Not All Designs Should Be Created Equal (and Other Reasons You Shouldn’t Use Your Flyer as an Instagram Post)

We could throw out a million jokes about why size matters, but let’s cut to the chase: All designs don’t work with all social media platform sizing requirements. If you drop the ball with your target market because of subpar posts, a competitor will be there with crisp, professional marketing to get their attention. Not to use fear tactics to drive you into hypervigilance or anything, but in the fast-paced world that is today’s marketing you need to be ready to strike while the iron is hot. And that means delivering not only some great content, but stuff that LOOKS good too.  

Your designs need to have the right sizing to make the right impact 

It’s tempting to make one graphic (or hire someone to make one graphic) and cut corners by posting it to every outlet. Believe me, we have been there (and, admittedly, done that). It is a mistake everyone makes at some point on their social media journey. And, as with all mistakes, it is important to continuously learn better ways of doing things.  

Resizing your graphics to fit specifications for different social media platforms is a much better way to offer crisp, professional looking content to your target market. 

Not only that, it will also make you more searchable for those fancy algorithms, which prioritize optimized images over those that are not correctly sized. Increasing your reach in this way is simpler than it seems and it will make your entire social profile appear more credible to your future customers. No more pixelated images or truncated text for you! 

Why working with a professional graphic designer helps 

Graphic designers are in the know about sizing (which can change often for various platforms) and they understand the importance of crisp visuals in grabbing attention from your scrolling target market. You will also need to take into account the differing sizes for videos versus static posts, stories, reels and more. Graphic designers will often create multiple versions of one image or video so it can be shared across various platforms with correct sizing. Remember, this doesn’t just help the visual appeal of your brand, it also helps your reach! 

The magic of hiring a professional graphic designer lies in their ability to build unique, creative and on-brand designs married with the knowledge of which imagery to use where and at what sizing. 

Now, think about combining THAT with professional content creators, digital marketing wizards, PR mavens and more. Did someone say growth? Brand recognition? An increase in customers and sales? That is the magic of the P&A Team. 

Can you do it in house? Yes. Can you do it yourself? Yes. You can do whatever you set your mind to. You are a business owner after all! But we do find that many entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed with all it takes to run a business benefit from outsourcing their graphic design and other strategic marketing to companies like us, who can give them a lot more bang for their buck than hiring in-house. (And the measureable results to back it up.) 

Want to know more? Chat with us about our Entrepreneurial Pathway Program!  

Why LinkedIn?

Maybe you are new to social media and are trying to set up a profile on every platform. Maybe you have been living under the same rock as everybody else and you didn’t realize the importance of LinkedIn until now. No matter your reasoning, we are glad you are curious about this insanely vital piece of the social media marketing puzzle. Read on to find out why Linked In is important AND how to make the most of your experience. 

If you don’t know the magic of LinkedIn yet, start here

Why is this social platform so useful for businesses? Our clients ask us this question a lot. The scoop is that LinkedIn has always been much more than just an online social media platform. It is a professional online hub for members to connect with each other, network and show off their talents.  

Think of how many businesses luncheons or dinners you have attended just to network with a couple of people. This platform magnifies that principal. (We still recommend you take those lunches or dinners and network face-to-face if for nothing else but the delicious meal and human connection.) 

Use LinkedIn to establish your professional online presence  

Whether you are trying to create a great first impression for future business or a recruiter, LinkedIn can help you design a digital portfolio to put your best foot forward. Instead of a traditional resume or website content showing your future employers or customers what you are doing, this platform allows you to showcase samples of projects, presentations, articles and more. And it will reach a ton of folks too!  

Rub elbows with the best of them

Easy and fun networking opportunities are just another reason to make sure you are all set up to use LinkedIn. For businesses, networking online can mean connecting with others in the industry and sharing insights and ideas no matter where you are in the world. Online brainstorm sessions can result in wonderfully creative ideas that help you to develop new content and more. You may even find yourself celebrating mutual successes with competitors.  

Take the chance to also build relationships with those you admire both within your industry and outside your vocation peers. LinkedIn makes it easy to be intentional about who you connect with through categorized groups, discussion boards and more. Establish genuine connections this way and engage in authentic interactions that will help to propel your business forward.  

Build your credibility 

Because it has always been a professional platform, LinkedIn is a great place to build your credibility and establish you as a subject matter expert in your field. To accomplish this, you will need more than just a bunch of random posts. Make sure you are engaging with the community, responding thoughtfully to comments on your page and others and building real connections that will help others to trust your brand’s voice.  

Although it is important to meet your target market where they are, be that Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, etc., LinkedIn is a great platform to grow your credibility, speak to others in your industry, gain new knowledge and even get the word out about your brand. Stay tuned for more LinkedIn fun here on our blog as well as social this month! 

 

Social Media Analytics: Dive on In!

social media analytics

Social media analytics is the grand finale for our “22 in 22 social media tips!”

We’ve got one more nugget of social media wisdom for you this year — but it’s an important one. And very much unglamorous … and it has to do with tracking the results of all your hard work.

Because we are working with humans, the ability to predict your post’s popularity can be challenging at best without diving into social media analytics. These data nuggets provides insight into your audience’s triggers and will lead to better content in the future.

Bring back those SMART goals

One of the first tips we dropped for you early in 2022 was “establish SMART goals for your business and your social media marketing.” We have continued to refer to how important this is throughout the year because it will make a huge difference in how you track your progress and what you can measure it against.

Remember, your SMART goals are a reliable yardstick; you establish them by intentionally figuring out what it is you want from your social media marketing. Keep a consistent eye on your metrics to see how posts and campaigns are performing over time and how they measure up. How many people are engaging in your content? If one of your goals was simply to reach more people and gain more followers (who can then be translated into consumers) you will want to track that progress often to make sure you are headed in the right direction.

Social Media Monthly Monitoring!

Don’t wait for an annual check in with your social media accounts. Instead, monitor after every campaign or once a month to get a frequent reading of how your brand is performing.

Each platform offers its own tools to track your successes and failures. If you see that you are performing particularly well with a certain type of content, produce more of that. Afterall, you are trying to engage followers, not robots, and people will favor more of what they want when it comes to the entertainment and informational value of a social media platform.

There will be other times that you see your content NOT performing so well. As with everything in life, making mistakes is a great chance to adapt and create something new and more exciting. If you want to go the extra mile, surveying some of your social audience could be a worthwhile cause, especially if you find yourself performing poorly over time. Asking your followers directly what they want to see is an obvious way to make sure you are engaging them with something they enjoy.

Social media marketing doesn’t mean much unless you are willing to do the mundane work of tracking your progress. And this won’t mean just checking in to see how many likes you received on a post. Metrics on each platform will check for various points that will tell you whether you are succeeding in running successful campaigns and creating engaging content. By measuring your successes and learning from your failures, you will be on your way to gaining more followers and establishing your brand across social media platforms.

Social Media Channels and Your Marketing

If you are a social-media-for-business newbie, it’s time to learn more about coordinating marketing campaigns across your channels as an important way to leverage this platform. Even with some experience under your belt, understanding the importance of creating a cohesive story across all your social media channels will help you to knock your social strategy out of the park.

Most users have a favorite social media platform that they turn to for entertainment, news, and connection. However, they most likely have a few different ones downloaded onto their various devices, interacting with your brand in different ways. Each social media platform offers a unique chance to show off a different part of your brand’s story to followers who are interested in learning more.

Maximize your social media channels

It’s easier than you think, but it does require knowing your target audience and time spent paying attention to detail.

You know by now the little quirks each platform offers. Twitter has that famous 280-character limit. TikTok is known for videos and not much written content. Hashtags are popular on Instagram but not necessarily on Facebook. All these things add up to a lot to remember when it comes to creating content. Add to that a marketing campaign and you may find your head spinning.

Overwhelmed by social media? Breathe.

So, let’s say you have a new campaign you would like to launch on your social media channels. As noted in this series on strategic social media, you can reach more followers by creating a cohesive story across all your channels. But this doesn’t mean you need to use the exact same content. Give you followers a chance to interact with different content on each of the channels, while keeping it all within the general theme of your marketing campaign.

Let’s say you have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. You can create a short tweet including an image as well as a helpful link for those followers who are part of your community on this platform. Take the same message and make a video that can be shared on TikTok, as a reel on Instagram and even as a story on Facebook. This message can be longer and more in-depth than the one on your Twitter account. Then, you can make static posts that will go out on Instagram and Facebook as well and even create a hashtag that is relevant for your campaign.

Teamwork makes the dreamwork! By working with all these channels together, you reach all your followers, gain some more, and get your message out in a dynamic, interesting, and multi-dimensional way.

Make content relevant to channel

A word of caution: there are some instances where a campaign will only be appropriate for certain platforms, depending on users. Your demographic will be different on Facebook versus TikTok, so before sharing content across all your social media channels, make sure that they are relevant to your followers there. If your company is launching a huge campaign, for example, or annual fundraiser, this would be appropriate across all channels. However, if you sell multiple products and are launching a new line aimed specifically at a certain age group, it would be worth your time to figure out where those followers spend their social capital and focus your efforts more on those channels.

Keep brand and message consistent and let your marketing campaigns shine on social media!

 

How to Post Your Blog to Social Media

So, you’ve created a blog … better  yet, you’ve created several blogs. You’ve posted them to your website. Now what?

It’s not rocket science. It is time consuming. That’s why about 60 percent of Pickett and Associate’s business is social media strategy, management and implementation. But let me give you the “inside scoop” — then you can decide if you want to play DIY or delegate. Here’s the deal:

  1. Write a few words of introduction to the idea of the blog; make it catchy, enticing. SOLVE A PROBLEM! OFFER A SOLUTION!
  2. Use the specific blog link, not just the blog page. then you want to cut and paste www.pickettandassociates.com/publishing-blog-social-media NOT www.pickettandassociates.com/blog. Why? You want readers to go right to that blog; theoretically, there’s a purpose in that blog that you’ve identified in a communication plan and/or editorial calendar.
  3. If you are using Facebook or LinkedIn, once you paste that link, a post is generated with a photo and the beginning of your blog; at that point, delete the link you put in there. If no photo is auto-generated, upload something appropriate (and talk to your web person about why that’s not happening).
  4. If you are using Twitter, shrink the link. We prefer ow.ly but you can use bit.ly. Either are super easy — just paste the long link and it generates something shorter.
  5. Schedule it! If you are using Facebook for business (which you should be) … (tell me you aren’t using a personal account, please!), you can schedule several posts at one time through Facebook. You can also use a service like Hootsuite and post across multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. (Other than the ease of having them all in one place, there’s an “ow.ly shrinker” built in.) There are tutorials galore; don’t be afraid.

See, I told you it was “easy peasey.” But if you decide to delegate, we’d love to hear from you! We love working with businesses and organizations of all sizes and budgets!