the chance to meet some lovely people in the process!
Share the Love
Sharing other blogger and influencers work and posts will not take away from my influence. Repeat that until it sinks in. So many people are afraid to share posts that aren’t theirs for fear it will over-take their sparkle and draw from their presence. Wrong. Everyone loves a team player, and if someone posts really great content why wouldn’t you want others to see what’s inspiring you that day? Empower other influencers and bloggers and grow together. There’s enough space for all of us to shine.
Tips and Tricks for Each Social Media Platform
Aha! The meat and potatoes of why you’re here. At the end of the day I can’t tell you what to do, but the above important reminders are super important to keep in mind when interacting on social media. It’s important to engage with others and build relationships, as well as share the love. With those key reminders in mind, we can now dive into the most popular social media platforms and the best ways to go about them!
Ah yes, Facebook is a bit of a tricky one. Personally, I don’t love Facebook for blogging, but that doesn’t mean it gets disowned and thrown off to the side. Even though a social media platform may not be your favourite, it can be a challenge to yourself to see if you can turn it into something great.
Plus, it’s a great idea to have an egg in each basket so you’re not empty handed if the basket with all the eggs disappears. Check out some tips to grow your Facebook presence below!
Claim Your Facebook Business Page
This can be done when you make an Instagram business account as an influencer/blogger. Once you switch your account to business on Instagram, it’ll prompt you to set up a Facebook business page. This essentially creates a fan page where you can share content and connect with your followers! Plus, this ensures no one else can take your blog’s name!
Post Regularly
Ideally, you would want to post every day to every two days to keep your followers engaged. Facebook is a big place, and when you’re just starting out it can be a big sea to get lost in. Post frequently to stay fresh in people’s feeds. Make sure you post a call to action with each post (ie. ask them a question so they can generate discussion on your post!).
Pro Tip:if you find it too difficult to keep up with daily, you can sit down on the weekend and schedule out posts. Craft a post like you normally would and when you go to post it theres an option to schedule for later. That way you can plan out posts in advance and save yourself time!
Create an Engagement Group
You don’t have to be a hugely known blogger or Instagram Star to create your own Engagement Group. Groups are a great way to get to know your followers, help others out and get answers to questions. Remember, community over competition! Invite others into your circle and create a safe space for them to ask questions and share their work!
Run a Facebook Ad
Facebook ads don’t have to cost you hundreds of dollars. You can release an ad for any price range your budget allows to get your content out further! When creating a Facebook ad it allows you to choose the target demographic you’d like the ad to reach, allowing your content to impact the right people! Not everyone who is successful on Facebook runs an ad, and not everyone who runs a Facebook ad becomes successful. Keep in mind your budget and the impact you want to make, and decide if this option is right for you!
Engage With Your Followers
If you post call to action after call to action and never respond to followers, people may feel less compelled to reach out and comment. Make a point to get on and comment back to your followers! I’m not saying dedicate your entire life to the comments section of Facebook, but showing followers you care enough to respond to them after they took the time to comment speaks volumes!
Related Post: How to Rock Instagram on A Budget
Instagram has left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths after they switched up their algorithm and made it even harder to create a presence. However, you don’t need to let the algorithm drag you through the mud. Use this as an opportunity to switch up your tactics and work on grabbing authentic attention. Follow along below as I share the best Instagram tips:
Do Not Buy Followers
Cannot stress this enough. As mentioned above in the key things to remember, buying followers is one of the things you should never do! Buying followers harms your engagement (fake accounts and bots do not engage back, affecting your engagement rate!), throws off your own personal algorithm (people notice gigantic improvements in engagement once they remove bots from their profile), and overall impact your goals and growth (if you use Instagram to monetize, you will not sell a single thing to bots).
Building a following of truly engaged followers who are interested in content is harder to do, but way more worthwhile. Attracting engaged followers means people want to hear what you have to say, they want to see what you’re doing, and if monetizing is your goal, you will have an audience that trusts your opinions and reviews of products.
Pro-Tip: You can often spot a person who buys followers by the sheer discrepancies in number of followers vs. following. If someone has 20k+ followers, but is only following 600 back, that’s often an indication they have purchased followers. You can also take a look at any one of their photos and see likes + comments. If someone has 20k followers and 200 likes, their engagement rate is way below average, and that can also be an indication that a majority of those followers are bots.
Be Present on Instagram
Throw one pebble into a pond and it’ll ripple out. But once the ripples stop, it dies. Throw pebble after pebble into the pond and the ripples continue one after another after another. The key to making a splash on Instagram is to ensure you’re posting frequently. You don’t necessarily have to post every day, but it’s key to post often enough so your followers aren’t wondering where you went! Being active on stories + liking and commenting on other’s posts on days you don’t post is a great way to keep your presence up!
Share Pieces of You
Get on your stories, share pieces of yourself in your posts, be authentically you. People want to see you. They want to see what makes you, YOU! They are following you for a reason, whether they love your style or love the way you share information or whatever that reason may be. It can be frightening to put yourself out there, but being real with your followers is a great way to build a deeper connection. Show them you’re not just someone who comes on once a day to pose, show them you are a real person with a real story and you want to make an impact.
Pro Tip: People are more likely to interact with a person whether it’s on your stories or your feed. It can be scary at first, but putting yourself onto your Instagram page is the number one way to secure engagement. While it’s okay to post quotes and flat lays, people crave seeing faces and other people.
Share Quality Pictures
Not every picture you take is worthy of ending up on Instagram. While it’s important to share what is beautiful and important to you, keep in mind that blurry pictures and photos of poor quality don’t fare as well. Instagram is a visual platform. People’s attention is caught by high quality, well taken photos. Not to say you need to hire a photographer, often your phone camera quality is sufficient enough, but keep in mind of things in the background, the angle, whether the picture is crooked or blurry etc.
Editing can also be a great way to step up your photos when the proper lighting just isn’t there. You can check out my post here for learning how to post great pics on Instagram!
Switch to a Business Account
A business account (free to switch to) grants you access to a ton of insights regarding your followers (age, location, majority of people following you etc.) It also gives you insight as to when your followers are most active (broken down by day and time!). Business accounts are a great way to track your growth and reach, as well as find optimal times to post to boost your influence!
Utilize Features of Instagram
Instagram rolled out a TON of new features in the last year (especially in their stories!) that you’re silly not to use! Features such as location, tags, hashtags and polls in stories are an excellent way to widen your reach! By tagging places you visit, you run the chance of them re-sharing your content! Taking advantage of these features will put your content further out into the Instagram world and can boost your engagement!
It’s also super important to take advantage of your stories! They’re a great way to share live events, you going out and about, as well as content that may not fit in with your theme, but you would love to share regardless! Get on and chat with your followers and make sure you take advantage of those features! (Be sure to use the location, tag & hashtag features in stories as well!)
Hashtags
You’re allowed up to 30 hashtags in your Instagram post/comments, so you may as well make the most of them! It’s not just about the number of hashtags though, it’s also about which ones you’re using. Hashtags with over 1 million uses are great if you’re a big time Influencer, but if you’re starting out they’re a waste of time (your post will get lost). If you’re just starting out, try using relevant hashtags with under 100,000 uses! These ones are great because you have a greater chance of being seen.
Another trick with hashtags is to make sure you’re using 30 unique hashtags in each post. Days of copying and pasting hashtags are over. The algorithm works in your favour if you switch up the hashtags each time. My personal trick is to simply post and then immediately head to the comments where I add up to 30 unique hashtags right after posting!
Ads
Like Facebook, Instagram also has the option for ads (or ‘promotions’) as they are now owned by the same company. As with Facebook ads, success isn’t dependent on the ad, nor does the ad guarantee success. They’re absolutely an option to run, and some may have more success than others. There’s no harm in running a cheap ad for a few days to boost your following, but remember to keep your budget and audience in mind!
Before & After Engagement
Remember how I said above to receive you must give? Instagram is the number one place this rule applies. General rule of thumb is to spend 20-30 minutes engaging before and after you post.
Before you post is a great way to catch up and interact with your followers, and making sure you’re seeing their content (you can also turn on post notifications for people you want to keep up with!). Spend about half an hour engaging by liking, commenting and reacting/commenting to people’s stories. The more often you engage with other people, the more likely you are to appear on their home feed!
After you post it’s great to engage with others, as well as on your own post! When people drop comments, respond to them as soon as you can (aim for within an hour)! Instagram likes when people hang out on your post, and the quicker you respond, the quicker that person checks it out, and more time is spent on your post!
It’s super important to engage before & after. Days of dropping a post and disappearing are over. It’s also important to engage using quality comments. If another person put a call to action, answer that call to action! Comment on something specific in the post! Comments like ‘this is so great’ or ‘that is so cute’ look spammy and bot like, and are quite generic! Make an effort to actually engage with your followers!
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By far, my favourite of the 3 platforms I’m chatting about to day because it’s so easy to engage and chat with other awesome people! Twitter is a great way to drive traffic for your blog as well as chat and connect with other bloggers! Check out my tips below for using Twitter to your advantage as a blogger:
Interact with Others
Loved someone’s tweet? Hit the little like or retweet button. Comment on tweets. Answer polls. Message others. The Twitter blogging community is very friendly and open to helping others. People will readily answer questions and share resources! It’s a great place to learn, and read a lot of great blog posts.
Help One Another Out
When you see a fellow blogger with a new post, share it! Sharing is caring and like I said before, it doesn’t take away from you as a blogger to help someone else out! Support and build up others, and you’ll attract people who want to see the same success for you.
Be Present on Twitter
Aim to send out a minimum of 5 tweets a day. Twitter is BIG and tweets can easily get lost in the Twitter-sphere. To keep yourself relevant, sending out a few tweets a day will keep your name popping up, and your Twitter friends will know you’re still alive.
Pro-Tip: Use a scheduler such as Hootsuite (I love the app version, plus it’s always free!) to schedule old blog post tweets in the background so your name is still popping up, even if you’re busy. That way you won’t have to worry about pushing content out and you can go on Twitter to interact and genuinely enjoy talking to people!
Message People You Want to Interact More With
Don’t be shy, reach out and message people who interest you and you want to chat more with! Twitter is a great place to meet friends and share tips and tricks for blogging! Don’t hesitate to reach out!
Use Hashtags
Hashtags are an opportunity to get your tweet seen by a larger audience. Using relevant hashtags throws your tweet farther into the Twitter-sphere, where more people are likely to see it! I recommend throwing in at least one or two hashtags into a majority of your tweets!
Wait… You Forgot Pinterest
Pinterest is actually a search engine. Like Google, users can enter search terms to get ideas for holidays, DIY projects, and much much more. While Pinterest is an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog (and some have success with Instagram), it actually isn’t a social media platform.
Nonetheless, Pinterest is a great asset to bloggers of many niches. To learn more about setting up Pinterest, click here.
Related Post: 10 Quick Fixes to Make Your Pinterest Look More Professional
A Few More Things to Keep in Mind
Social media can be easy to master once you get the hang of it, but there are some general housekeeping rules that are important to practice. As I hope none of you would need a reminder, these are some things to keep in mind:
The Follow/Unfollow Game is Annoying
I’m not talking about unfollowing someone because you don’t enjoy their content (which is absolutely okay). I’m talking about people going on mass follow sprees, then unfollowing everyone days later. This does not grow your following in a positive way (if at all) and people take notice.
Be Kind
What looks great to you may not be someone else’s cup of tea, and vice versa. It is never okay to make a derogatory, rude, racist or sexist comment on anyone’s post, story, or through personal messages. These are completely uncalled for and are a form of bullying. I recommend anyone experiencing this kind of negativity to block and report said user.
Give Credit Where Credit is Due
Taking other people’s pictures, quotes or blog posts without permission (or in the case of Instagram, using the regram feature to give credit) is stealing. Always ask permission before taking someone’s content for repurposing, or make sure it’s visible wherever you’re sharing that the content is not yours.
Have Fun With it!
Social media’s future is always up in the air as it is constantly changing, and so are our interests as humans. Remember your worth lies beyond social media, and likes and followers in no way determine your worth. Being a micro-influencer (an influencer with a small follow count) isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Don’t sell yourself and others short trying to claw your way to the top. Kindness and genuinely being yourself go a lot farther.
Excellent tips!
Love how detailed this post is! And twitter is also my favorite platform as well. I’ve found it to be so helpful and engaging when trying to grow a blog. Thanks for the tips!
I’m glad you found it helpful!