4 Social Media Tips I’ve Learned from 10+ Years of Experience
At the risk of dating myself, I’ve been managing social media platforms for companies for a full decade now. 😅
I started out managing social media platforms for the College Foundation of West Virginia and the West Virginia GEAR UP program, and now, I head up our social media efforts at Huntress. While the industries have changed and social media has evolved, it’s been a constant learning experience for me to bring me to where I am now.
Highlights
I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished on our social platforms at Huntress. In just under a year of working here, I was able to…
Grow our LinkedIn audience by 238% (+11,117 followers) and our Twitter audience by 168% (+10,507).
Increase our interactions on LinkedIn by 8,134% (+25,052) and Twitter by 752% (+8,234).
Increase our click-through rate on social media posts on LinkedIn by 10,707% (+11,564) and Twitter by 820% (+16,048).
And in the last 6 months, I’ve been able to…
Grow our social media audiences on Twitter by 26% (18,510 → 23,315); LinkedIn by 48% (17,834 → 26,453); and Facebook by 22% (604 → 739) (compared to previous 6 months)
Generate half (49%) of all new contacts on social as a result of organic social media efforts
I know what you’re thinking: followers are but a vanity metric. I get it, and I understand why followers are often chalked up as such. However, I’m proud of the fact that we’ve got more folks interested in what we have to say—and I largely believe it’s because of how we’re saying it.
Followers are more than just a vanity metric. Followers mean brand awareness. And when people are ready to buy, it’s important that you’re top-of-mind—and what better way to be just that than to appear regularly in people’s feeds where they get lost scrolling for hours on end?
That brings me to my lessons learned.
Here are my top four social media tips I’ve learned from managing social media for 10 years.
1. Write like you’re writing for humans—and keep it casual.
When you’re staring into the abyss of a blank document, it can be easy to forget that you’re not writing for a computer.
Digital marketing—particularly social media—is consumed by humans. Your posts will show up in your followers’ feeds while they’re at work, at home, relaxing on the beach—it’s a rather personal play, when you think about it.
And that’s why it’s so critical to remember that you’re writing for humans. Entertain them, delight them, and develop content that’s easy for them to read.
One of the biggest philosophies I have as a writer is that I keep my writing casual. (In fact, it’s so important to me that I talk about it on my About page.)
This doesn’t mean use those acronyms like ttyl—those died forever ago. But you should make your brand seem approachable through your posts, and casuality goes a long way in that goal.
You can even make this part of a brand play.
For example, I managed the social media platforms for Signal Vine (now Modern Campus), an AI-powered text messaging platform. To put a small human touch on every post—and stay true to our brand—I infused emojis into our social media posts (and even our blogs). An emoji here and there helped to keep things casual and on-brand.
Similarly, at Huntress, one of our brand standards is to keep it casual—something I absolutely love about our brand, given that so many tech companies don’t appreciate this approach.
Our social media feeds at Huntress are anything but “corporate stuffy.” Even posts that break down complicated topics are written using a casual voice and simple language.
It’s worked out well for us.
2. Newsjack when possible.
Newsjacking is one of my favorite social media marketing techniques.
David Meerman Scott* coined this term. To paraphrase, newsjacking is the art of making a trending topic or news event relevant to your brand. This helps you create space for your brand in the sea of information overload that is social media.
While you can do this for actual news, it can be fun to capitalize on pop culture and trending topics.
I’ve got a few examples of times I’ve done this at Huntress in our social feeds.
Remember when everyone was coming up with Spotify playlists that told a story?
I even had one of our partners at Huntress reach out to me just to tell me about the hearty bellylaugh this post gave him. It made my day.
How about the golf meme that took the internet by storm?
Our engagement was wild on these posts. People who’ve never heard of Huntress or engaged with us before were stopping by to check us out.
We also participate in other events that pop up in the news, such as Cybersecurity Awareness Month and April Fools.
Oh, and for the Trekkies, we celebrate First Contact Day, complete with downloadable desktop backgrounds (these were designed by incredibly talented multidisciplinary designer and fellow Trekkie, Regina Ball).
…as well as Star Wars Day for the Star Wars fans—with desktop backgrounds courtesy of Regina Ball.
As a social media manager, newsjacking is your friend.
3. A little humor goes a long way.
Back to the stats I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
Our social media following at Huntress has exploded since we tweaked the way we write our posts.
As the company gained more respect in the industry both online and offline, our following grew. But we did one thing that absolutely made our feeds explode.
Memes.
You read that right—memes.
Memes and humor in general were two major driving forces that helped us “figure out” social media. Our posts went from having under 10 reactions/interactions each to having tens, hundreds, and even thousands of reactions/interactions.
And don’t even get me started on impressions.
Interestingly, I was on the fence about introducing memes to our feeds. I wasn’t sure how our audiences (mainly managed service providers) would take them—particularly on LinkedIn, a professional network.
Turns out, it was the move that powered our exponential growth on social media.
My unscientific research behind why memes work leads to a simple conclusion: people in the tech industry need a good laugh.
This industry has a reputation of being all business, all the time. It seems like the tides may be turning as people are showing appreciation for less serious approaches on social media (think Wendy’s).
If you’re going to experiment with memes, I recommend a slow and steady approach, posting one per week (for example) and adjusting as necessary. Be careful not to let memes consume your entire feed, however. Social media is a balance, and you should make sure that no one content type overshadows the others.
4. Develop a regular posting cadence and stick to it.
I’d always heard that it’s great for companies to post at least once a day on each of their social media platforms. As it turns out, that strategy works.
The best example I have of this comes from my work as a Marketing Lead at Level Effect: a cybersecurity training company. Over the past three months, I increased our number of posts by 90%, taking October—Cybersecurity Awareness Month—to really experiment with posting nearly every single weekday.
In October, we published a total of 78 posts across our social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. In October alone, we increased our…
Audience by 14% (1,596 → 1,825)
Interactions by 167% (260 → 694)
Clicks by 498% (131 → 783)
Shares by 632% (25 → 183)
Web sessions by 373% (587)
Impressions by 81% (7,617) across all our social channels.
Posting something of value once per day has paid off for us, even though our brand awareness is admittedly not the greatest (yet!).
BONUS TIP! Make your social media feeds look good.
Social media is very much a visual play.
Think about it, how easy it is for your thumb to get caught up in an endless cycle of scrolling across Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. You scroll and scroll and scroll until something catches your eye.
What is that something? I’ll bet it was an appealing visual, such as an image, a GIF, or maybe even a video.
Social media feeds should look good. Copy is important, but there’s already so much of that to go around on social media. You have to give someone a reason to stop scrolling.
Solid assets that are visually pleasing will help get folks’ thumbs to take a pause. Visuals are the hook and the line. Good copy that accompanies those visuals is the sinker.
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I’m such a strong believer that social media serves as an excellent way to communicate with your customers, prospects, and communities in general. These tips have helped me grow social channels for the past 10 years, and I hope they help you in your social endeavors, too.
* Side note that I highly recommend David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. It was one of those books I came across during my time in grad school that remains on my bookshelf to this day.