Great social media tips to help you manage and boost your Social Media!

1. Laura Donelli
Web Services Specialist
McHenry County College
@OMPRweb

2. 15 Basic Tips
1. Choose the right platform: Take some time to see which platforms are best for
your business and limit them to five max.
2. Survey your customers where they spend time online and what social sites they
use for business
3. Develop a social media editorial calendar
4. Use clear and consistent messaging - key is to keep your content short, fresh,
relevant, useful and entertaining
5. Find out what the best days and times to post for your industry and
demographics Best time to post for most businesses, Monday – Friday, between
10 am and 4 pm. May vary depending on who you’re targeting. Do your
research.
6. Engage your followers and respond promptly
7. Use great photography, infographics, graphics and short videos
8. Grammar! Check, double check, watch out for embarrassing typos
9. Use analytics – measure how much traffic social media brings to your website
and how much of that traffic results in conversions
10. Make sure your social profiles are complete and up to date
11. Get comfortable and manage your social media relationships in less time with
Social Media tools for scheduling and monitoring like: Hootesuite, Tweetdeck,
Netvibes, Buffer
12. Set up Google alerts - https://www.google.com/alerts
13. Incorporate social media icons to add interactivity to your website.
14. Make your content easy to share, they’re more likely to do so. Add a share or
add it button to your web content Add social icons in your email signature
15. Don’t post during the day of tragic events. Make sure to turn off your scheduled
posts.

4. Expectations
• It’s all about quality, not quantity
• Don’t spread yourself too thin
• Listen to your customers, respond and
most of all be human
• Develop a social media policy
• Keep current with trends
• Set realistic goals

5. What are your goals?
• Raise awareness of your brand
• Number of visitors to your website
• Number of likes or fans
• Conversion rates

6. Facebook
• Facebook #1 social media network
• Worldwide 1.28 billion monthly active users*
• 757 million daily active users*
• Use the official Facebook buttons on your website. Help
your content become more popular by including the
Facebook like button. Encourage people to become a
fan of your page with the like box
• Post 5 to 10 times a week
• Post with photos, graphics and videos for more
engagement (use right size)
• When adding events, create a nice event banner.
• Experiment with boost posts and regular advertising
*http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=821954

8. Twitter
• Twitter has 271 million active users, 500 million Tweets are sent
daily.
• 78% of Twitter active users regularly access Twitter on either a
smartphone or tablet* (best to have your website responsive)
• Mix it up. Don’t only tweet your own content. Tweet news
articles, blog posts, images/videos, etc.
• Post 2-8 tweets/retweets a day spread throughout the day.
Use bitly to shorten your urls and you can also track activity
• You can upload up to four photos. Photos 600 x 300, 2: 1
aspect ratio
• Convert quotes and stats into visual format.
• Remember to use #hashtags in your tweets and during events
• Use “Favorites” and “Lists” to organize the chaos and feature
your most important tweets
• Twitter cards. Brands wanting to stand out in a text-heavy
environment use the cards so that they can showcase visual
and rich media in their tweets.
*https://about.twitter.com/company

11. LinkedIn
• Social network for professionals
• Take advantage of the company page design
• Try to post once a day
• Post in the morning best time for engagement,
with a slight bump occurring again after business
hours. Experiment to see what works best for your
company
• Join the discussion in LinkedIn Groups
• Post updates to your company page. You’ll see
the number of impressions and clicks and the
percentage of engagement for each of your
updates
• Updates can be targeted to a specific audience
or shared with all of your followers

14. Google +
• Claim your custom URL
• Local business, encourage reviews on your Google+
local page
• When adding people to Google+, you can choose what
“circle” to put them in
• try for 2 times a day
• Google+ integration with YouTube can give your
business the opportunity to reach a broader audience
• Through the use of Hangouts, you can construct your
own video channel. With this easy-to-use tool, creating
your own unique TV show has never been easier
• What advice, tips or inspiration can you offer your
audience? Record it, stream it live, and voila; it’s
instantly uploaded to YouTube!

15. Instagram
• Tap into #Hashtags to gain visibility
• Check out what your competition is doing
• Get your audience involved
• After you build your initial audience, you must
remain active and encourage users to
engage with your brand.
• Have your users share personal photos from
daily experiences and fun activities
• Share what matters most to your customers
• Offer sneak peeks of new products or behind
the scenes views of your business

16. Pinterest
• Pinterest has 53 million active users in US*
• Use the Pinterest Business Center
• Think of creative, interesting visual
content that is relevant to your
customers.
• Use the Pin It button next to shareable
images on your website.
• Create your boards based on your
customers interests
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/06/24/still-more-data-shows-pinterest-passing-twitter-in-popularity/

18. Trends
• Using inspirational quotes in images
• #throwbackthursday
• Using national something day and spin it on
something relevant to your business
• Having users post photos of them using your
products and services
• “Trendjacking” describes the act of capitalizing
on an existing news trend in order to boost one’s
brand in the marketplace. The birth of Prince
George prompted brands such as Google,
Pampers and Coca Cola to jump on the
bandwagon and create signature,
congratulatory posts on their social media pages

19. Resources
• Always up-to-date social media image sizes cheat sheet
• Facebook image size guide
• Twitter analytics
• Pinterest Business Center
• Hootesuite - https://hootsuite.com/
• Netvibes - http://www.netvibes.com/
• Buffer - https://bufferapp.com/
• Tweetdeck - https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
• Google Alerts - www.Google.com/alerts monitor keywords, about your business, competition
• Evernote - https://evernote.com/ designed for note taking and archiving
• Trendsmap - http://trendsmap.com/
• Graphics
• Free online image creators – www.picmonkey.com , www.canva.com
• Share Content
• Add this - www.addthis.com
• Share This - www.sharethis.com

20. • Questions?

21. THANK YOU
• Connect with
Laura Donelli
Web Services Specialist
McHenry County College
@omprweb
ldonelli@mchenry.edu
www.linkedin.com/in/ldonelli