Who else is guilty of spending way too much time watching videos about “Life hacks”?
You know the videos… the ones that give you 13 ways to reuse an empty toilet paper roll or some other mind-blowing project.
While we aren’t exactly crafty people, that doesn’t mean we don’t have some hacks of our own.
Here are some of our favorite social media hacks that may seem small, but can make a big difference!
Hack #1 – Square Photos on Facebook
When most people think about square images, they mostly think about Instagram, but making your images square can have a big impact on Facebook as well.
The reason for this has to do with real estate. No, I am not talking about the housing market, but rather the amount of real estate that a post takes up on the Facebook newsfeed. A square image is going to take up more room on the newsfeed and will take the user longer to scroll past. Especially at a time like now where the space on the Facebook newsfeed is extremely limited, you need to make the most out of what space you do get!
Take these examples below. The first is with the image in landscape, the other is square. See how much more room the square images take up on the phone screen?
Doing this will allow you to more effectively get your user to stop scrolling and increase your chances of your content being seen.
Hack #2 – Schedule to Instagram From Your Desktop
Long has it been the desire of marketers around the world to be able to schedule Instagram posts from their computers without using any third-party software… Wait…. That feature has already been out for months?
Yep!
We have an entire blog giving you the step-by-step guide on how to schedule to Instagram from your desktop. But to make a long story short, as long as you have your Instagram account connected to your Facebook page, you can use Facebook creator studio to schedule an Instagram post for later.
This is such an important hack because now you can become much more strategic with your Instagram posts and develop content well before you intend to post it. So check out that instructional video on the link above and start scheduling!
Hack #3 – Invite LinkedIn Connections To Like A Business Page
Looking to grow your business’ following on LinkedIn? You can now leverage your connections to do it! LinkedIn added a feature not that long ago that allows you to invite the connections you have on your personal LinkedIn profile to like your business’ page. This feature was never really announced, so not many people know it exists, but it is an awesome tool to help your business page grow and for more eyeballs to be on your content. How do you do it?
Head over to your LinkedIn company page and look for this box on the right-hand side of the page.
Every month, LinkedIn will let page admins invite up to 100 people to like the page. If the person accepts, you get one of your credits back to invite someone else. At the end of the month, you get 100 more credits to play with!
This is a great way to grow your Linkedin following quickly and get more eyes on your content.
Hack #4 – Use posts that perform well as advertisements
Facebook ads are a big mystery to a lot of people, but this hack can help your ads become more effective.
How do you select what posts to boost for your business? If you are like most people, you probably take a “shoot from the hip” approach. You might see a post that you really like or talks about a product or service that you would like to promote and BOOM you boost it.
But what if we told you there was a better way to boost posts on Facebook?
What you should be doing is boosting whatever posts are performing well organically. For example, a post that gets 30 likes when a normal post for you only gets 5.
Why? Two reasons:
- You have what is called “social proof”. Social proof is the idea that a piece of content performed really well with your audience that you already have, which means it should perform well when you use it as an audience to similar people in your advertisement.
- Your advertisement will already have an advantage in Facebook’s algorithm. Since your post already has a lot of engagement, when you make it an ad, Facebook will already think that the content of that advertisement is good and will be more willing to show it to more people at a cheaper price. Remember, Facebook is always trying to make the experience better for its users, so if it sees an ad that has a ton of engagement on it already, they are going to see that content as more relevant and providing a better experience to its users.
Hack #5 – Replying to comments helps your reach
Getting engagement on social media posts is the most important factor in understanding how many people that post is going to reach.
A post that has a lot of engagement, in the form of likes and comments, is going to be seen to more people than a post that doesn’t get any. The reason for this is that most social media platforms are trying to give their users the best experience possible. So if they see a post that a lot of people are interacting with, they know that content is good and will want more and more people to see it and enjoy it.
While this idea is fairly common knowledge among marketers and business owners, what most don’t realize is that they have the power to give an extra boost to this engagement by doing one simple thing: replying.
I cannot tell you how many times we take a look at businesses’ social media accounts and see that they are not replying to comments. It is such a massive missed opportunity that we see ALL. THE. TIME.
Not only is replying to comments and interacting just a good business practice, but it also helps you gain additional reach. For one, every time you reply to a comment, your post gets an extra piece of engagement on that post that will help it reach more people. And second, Social media platforms like it when the poster is interacting with their followers and are willing to give priority to those pages that interact. After all, its SOCIAL media for a reason right?
So if you are looking to try and get some additional reach on your posts, ask yourself, “Am I interacting enough with my audience?”
So what do you think? Will you be able to use any of these social media hacks as a part of your strategy?