100 social media marketing tips

All progress takes
place outside the
comfort zone
Michael John Bobak

Create evergreen content
that you can reuse and
repost. SEO will benefit
substantially.
Tom Tunguz , Redpoint Ventures

Initially, quantity matters
a lot. It’s important to
establish a cadence for
your readers, so that
they keep coming back
and feel rewarded with
new content.

Network with the
influencers in your sector
and build rapport with
them online. They can
become a powerful
distribution channel for
you.

Build anticipation and a
large email list before the
official launch by using a
email and social referral
strategy.
Jeff Bullas , Jeffbullas.com

Build your social
networks from day one
to create content
distribution.

Create great content on
your site and also be
active as a guest blogger
on the top influencers in
your niche to build your
SEO and online authority.

Listen to advice, but do not
always follow: Even though there
are basic rules for the different
social media networks, still what
works very much depends on
your own audience, message,
reputation and much more.
Susanna Gebauer , exploreB2B

Do not expect the huge results
after a short time. Most social
networks take time to built an
audience, a reputation – and they
even take time to figure out what
is the best strategy for each
network.

Test what works, build
your data first. When you
found something that
works for you – scale it
up.

Make something
people want to
share.
Brenden Mulligan , Cluster

Make sharing part
of the flow, not an
afterthought.

Make becoming a
user exceptionally
easy.

Start from the beginning.
Integrate social into everything
you do. Build your culture with
social in mind. Show everything.
Give your community access to
the everything from the start.
Justin Wise , Think Digital

Start building your email list.
Create something of value. Give it
away. Build your list from the
start. It will be one of the most
important assets in building your
business.
Justin Wise , Think Digital

Be social – social media is not
about advertising your business.
It is about creating relationships
that can in the long term help
your business.
Bill Gassett , RE/MAX Executive Realty

Don’t be a link dropper and nothing
else. So many people/companies share
their message by social sharing tools
and do nothing else. In order to be a
social media winner you need to
respond and interact with those you
want to get the message out to. The
best of the best in social react and
respond to inquiries right away.

Understand which social platforms work best for your
business. There are certain platforms that will work better
for some businesses than others. For example Google Plus
is great for those in the social media/SEO industry. A large
portion of the Google Plus membership includes these
industries so it is a natural fit. Don’t try to force your
business into a platform that doesn’t fit. Pinterest is a great
platform for those in the real estate/home improvement
industry because of the visual aspect of the platform. When
you understand what platforms work best for your industry
you can better manage your time and efforts targeting the
appropriate places for your message.

Have a plan! Write it
down. Don’t worry how
it’s going to get done, just
create the plan first.
Karen Yankovich , Uplevel Media

Curate content and
always have reserves.

Focus on the end result,
where are you looking to
drive traffic? Where is the
profit?

Be Yourself.
Brian Fanzo , Broadsuite

Find ways to use content
& social posts to
“#ShowUcare”.

Focus on 1 to 1
Conversations not
Communication when
posting & engaging on
social media!

Many brands want to treat their paid
social media advertising strategy like
traditional media campaigns. Although
there are some overlaps, advertising on
social media is a completely different
type of marketing. For the first time in
history advertisers can communicate
directly with their current and potential
customers, don’t lose this opportunity
with the wrong message.
Andrew Torba , Kuhcoon

If you’re advertising on social media
treat it like one big science experiment.
Create a hypothesis about your
customers, test different messages and
creatives, and monitor your campaigns
closely for performance.

Remember the three F’s of customer
service at all times: fast, friendly, and
focused. People from around the world
are talking about your brand, or
communicating with you directly
through your social pages. It’s
important to take the time to provide a
fast, friendly, and focused response.

Reciprocate. Empires are built with lots
and lots of help from as many people
as you can find. Follow, share, and be
generally friendly even if you don’t see
it helping you in the short term. You
never know who will remember you
down the line and reciprocate back.
Chris Sevilleja , Scotch.io Development

It all comes down to the product:
Your product, your value, and
your offerings to the world will
determine success. You can try to
put fun gimmicks in and all sorts
of marketing speak/tactics. When
it comes down to it, your
content/service/product is at the
core of your business.

Schedule Your Posts: Social marketing
helps an incredible amount, but it
shouldn’t take up more than an hour of
your day. Use Buffer, HootSuite or any
others to schedule so that your day can
stay productive. Use analytics tools to
help optimize your sharing times also.
Tools like Followerwonk can help
analyze your followers for the best
times.

Don’t just broadcast. Even for
an account in a company
name you can interact with
people using a bit of
personality. Ask questions of
your followers, respond to
tweets in a friendly way.
Rachel Andrew , Perch

Tweets about your product
can be a great source of
genuine reviews. We use
tweets on the Perch site in the
footer of each page and in
places like our about page
http://grabaperch.com/about.

RT questions about your product to
your followers. We do this a lot at
Perch. If we see someone asking a
subjective question for example,
“Does anyone here use Perch?” we
retweet it from the grabaperch
account. Our followers then reply
to the person with their honest
feedback. Their responses are far
more relevant than anything we
could say as they come from other
customers.

Be consistent so
your followers
know what to
expect.
Rachel Gurk , Rachel Cooks

Be authentic.

Be present —
engage with your
audience.

Everything revolves
around great content.
Add to the conversation
by writing an insightful
post, doing interesting
data analysis, open
soucing useful code, etc.
Geva Perry , A bunch

Participate in the
conversation.
Respond, argue,
agree, disagree. Take
a position and join in
on the conversation.

There is no silver
bullet to social media
success. It requires a
lot of virtual
“legwork”, day in, day
out.

Build your
personal brand
first.Nat Schooler , Social Dojo

Build
relationships,
they are key.
Nat Schooler , Social Dojo

Schedule quality
content don’t just
tweet rubbish.
Nat Schooler , Social Dojo

View social media as a way to
add value to your target
audience, not as a way to sell
to them. When you add value
by sharing useful links, or
replying with helpful tips, you
begin building trust instead
of coming across as spammy.
Ryan Battles , Harpoon

Be comfortable with posting the
same update multiple times. Only
a small fraction of your audience
will see each update, so by
posting numerous times (i.e. once
later in the day, once the next
day, once the next week, once the
next month) you will reach a
much larger percentage of your
audience.

Leverage Twitter lists. Maintain a
list of people that you’ve had
face-to-face interaction with, as
these folks will typically be your
biggest supporters, retweeters,
etc. By monitoring this list and
engaging regularly, you’ll
maintain these relationships and
ensure they don’t get lost in the
Twitter stream.

Focus on your output, not
your input. Use social media
as a platform for curating and
sharing not just your stuff,
but your entire industry. You
shouldn’t only use social for
listening.
Caleb Wojcik , DIY Video Guy

Follow less people. There is a
lot of noise on social. Instead
of wasting time with people
and companies that use it the
wrong way, spend your
energy on what actually
matters: connecting with
your target audience.

Stay on topic. Yes, there are examples
of companies that have done quick
turnarounds on current events that
really helped them on social (see: Oreo
during the Super Bowl), but most of the
time you should just focus on your
domain. Talk about what you know
more than anyone else and don’t jump
on the “trending” bandwagon unless it
makes sense to.

Use Buffer! – I tend to read a ton
of great, sharable content late at
night when there’s less chance of
retweets. Buffer lets you drip feed
content evenly throughout the
day so as I’m running around in
meetings or designing stuff,
content keeps keeping pushed
out without me having to
remember.
Murat Mutlu , Marvel

Give your audience a reason
to follow you – if you only
tweet about product updates
then it’s going to be a pretty
way one relationship with
your followers. Tweet about
useful tools, articles and
things that will interest them.

Pick one social network to start
with – It’s tempting to make
accounts on every social network
but managing that is hard.
There’s nothing sadder than
looking at a Facebook page with
no updates in 6 months. Just pick
one to start with and grow that
before moving onto another
network.

Decide if you want A LOT of
“followers/friends” or if you want GOOD
“followers/friends.” The former leads
to… I don’t know, clicks and retweets
and stuff. The latter leads to
relationships, good jokes, a crew of
people to build a thing for, and
sometimes, just sometimes, a perfectly
timed gif. Whatever you decide, put
something on your wall to remind you
of your decision… and hold steady.
Chase Reeves , Fizzle

Be a real person. Be yourself. Be kind.
Be useful. Gary V. does something? So
what. Do it your way. Add a picture? If
you feel like it. Always link to
something? Up to you. Tweet
something scandalous? If it’s in you.
Everyone’s putting out a fake version of
themselves, the way they want to be
perceived. Put the real version of
yourself out (if you know which version
is the real one… that’s a whole other
list post we need to make).

Keep close to your audience. Don’t worry,
you’re doing a good job, about not doing
enough, or doing too much, or what this
person or that person is doing. Keep your
nose close to your audience, to the real
people with real needs and ideas and hopes
and struggles and desires and problems… If
you can make stuff that’s valuable to them
AND be real in your interactions with you
over time, you just may have a career in
social entrepreneurship or Mavening™ or
whatever the kids are calling it these days.
Break a leg.

Think of community and the
connections that you have
and want to have, not just
broadcasting messages. That
way when you are ready to
push you can leverage your
strong.
Michelle Williams , Ideaction

Be authentic and
share who you are
not just what you
want to sell.

Share ideas, relevant
articles and what you
believe. This is long
lasting and makes you
stand out amongst
the rest.

Choose one (only 1)
social media channel to
focus on. You can have
profiles at all of em, but
one where you’re actually
active and engaged. For
me, that’s Twitter.
Brian Casel , casjam

Share the articles you read &
recommend. Sounds obvious, but
most people just consume.
Actually take time to curate the
stuff you found valuable and pass
it on. And DON’T share stuff that
you didn’t actually read. That’s
just noise.

Turn off social media. Get
back to work. I read a bunch
of articles during breakfast
and Buffer my favorites for
posting later in the day. The
rest of the day is for being
productive, not consuming.

Don’t be self-
indulgent.
Nick Armitage , Nonsense

Be honest.Nick Armitage , Nonsense

Share your
journey.
Nick Armitage , Nonsense

Use Facebook’s dark
posts – they are one
of the greatest tools
in the arsenal of a
Social Media
Manager.
Filip Mlody , Mimecast

Tweets praising your
product/service are like
mini-testimonials that
can be tracked straight
back to their author.
Use them
appropriately.

Learn why shortening your
links might lead to flawed
analytics and consequently
making wrong decisions (i.e.
https://megalytic.com/blog/d
angers-of-shortened-urls-for-
analytics).

All too often founders think their words
of wisdom automatically entitle them to
social media attention. They do not.
But, your hard-won perspective on your
industry segment, your experiences
coping with the same problems your
customers and clients face, and your in-
depth knowledge of the knowledge
domain you inhabit are interesting and
worthy of attention. Focus on them –
and write from the heart, not from
“marketing”.
Bob Walsh , 47hats

Quality and sharing real value
beats noise and “message
dumping” every single time. If
you view social media as just
a variant of advertising,
you’re completely missing the
point, and you will do your
company more harm than
good.
Bob Walsh , 47hats

Social media is about
people – what they’re
interested in, moved
by, sympathize with –
not “brand” and not
“marketing”.
Bob Walsh , 47hats

Share Behind-the-Scenes
Stories: When launching a
product, product-making
peers and early adopters love
knowing the story behind
products they use. Sharing
the story can boost traffic
and signups.
John Henry Muller , Pack

Big Beautiful Visuals: Visual
posts preform better than
text only posts. Optimizing
images at 1200×630+ pixels
for content on both Facebook
and Twitter will ensure your
images look great and get
noticed in the busy feed.

Charming OG Tags: Custom
OG tags are often
overlooked. Writing custom
charming headlines and
images optimized for
awesomeness will help you
attract more attention to
shares on Facebook.

Remember that the only way
to maintain sustainable
growth in your product is
building something worth
spreading by word of mouth
– social media is just there to
make those conversations
easier to start.
Jon Chan , Bento

Timing is important.
Think about where
your audience is and
when they will be
looking at social
media. Timezones
matter.
Jon Chan , Bento

Successful social
marketing is about the
details – your headlines,
the images in your cards,
the placement of your
links, everything.
Remember to dot your Is
and cross your Ts.
Jon Chan , Bento

Don’t feel like you have to
scramble to be active on
*every* social network. Find
out where your customers
are most responsive, and
focus on engaging and
posting regularly to those
networks.
Irma Olguin Jr. , Buildicus

Don’t be boring. Posting
only about your business
or product is boring.
Behind-the-curtain stuff
shows you’re an actual,
relatable, real-life
person, so feel free to
throw in some flavor.

Never post when you’ve
had a couple of cocktails,
as the likelihood of
accidentally posting
photos of your junk
increases exponentially.

Engagement on social
media is key. Don’t
underestimate the value
of a “like” or “favorite”.
It’s a simple, subtle way
to get others attention
and can help you gain a
relevant following.
Cody Beck , Enstitute

No one can create original
content all the time, and you
don’t want to continuously
post without contributing to
the conversation. Focus on
curating relevant and helpful
content to position yourself
as an informational hub for
potential customers.

Learn the rules, so you know
how to break them properly.
It’s good to imitate those
who’s style you admire on
social media. But once you
get the hang of it, don’t be
afraid to try something new,
no matter how “out there”. It
could just be crazy enough to
work.

Claim your name on
every social media
platform you can, even
before you start posting
and try to be consistent
with the unique name.
“/startupname”.
Guy Pearson , Practice Ignition

Make sure you research
where your target
market lives. Instagram is
no good for a B2B
business application.

Try and create unique
content for each, i.e.
don’t blanket post to all
your accounts as it may
look spammy.

Lists are great! Build lists for
your key stakeholder groups
– partners, investors, team
members, star clients (or
vocal clients), key media folks
you want to keep in touch
with, and those who inspire
you.
Janneane Blevins , KA+A

It’s ok to recycle content, like
a really great article that was
written about you, content
that you’ve published on your
blog, etc. The key is to space
it out. A tool like Buffer is
great to help schedule those.

Be sure you have a good
mix of content – don’t
just promote your own
blog posts, whitepapers
and webinars. Ask
questions, retweet,
reply… be human.

Take the time to work out
which social channel will give
you the most traction. Start
with a broad range and
measure which ones are
working best, and focus on
those. You should end up
with 1-3 different channels.
Ben Slater , Seed Jobs

Build relationships. Make
sure you’re adding value to
your audience, not just
selling. Investing time to help
potential customers out at
this stage will increase brand
awareness and encourage
them to return to you when
it’s time to buy.

Connect with influencers. Use
tools like Followerwonk to
find the big hitters in your
industry on Twitter and
engage them. Suggest
content that they might enjoy
and build a relationship –
don’t just reach out cold
when you need something.

One thing I did early on with Lean Domain Search,
a domain name generator I built, was to incentivize
people to share the site on Twitter. When users
performed a search I showed them 150 search
results for free but also gave them an option to
tweet about the site to get an additional 150
suggestions. The code for this was fairly simple: I
asked users for their Twitter user name and then
used Twitter’s API to check their last few tweets for
a mention of Lean Domain Search. If they had
mentioned it, I added a cookie that enabled them
to see the additional results. Day after day people
would take advantage of this feature to view more
results and I benefited from the extra exposure.
Matt Mazur , Lean Domain Search

On that note, I’d recommend
using software like Tweetbot or
TweetDeck and set up lists that
show only mentions of your
service’s name. For example, I
had one list for “Lean Domain
Search” and another for
“leandomainsearch” and this
enabled me to constantly monitor
what folks were tweeting about
the site.

Finally, when people do share your
service on Twitter or any other
social media platform, thank them
for it. It can be as simple as
favoriting their tweet or responding
to them and thanking them for the
mention. Not only is it the polite
thing to do, but it never hurts to
delight the people who you already
know are apt to sharing your
service with others.

Don’t put too much effort into
social media before you are sure
about what you’re really offering
and why people should be
interested. Focus your initial
social media activities on finding
those crucial early adopters and
invite them into the process of
improving your product/service.
Louise Stigell , Playify

Play the long game. Don’t be too eager
to quickly gain tons of followers and
press.Take your time to get to know
your audience on different social media
platforms, monitor their activity, follow
relevant people and engage in
conversation with them. Offer value to
them. You will earn your followers,
press and customers, without having to
pay for advertising or spam journalists’
inboxes.

Have some personality! People don’t like
faceless brands that do nothing but try to
convince them to buy. Tell people about
your start-up and why it’s the greatest thing,
but do it casually, not all the time, and with
some self-perspective. Introduce the people
behind your start-up. Focus on building
relationships with your fans and customers,
asking them for feedback and giving away
lots of value. That way, people will not only
buy from you, they’ll act as ambassadors
because they truly -like- you.

Know your audience: Find out
where your audience spends their
time – target specific
communities on larger social
networks like Twitter or look for
niche social networks, blogs and
discussion forums where your
ideal customer goes for their daily
dose of inspiration and
knowledge.
David Kelly , Shareflow

Be a Mensch: As Guy Kawasaki
recommends, try to be helpful
to people without any
expectation of direct return.
Share links to useful
information, answer questions –
engage and pay it forward.
Good things will happen in ways
you never expected.

Keep it up: It pays to have a bit of a
strategy in mind to help you maintain
a constant presence on social media.
Get to know your ideal customer,
pick a few basic themes of interest to
them, and find or create interesting
content to share with them. I use
tools like Buffer for scheduling tweets
and posts, Feedly for collating
sources of content, and Google Alerts
to help me find new stuff relating to
my chosen themes.

100 social media marketing tips

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Featured

Featured (20)

100 social media marketing tips