Tell me this hasn’t happened to you before.
You’ve just read an awesome, lengthy post on a topic like “X social media tips” or “Y steps to a better social media campaign“.
The article is absolutely chock-full of useful information. While reading it, you resolve to implement each of the detailed social media strategies mentioned in the post.
So you finish reading the post, close the tab, and then … do nothing?
Wait, hold on. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, is it?
No, that is most definitely not how it’s supposed to work. So what happened?
Here’s my theory: as you read the post, even though you became aware of what you should be doing on social media, you actually never got around to applying the tips – probably because you weren’t able to find the time.
This is a big (and common) problem, something that I myself have been guilty of many times. Despite the usefulness of the blogs we may read, we use the ol’ I-don’t-have-enough-time excuse to get out of implementing what we learn.
So with this post, I’ve tried to do things a little bit differently.
My aim is not that you’ll have a huge amount of new knowledge after you finish reading it.
Instead, I want you to come away with just a few quick, actionable (big emphasis on actionable) tips that you can start applying immediately.
To that end, I’ve collected 50 one-sentence, bite-sized social media hacks that you can start implementing today. These are short, easily-executed tips that you should be able to apply in as little time as 10 minutes.
No excuses!
Note: I take my inspiration from Brad’s similar post on SEO also at Jeffbullas.com (it’s a great post!).
Also, for easier digestion, I’ve divided this list into five sections – 4 categories for each of the top 4 social networks for bloggers and 1 for miscellaneous/general tips:
- Facebook hacks
- Twitter hacks
- Google+ hacks
- Pinterest hacks
- General
Let’s get started.
Facebook hacks
According to a Business Insider report, Facebook’s growth rate has been steadily declining in recent months. They now add around one million new users per quarter, whereas in the early days they were seeing up to 50 million new users per quarter.
The reason behind this slowing growth rate?
Facebook is (quite literally) running out of humans. Over 50% of the existing internet-accessing earthlings are now on Facebook. That’s just how big the world’s most popular social network is.
If you aren’t already leveraging Facebook’s audience to promote your blog, then you’re probably missing out big-time.
Here are 10 one-sentence hacks to help you get the most out of Facebook:
1. Use a cover image for your page that’s exactly 851 x 315 px.
2. Use a profile picture that’s exactly 180 x 180 px.
3. Move your posts from weekdays to weekends (14.5% higher brand interaction on weekends).
4. Try posting between 7-8 AM (14% higher interaction during this time slot).
5. When sharing links, always insert a square image (53% more likes, 104% more comments, 84% higher click-through rate vs imageless posts).
6. Use custom images whenever possible (explanatory images like charts/infographics are best) instead of stock photos.
7. Use a “reveal” tab to incentivize likes with rewards.
8. Whenever you reach a significant milestone, celebrate it with your fans to make them feel more like a community than a following.
9. Create a simple contest to get fans to refer their friends.
10. Take advantage of Page Insights to understand and track fan engagement so you know how to be constantly improving your page.
Twitter hacks
Twitter is the second most popular social network in the world. But it’s a bit of a hard one to figure out; because there is just so much content being produced.
Over 500 million new tweets are created every day, and most brands will have to tweet multiple times per day to reach a significant portion of their audience. The only trouble is staying within that 140-character limit, which has frustrated me personally to no end.
Still, the benefits are simply too large to ignore.
Use these 10 quick tips to get more out of Twitter:
1. Use a cover image that’s exactly 1500 x 500 px.
2. Use a profile picture that’s exactly 400 x 400 px.
3. Use SocialBro to discover the ideal times to tweet every day based on the times your following is most active.
4. When starting off a tweet with a mention, use a period at the beginning (e.g. “.@jeffbullas xxxx”) — otherwise, your tweet won’t be published to your followers’ streams.
5. If you often tweet links, don’t just track favorites & retweets – make sure that you’re also tracking the replies to your tweets.
6. Instead of using the Retweet button, try retweeting a tweet like this to ensure that your profile gets more visibility.
7. Always try to favorite tweets that share your content to acknowledge and thank the user for his/her support.
8. Time permitting, go the extra mile by replying to an account when they share your content; this helps you cultivate relationships.
9. Always use hashtags; but try not use more than 2 hashtags per tweet (using over 2+ hashtags tends to drop engagement by 17%).
10. Connect your LinkedIn and Twitter for cross-platform engagement.
Google+ hacks
From what I’ve seen, Google+ is a social network mainly for B2B and tech industries. I’ve seen some digital marketing, content marketing, and tech blogs/businesses do really well on G+.
But fitness, food, beauty and those types of niches? Not so much.
Bear this in mind when creating and maintaining a Google+ page.
Also, there’s one more thing to remember: due to the relatively small community that exists on Google+, your G+ followings will probably never be as large as your Facebook and Twitter followings.
Case in point: Jeff has 347K Twitter followers, 35K Facebook fans, and 25K Google+ followers.
That said, Google+ tends to be much more focused and engaged, and there’s even speculation on a G+ popularity and SEO rankings correlation. So again, Google+ is definitely worth the effort provided you’re in an appropriate industry.
Here are your 10 one-sentence hacks for Google+:
1. Use a cover image that’s 1080 x 608 px.
2. Use a profile photo that’s 270 x 270 px (keep in mind it displays as a circle).
3. Your Google+ page/profile will have a lot of forms and information to fill out; make sure you complete as much of it as possible.
4. Posts published on late mornings (past 9 AM) during weekdays tend to perform the best.
5. Use Timing+ to analyze your Google+ audience and find ideal posting times.
6. Tag appropriate people when sharing a Google+ post (for instance, if you’ve linked to a certain blogger in a blog post, use a tag to let them know).
7. High-performing Google+ posts tend to be longer than tweets or Facebook posts at 442 characters.
8. Keep your headlines <60 characters long.
9. Format your Google Plus content: *asterisks* for bold, _underscores_ for italics.
10. Always use thumbnails (150 x 150 px) when sharing links.
Pinterest hacks
Our last social network is Pinterest, the ever-growing image-based social network.
Pinterest has been seeing explosive growth in recent months. In fact, Pinterest grew over 97% last year – compare this with Twitter and Google+ growth rates that are between 7-13%.
If you’re not already on Pinterest, then it’s probably time that you sat up and took notice; that is, if you’re in the right industry.
Pinterest has a few defining characteristics that set it apart from the other networks on this list.
For one, the Pinterest user base is heavily biased to the female gender: 80% of users are female, and 92% of all pins are created by women.
Secondly, the top categories on Pinterest are totally removed from that of other networks: pins that are centered around the home, arts and crafts, food, and fashion industries tend to do best. B2B industries and tech industries have a very small presence here.
So if you are in the right niche for Pinterest, and your target demographic matches Pinterest’s user bias, then use these 10 hacks to grow your following:
1. Make sure that you’re using a business account, not a personal account, if appropriate.
2. Share pins that have a minimum width of 600 px, with an aspect ratio from 2:3 to 1:3.5 (e.g 400 x 600 px or 400 x 1400 px).
3. Make it a point to pin at least 5x per day, with consistent intervals.
4. In feeds, Pinterest images are scaled down to 235 px width, so make sure that your image will look good at that width.
5. Write 1-2 sentence keyword-rich descriptions (shorter is typically better) for your pins, but avoid hashtags.
6. Include text overlays in your pinned images (3x more repins on average).
7. Take advantage of the built-in Pinterest analytics to track your content.
8. Categorize your pins into appropriate boards.
9. Use Rich Pins to create more detailed pins (currently 6 rich pins are available: app, movie, recipe, article, product, and place).
10. Name your images appropriately before uploading for added SEO benefit.
General hacks
1. Set social media goals beforehand so you know exactly what you need to achieve.
2. Ensure that you’re getting the most out of your social media profiles by inserting short call-to-actions on each of your pages/bios.
3. Always take advantage of fields in your profile page that allow you to insert external links to your website.
4. Try embedding relevant social media updates into your blog posts when appropriate.
5. Use this IFTTT recipe to automatically schedule new blog posts with Buffer.
6. Install the On Hover Image Sharer WordPress plugin to allow blog visitors to share images from your blog posts.
7. A/B test title copy by sharing two different updates with different headlines for a blog post.
8. If you post frequently on multiple networks, use a dashboard to coordinate and monitor all your networks.
9. Always try to be authoritative in your updates to come across to followers as an industry expert.
10. Exploit social media templates to easily audit, strategize, and plan your social profiles.
Over to you
And there you have it: 50 one-sentence social media hacks for bloggers that you can start implementing today.
Do you have any questions about the tips mentioned? Got any quick social media wins/tips yourself that you’d like to share?
Voice your thoughts in the comments below!
Guest Author: Jonathan John is a freelance writer for hire with serious content marketing chops. If you’re a online business looking to boost traffic and establish brand authority with high-impact blog content, Jonathan is your go-to guy. He writes on digital marketing, WordPress, and entrepreneurship. Tweet him @JRJohnWrites.
The post 50 One-Sentence Social Media Hacks for Bloggers appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
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