Social Media Best Practices for Effective Engagement

Social media is an excellent way to get your brand seen by potential customers, market products, and build an audience. Statista reports that 86 percent of marketers globally use Facebook for marketing products and services, followed closely by Instagram at 79 percent [1].

Discover social media best practices to utilize social media for engaging your audience, building your brand awareness, and making sales by exploring the most relevant platform for your business and creating content that your audience responds to.

Social media best practices

Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy is an important step in marketing your company. In addition to being present on social media, you need to have a strategy in place for using it to maximum effect. To do this, it helps to follow several social media best practices. 

Understanding your audience

The first step in effective social media marketing is really understanding your audience. You need to know who they are, where they hang out, and what makes them tick. To do this, you need to do some research into your customers. Use social media analytics to find out details about your customers and followers—such as where they live, their age and gender, their income, what they buy, and how they engage. You can also analyze sales data and ask customers to complete surveys. 

Once you have useful information, you can use it to create a customer or buyer persona. This is a fictional character based on the characteristics you know your customers have. You then use this persona as your guide when marketing on social media. You may have more than one persona.

To create a customer persona, spend time researching your current customers. You might ask them to participate in focus groups or surveys or analyze historical sales data. You can also research people who aren’t yet customers. You can do this by looking at data of people who are former customers and through social listening to see what people are talking about online. 

Choosing the right platforms

Once you know who your ideal customer is, you need to determine where to find them. Which social media platform is their preference? This will likely depend on their demographics, which you will have already determined, as well as their interests and motivations. For example, if your content is highly professional, LinkedIn might be a good option. If you’re looking to create lively, fun reels, Instagram might be more your style. 

Other factors will affect your decision, such as the type of content you want to create and the products and services you sell. Make sure you do some research to find the platform that will bring the best return on investment (ROI) for your brand. If you have a large company, you may utilize several social media channels. If you have a smaller business, you may only need to pick one.

Some social media platforms and what they’re known for include:

• X: Formerly known as Twitter, X is a fast-moving social media platform offering real-time updates. It’s excellent for audiences who want to find out what’s trending, and it allows you to search using hashtags. It’s also effective for brand awareness and customer service.

• Facebook: Facebook is a social media platform for keeping in touch with friends, so it’s an excellent choice if you plan to build a following and create brand loyalty by creating content for your existing customers. You can also use Facebook ads to target customers with personalized content.

• Instagram: Instagram is a highly visual option, which is excellent if you plan to use lots of images and eye-catching reels. It’s good for aesthetically pleasing content, such as fashion, food, and interior design.

• LinkedIn: If you’re marketing a professional service, targeting professionals, or specializing in business-to-business (B2B), LinkedIn is a great platform. It’s also good for recruitment businesses, as it’s a popular site for job searching.

• YouTube: YouTube acts as a search engine and is excellent for “how to” videos. If the content you create is of a self-help nature, YouTube is a good option for you. It’s also effective if you’re creating longer videos.

Crafting compelling content

The content you create will vary depending on the platform you choose. However you decide to manage this, your content needs to be compelling, engaging, and in keeping with your brand and unique selling point.

Depending on what you use, you’ll likely need some visuals. These might be photos, videos, infographics, or reels. Some applications like Canva allow you to create images and content by inputting your brand logo and colors for consistency across posts so your social media content is easily recognizable as your brand.

Video content needs to be engaging to stop people from scrolling. Having a hook is a great way to get people to pay attention. Like with visuals, you can find templates and tools to help you create compelling videos that teach or tell a story. Customers like to see useful, authentic videos rather than promotional material. 

It's good practice to develop a content plan to keep on track with the content you plan to create and release. Your content needs to have a goal. For example, if you’re launching a new product, the content you release in the build-up to the launch will create excitement and suspense. 

Consider using keywords and hashtags in your content if the platform allows so it’s easily searchable. You can find appropriate hashtags by analyzing posts from your industry and competitor content as well as performing searches to see what’s trending. Use these hashtags and keywords in your captions. You can also consider repurposing your content in different forms for different social media platforms. For example, you can condense a longer Facebook post to make content for X.

Maintaining consistency

A good practice includes creating a content plan and a content calendar. A schedule outlining when you’ll post content allows you to be consistent with how often you engage with customers and followers. You might find it effective to alternate between evergreen content, promotional content, and recurring messages. You can use scheduling software, like Sprout, Buffer, and Hootsuite, to achieve this. In addition to being consistent with your posting schedule, you’ll also want to make sure your branding is consistent across your posts and platforms. Using the same visuals (including your logo), keeping to a recognizable color scheme, and being consistent with your message means consumers will recognize your brand from your previous interactions, ads, and posts.

Engaging with your audience

Being on social media isn’t just about posting content. It’s an opportunity to engage with your audience. Consumers use social media to contact brands and discuss their experiences. Use message functions to answer queries. Engage in social listening by searching for your brand name and associated hashtags to see what consumers are saying. 

Interaction and engagement with followers are excellent ways of determining whether your content resonates with them and of building a community. People use social media to connect with each other, so this is an important aspect of running your channel. Invite your audience to comment, like, share, mention, and subscribe to your posts and feeds. One way of encouraging engagement is using polls for your followers to vote in, asking questions, or offering competitions that require a response. 

Customers want authenticity, and one way to give them this is by engaging through user-generated content (UGC). UGC is content that comes from users about your product and brand. These might be reviews, photos, or videos of customers using your products. They can be very effective at no cost to you.

Analyzing performance

As with any content strategy, you’ll need to track your metrics to analyze the performance of your social media marketing campaigns. Key metrics to track include engagement rate, social reach, and conversions to web pages and sales. 

You can find a range of tools available to help you track and analyze the effectiveness of your social media strategy, such as Google Analytics and insights pages on Facebook and Instagram. By analyzing your performance, you can quickly see what is and isn’t working and plan any changes you need to make to your strategy. 

Staying updated on trends

When considering social media best practices, keeping up with trends is important. Industries change and develop quickly. With platforms like X offering real-time updates, information is readily available. Use podcasts, blogs, and webinars to keep up with news and developments within your industry so your content stays fresh. It’s also important to keep up with social media trends to ensure your social media strategy is current and shareable. For maximum engagement, it’s a good idea to update your social media content according to the latest trends. Social media platforms are constantly changing as technology develops and brands compete with each other.

Develop effective social media best practices on Coursera

When implementing a social media marketing strategy, it’s essential to take note of social media best practices that ensure your content is fresh, relevant, and in line with your business goals. If you’d like to learn more about social media strategies, the Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate on Coursera presents how to set up, optimize, and analyze your social media campaigns for maximum effectiveness.