11 Social Media Best Practices for Marketers in 2022

12 min readAug 11, 2022

The digital world has made the social media landscape dynamic and diverse. Everything changes rapidly; new trends come and go, so marketers and businesses need to be aware of them and prepare for the next one. Keeping up with the latest social media best practices might be confusing, but don’t worry, that’s why we are here.

We gathered the 11 best social media practices to help you understand better how to use social media to your benefit. But first, let’s start with why you should use social media accounts, and then we will jump into the practices you need to implement.

4 Reasons Why Should You Use Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is important for your business, as it helps you grow powerful customer relationships, boost your brand awareness, and approach new audiences. Social networks allow you to follow your customer’s activities and receive useful information about their interests, so you can form strategically better business decisions and create a better digital marketing campaign.

Reason #1: You grow an audience cost-effectively

The first reason you should keep in mind is that social media is the best way to connect and engage with existing and potential customers, ensuring you achieve your branding and social marketing goals. Promotion on social media accounts is great for boosting conversations, leading generation, driving traffic to your site, and increasing sales. But most importantly, creating the right content for your social media platforms and building your community are the key elements of your social strategy, as they will increase customer interaction and engagement. Likes, shares, and comments are also factors you should pay attention to. Consistency is what will make your audience stay loyal and come back for your brand and everything it offers.

Of course, another benefit of social media is that their services are cost-free, which enables businesses to build a huge following audience.

Reason #2: You raise awareness for your brand

Increasing your brand awareness means measuring how memorable your brand is and what makes it stand out from your competitors. Raising awareness will help you lead your customers toward your brand and create an instinctive preference for its products and services. Companies with high customer recognition enjoy customer trust and loyalty while gaining visibility and being seen as an expert in their fields. So, simply put, brand awareness is the factor that makes customers form a purchasing decision and expand your audience base.

To achieve that you should focus on your customer’s journey, and the quality of your products, make sure your content is compelling, take advantage of any opportunities that may come along in the digital world, and in general be sure that you have a strong online presence. To build a strong online presence you can promote yourself both online and offline. You can create a QR code with your social media channels and promote it in different ways.

Reason #3: You learn more about your competitors

Getting to know your competitors means getting to know your competitive advantage and that way you can get a handle on your competition. Being aware of what differentiates you is the solution to making the most out of your advantage. Learning and observing how your competitors run their businesses will help you understand them better.

In addition, discovering what works and what doesn’t for your competitors allows you to minimize risk and avoid potential crises. It’s another way of learning from a variety of strategies, experiences, and techniques from another business. Of course, any attempt to copy their work is prohibited. There are many ways that you can improve your business strategy by paying attention to what others do; measuring success, discovering tools, implementing new branding and marketing strategies, and forming better business decisions.

Reason #4: You build relationships with your customers

Building relationships with customers equals connecting with your audience on a personal level. When you connect with them genuinely you can better understand their concerns, find solutions to any problems, and create a sense of mutual understanding. Some of the major benefits of a strong customer relationship are customer acquisition, retention, and satisfaction. All three are proof of a strong established relationship; your customers can spread the word about your brand to friends, family, and colleagues (word of mouth).

Asking for feedback and reviews is another significant outcome, as your audience will feel like they are appreciated and involved in your business strategy, that you value their opinion and that they can trust your company. Custom loyalty is something you can’t miss!

11 Social Media Best Practices to Implement

Social media is the greatest tool of the digital world and you need to take advantage of it, as it can help you promote your business and boost your brand reputation at a low or zero cost. But let’s be more specific. We’ve gathered the 11 best practices for you to implement into your social media strategy.

1. Create engaging content

You always have to pay attention to the content on social media posts. Your content should be appealing to your customers, as it was made for them to stay engaged. You should keep in mind that content creation isn’t solely focused on your existing audience, but also on potential ones. So, getting to know your audience will help you create content tailored to their needs and requirements. It’s not recommended to create content without a goal.

So, the real question is how to create engaging content? First things first, remember to stick to specific content themes, show your human side, and engage with your audience, by responding to comments, creating Instagram Q&As, quizzes, gifs, posting tweets, retweeting, video content, Instagram stories, infographics, reposts, and more. Maybe some testing will be needed over time to understand the type of content that works best on different networks, so be prepared to update your content regularly.

2. Create a content calendar

Social media calendars are spreadsheets used to schedule social posts in advance. Their purpose is to plan when and which content will be published, oversee campaigns, and track deadlines. Content calendars are the best way to plan and organize the distribution of your content across multiple channels; you save time, you can improve your results, everything’s more organized, and you set deadlines.

Here’s an example of a Social Media Calendar in Action, from CoSchedule.

How to start creating your calendar? Well, first the social channels you want to distribute content to, decide what should be included in your calendar, and then get feedback from your team. Don’t forget the 80–20 rule; 80% of your posts are designed to inform, educate, or entertain, and the other 20% to directly promote your business or drive conversions. Figuring out what type of content you want to create is a crucial step, such as visuals, copy, links, paid/organic ads, and more according to the SEO strategy.

All in all, by using a calendar you save time, efficiently manage your social media accounts, and improve your results. So, it’s time to create content; you can check online for templates that can help you get started.

3. Use social media monitoring tools

Monitoring and analytics tools are a must for your social media strategy. They can help you keep your content organized, schedule and publish posts, communicate with multiple social accounts, and monitor whatever your audience has to say about you. Social listening enables you to collect feedback and track positive and negative mentions, keywords, and hashtags, on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, more social networks, and the entire web. As a result, you can discover trends, find influencers, check on your competitors, benefit from increased engagement opportunities with your audience, and deal with any potential crises.

On that note, Mentionlytics is a powerful social media monitoring tool; known for tracking mentions, hashtags, keywords, and sentiment thanks to the Social Intelligence Advisor (SIA), which provides organizations with access to audience insights and historical data.

There are many benefits to using a social media monitoring platform and you should start considering it if you haven’t already. The tools’ algorithm can help you collect data and analyze information in real-time, so you can make informed business decisions, increase community engagement and boost your brand awareness. You can also receive notifications whenever something comes up about your brand and stay informed about social media analytics.

4. Set the right objectives

Setting clearly defined goals may sound complicated, but it’s highly necessary and not as complicated as it sounds. Either if you’re starting a business, or already running one, you need to start planning your business strategy, and setting the right objectives is the first step. Your business goals are your overall company’s mission statement, that helps you move in the right direction.

To create a successful social media strategy, businesses need to set the right goals such as:

Number of followers
Total likes
Sales from social media posts
Reach

Here are 4 tips you can follow:

Set clear and specific goals, not too complicated ones
Be sure your goals are suitable for both short-term and long-term strategies
Set ambitious, yet achievable goals
Set goals that are easily identified by other members of your team and represent the company’s mission.

Simultaneously, you can use the SMART method to set your business objectives. This method goes as follows:

S for specific, keep in mind that you need to set specific actions to implement these objectives
M for measurable, you need to be able to measure if your actions and goals are successful or if something needs to be changed
A for attainable, your goals should be able to achievable
T for timely, you need to set a timeline for your goals.

5. Use the right metrics

You need to measure everything that matters, especially in today’s digital world where data is more than important. Actionable metrics help you pinpoint how your business is going and what you need to focus on, which is great for small businesses. So, choosing the right metrics is crucial for your business strategy.

Similar to objectives, brands need to monitor the right metrics too. For example:

Followers
Engagement rate
Impressions
Reach
Likes
Comments

There are a variety of ways to choose the right metrics for every business, such as the pirate metrics (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue), IPAs (Important, Potential Improvement, Authority), TIEs (Trackable, Important, Explainable), and KIPs (Key Performance Indicators).

Metrics can show you what works and what needs improvement around your performance and inform you about whether an action is good enough to meet your audience’s requirements. Improvement is always necessary for a business to stay up to date, competitive, and stand out from its competitors. The process of optimization is necessary.

6. Keep an eye on your competitors

Keeping an eye on the competition is another practice you should follow. Understanding what is happening in your field is also an important step in strategic planning. Being aware of your competitor’s actions can help you identify your competitive advantage and possible disadvantages concerning other companies in the market.

It is useful for you to understand the plans and actions of your competitor’s business strategy, so you are always one step ahead and differentiate yourself from them. It’s useful to stay updated about their actions and strategies as they can be a source of inspiration for yourself, learn from their errors and avoid repeating them in the future, you may find what is missing from them and use that to approach their target audience.

Don’t forget that competition creates opportunities, on an individual level, for people to enter the marketplace and start their businesses, which is also an excellent benefit for entrepreneurs.

7. Establish a social media identity

Creating your social media identity means identifying your brand identity across your social media channels. If a brand wants to create a strong social media presence first is necessary to establish a powerful brand identity, this includes using the right colors, tone of voice, and type of posts, that will allow brands to establish their unique identity. A unique value identity explains who you are and what differentiates your business from its competitors. Having a dynamic social media identity enhances your credibility and it can prevent potential failures, in terms of social media content creation.

After creating your social media identity you should stay active and present on social media networks, so your audience knows they can communicate with you anytime something comes up and that your brand voice meets their needs and requirements.

8. Engage with your audience

Being active and present in your audience’s feed is crucial; engaging an audience boosts participation, improves learning, and enhances satisfaction. Engaged audiences share their experience on social media channels and that increases the trust and visibility of a brand. So, technically, they become your brand ambassadors; creating and sharing content, building your referral list, and spreading the word about future endeavors.

Your customers will feel that you value their contribution to your strategy and that will enhance customer loyalty, as they will feel appreciated and satisfied. Of course, that can help you approach a new potential audience; people take into consideration the opinion of a friend or a family member, and if your customers are satisfied with you they will recommend you to others. So, have in mind the importance of being engaged with your community, as social media engagement can help you evolve.

9. Be consistent

Consistency is the key to successfully executing your social media management strategy. If you want your audience to identify and recognize your brand’s value you need to stay active and engaged. A strong brand identity equals communicating to your audience your actions and tone of voice. To achieve that you need to figure out what your brand is, what values it represents, and share it with your followers.

So, sharing content and posting regularly can only help you increase your brand awareness and reputation. Also, publishing posts strategically and consistently maximize your organic reach. Although, you should maintain balance in the variety of posts you publish. Creating a consistent visual aesthetic identity is also part of the process. You should focus on posting aesthetically compelling visuals that attract your audience’s interest. In general, consistency on social media posts has a great impact on followers.

10. Utilize influencer marketing

Another great social media tactic is influencer marketing. Working with influencers enables brands to promote their products and services, host giveaways, and boost their brand’s awareness through an authoritative figure. Keep in mind that influencer marketing empowers a brand’s credibility and trust. Influencers are people with great convincing power, as they are highly appreciated by their audiences. They have built an engaged followers base, who follow their recommendations and trust their opinions. So, it’s a great way to grow sales and it will help you save time and keep your social media content relevant and appealing.

Influencers have a unique voice when it comes to speaking to their followers. They know the market and the majority of the time they are experts in their field. You should benefit from the opportunity to be shown in an influencer’s social media profile, as you will get exposure, recognition, and potential audience growth.

11. Take advantage of hashtags

Why use hashtags? Well, hashtags offer the perfect opportunity to connect with people with whom you share the same mindset. They allow you to heap together conversations and content, concerning a specific topic, so it’s easier for people with the same interests to connect.

A successful social media strategy should include relevant hashtags. On that note, hashtags are the way to raise awareness or start a conversation, you can keep up with trends, increase engagement with your audience, enhance brand awareness with branded hashtags, support your community, and add content to your social posts. Hashtags can also help your target group find you, as users can follow hashtags on LinkedIn and Instagram, So, if a hashtag is popular and goes viral you have the chance of being discovered and gaining some new followers, which is great for organic growth.

Now Over to You

These social media best practices can be a great start for every individual or an enterprise that wants to be more active on social networks, and understand their function and how they support a business strategy. You can use everything mentioned above, check what works for you and what doesn’t, measure the results, re-evaluate, and try again, that’s the way to create a successful social media strategy.

Of course, you can always pay a visit and book a free demo with Mentionlytics; we will answer every question you may have and explain everything you need to know about social listening, planning, and monitoring. We are here for you every step of the way.

Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/social-media-best-practices