Benefits of Engaging with Your Audience:

• Enhance the customer service experience
• Build a loyal following of prospects, leads, and customers
• Demonstrate brand expertise
• Provide value to your audience through informative interactions
• Control the brand perception and counter negative feedback

6. Post Consistent, High-Quality Content

Your audience pays attention to the little details and so should you. Share content on a regular basis that speaks to your brand values. Images, videos, post copy, and all other types of content should be optimized for reach and quality.

Things to Check For:

• Image quality – don’t post images that are blurry, pixelated, low-quality, or contain off-brand messaging
• Video quality – all videos should be in high-resolution and present information that your audience will appreciate and enjoy
• Grammar – if you advertise your brand as being professional your shared content needs to look professional
• Posting frequency – make sure you’re not posting too much or too little—there’s a balance that needs to be found

Remember that you only have one chance to make a great first impression, so the quality of your visual elements needs to be perfect. A poorly sized cover photo or slightly pixelated profile image can result in negative brand association and loss of audience.

7. Add Value & Stay Relevant

You need to engage with followers on social media every day while posting high quality content on a consistent basis that builds an audience of brand advocates.

Additional Considerations:

• Customize posting frequency by social media platform
• Create content that speaks to all your audience personas and not just one
• Add variety to your social media posting
• Include timely and topical posts that speak to current events which relate to your area and business
• Interact with prospective social media accounts

If you keep these social media best practices in mind as you begin to build your social strategy, you’ll be well on your ways towards achieving your business goals.

Many social media sites come with easy-to-use tracking tools, so areas can see which posts are viewed and shared most, which generate comments, which are irritating, popular, or ignored. Be prepared to re-align strategy in response to who is viewing the site, using data and metrics to help drive decisions.

Be respectful
You and your Social media consultant should strive for accuracy, professionalism and respectfulness at all times on social media sites. Do not engage in arguments on sites; it needs to be shared accurate information to avoid misinformation.

Be transparent
Your Social Media Consultant should make it clear that they are blogging/tweeting/posting, etc. in their official role as a presenter of your WhatsOnIn business. One of the great benefits of social media is that the individuals maintaining social media sites personalize large and complex organizations.

Users are savvy and can recognize an inauthentic response or message. However, you Social Media Consultant should check with you regarding messages and responses to be sure they are conveying appropriate and accurate information.

Remember: The Audience is Bigger Than You Think!

Social Media Consultant should remember that anything shared within social media, even within a closed network, is not private. It can be shared, stored and spread globally.

Listen
Being a consumer of social media is essential to the ability to be a successful producer of social media content.

Monitor 
Social media presence requires diligent “care and feeding.” If a you do not have the time or resources to check in on your social media at least a few minutes each day, and to post fresh content several times a week, it should NOT use a social media, as your website will suffer more harm from a neglected Social media than not having at all.

Without regular monitoring, information that might be protected or even illegal might be missed.

One of the great benefits of social media is the ability to share information almost instantly with a global audience. This timeliness is also one of the expectations of that audience. Be prepared to move quickly in response to emergencies or new developments by linking to any official information provided by central.

However, never post any unapproved, non-central information in a crisis or urgent situation affecting the website – link only to approved announcements to protect individuals, ensure accuracy, limit liability, and quell rumors.

Separate Personal from Professional
Balancing a professional and personal social media presences can be tricky, particularly if a person is active in both arenas. Content that might be of interest to personal friends is not always appropriate or relevant to you audience.

If you or your Social Media Consultant maintain personal and your WhatsOnIn social media accounts, you and they should take care to verify which account they are logged into before posting. Many high-profile social media blunders have come from an individual making a post from what they thought was a personal account only to later discover it was posted to an official work account.

Be a Valued Source and Community Member
If a the Social Media is only used to promote, it will quickly lose credibility. Sites should share the helpful or interesting information from trusted sources outside.

Vary Posts
Keep sites exciting by using various forms of media including links, photos, and videos. Almost every post should include a visual of some kind (image or video). Posts result in much more engagement if there is something to catch the audience’s eye.

8. How to clear cache in main Social Media’s post preview

Visit the LinkedIn website and enter the URL you wish to inspect in the LinkedIn Post Inspector tool. This will display a preview of the summary card and clear the card’s cache at the same time.

Facebook:

Step 1: Visit the Facebook debugger tool – https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
Step 2: Paste in the problem link and click the Debug button.
Step 3: The debugger will return the info it has on the URL and likely include an error.
Click the Scrape Again button.

Twitter:

Step 1: Go to Twitter’s validator website https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
Step 2: Paste URL into space and click “preview card”
Step 3: See the new image* & information pop up!

LinkedIn:

Step 1: Visit https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/
Step 2: Enter your URL and click on Inspect, You will see the updated preview image
Step 3: Now try sharing your URL on LinkedIn

FREE Social Media Management Tools

Buffer

Buffer is one of the best apps for managing your social media presence and scheduling your posts. The app also comes with analytics tools that enable you to track your audience’s activity and figure out when it is the best time to post in the future. The Chrome extension integrates itself seamlessly and never gets in the way, yet it is always there when you need it. It is a more straightforward and more effective way of managing your social media, and you are never more than a few clicks away from setting up anything you want. Buffer supports over 7 different platforms.

Socialoomph

As you look at Socialoomph, keep in mind that compared to the other tools, this one has more of an old-school interface. This tool supports Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Discord, LinkedIn, Reddit, StockTwits, Mastodon, Shopify, Tumblr, WordPress.org, and WordPress.com.

The free plan (Personal Suite) works with a single social media profile. You can use it to schedule unlimited posts to that profile, as long as you don’t exceed three posts in each hour. This makes it particularly useful for businesses that just need a social media management tool for a single social media channel. You can use it to queue your entire month of posts ahead of time. There is also a blog posting feature that lets you queue your blog posts, then publicise them on your social media channels in a separate queue. You can even track keywords.

If you decide that the free Personal Suite is not for you, there are also paid options at $15, $25, or $55 per month. They can add extra posting features and increase the maximum posts per hour to 60. They can also support up to 20 social media profiles, 10 RSS feeds, one webhook, 10 blogs, and 10 queues, with the ability to buy extra.

Canva

Canva is the best of the free social media management tools for those who prefer visualisations. The platform also makes it easy to develop designer-level visuals for social media channels.

It includes an incredible variety of pre-made templates and assets that you can use across various social media platforms and post types. These include Facebook banners, Instagram posts, and Instagram stories.

There are also paid options in the form of plans that let you access all of the assets. Or you can individually purchase assets as you need them. The Pro Plan is $9.99 per month or $119.99 per year, while the Enterprise plan is $30 per month per person.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is the go-to social media management tool for those who focus on Twitter. It is ideal for any brand that mostly uses Twitter in its social media marketing page.

You can use the tool to manage and monitor an unlimited number of Twitter accounts, all from a single integrated interface. You also get access to a customisable social media dashboard that lets you send and receive Tweets with ease.

This platform includes numerous free tools and functions, including the ability to schedule Tweets. You can also use a custom timeline, make team accounts, and manage your Twitter lists.

Friends+Me

Friends+Me stands out among the other social media management tools thanks to its sleek interface. While this platform is primarily known for its support for Google+, it does much more than that. You can also use it to manage your social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.

Using the free plan lets you have up to two queues, with as many as five posts in each queue at a time. You also get a long list of convenient features, including browser extensions, Zapier integration, and link shortening, as well as support.

If you have the budget for it, there are four plans ranging from $7.50 to $215.84 per month if billed annually or $9.00 to $259.00 if billed monthly. The largest of these can support up to 50 extra team members and up to 120 queues with 5,000 posts in each. Opting for any paid plan also gives you access to Pinterest features and priority support.

FollowerWonk

FollowerWonk provides you with analytics for your social media management. This is an essential part of any social media strategy, as you can’t improve your strategy if you don’t know what areas to work on.

The main focus of the free tools on this program is to help you better understand your audience. You can take a closer look at your current followers and compare yourself with the competition.

With the free plan, you can see your followers and their locations. You also get to view your social authority rankings. To help with optimisation, you can see when followers are active. The free plan gives you access to 50 Twitter profile searches per day, 100 results per day, and up to 20 analyses per day. You can use it if your account has up to 25,000 followers and compare it with up to 20 other accounts with up to 150,000 followers. That plan just works for a single profile.

Paid plans cost $29 or $79 per month ($23 and $63, respectively, when you pay annually) and work with up to three and 20 profiles. These include extra analysis, including the ability to tell what Tweets lead to the most engagement. They also help you compare followers, view losses and gains in the number of followers and optimise when you should Tweet. You also get unlimited Twitter profile searches per day as well as increases on the other limits. Paid plans also add the ability to sort followers and download analyses, including for Excel or CSV.

Using one or more of the above free social media management tools will help you make the most of your time, plan social media campaigns ahead of time, and view analyses.