Social media best practices are tips, strategies, and guidelines that can help you succeed on social networking sites. These refer to different aspects, including posting content, customer service, and marketing.
Online trends, user interest, and even algorithms can rapidly change over time, and if you want to get ahead of the competition, it’s important to stay updated. Read on as we share over 17 social media best practices for 2024 to elevate your marketing strategy and help you build a stronger online presence.
5 Social Media Best Practices for Posting
These social media best practices for posting are designed to help you publish content that resonates with your audience for maximum reach and engagement.
#1. Maintain Branding
For businesses that are just starting out, it’s best to maintain consistency in branding across all their content. Brands sometimes create a different persona for each social media platform to appeal to that site’s main demographic. However, this strategy only works if you’re already a widely recognizable name.
By using the same color scheme or tone of voice in your posts, you can make your brand more recognizable to your audience. Over time, this will improve brand recall and help you create a more polished and professional appearance that sets you apart from competitors.
Branding also falls under social media best practices for individuals and creators. In an era where more than 62% of the world’s population is on social media, knowing how to cultivate your personal branding online will help you gain more opportunities and achieve success.
#2. Experiment With Different Types of Content
These social media best practices for diversifying your content will help keep your existing audience engaged and interested while connecting with new followers.
Knowing what content resonates with your target audience is key to growing your followers on social media. However, by limiting yourself to one content type or format, you risk alienating your most loyal subscribers.
That said, straying from what’s familiar is easier said than done, and if you’re struggling to find a new topic to post about, try some of these fresh Instagram post ideas or TikTok video inspirations.
Another excellent content idea is incorporating user-generated content into your posting strategy. UGC can improve your relatability and is highly effective at turning your followers into consumers.
In fact, a survey by Power Reviews found that there was an 8.5% increase in the conversion rates of users who encountered UGC.
#3. Choose the Best Time to Post on Social Media
By adapting your posting schedule to the best times to post on social media, you can maximize your efforts and increase the chances of your audience seeing and interacting with your content. After all, no one wants to spend hours making a great Instagram carousel only to have three views and one comment.
If you could only pick one strategy to follow from this list of social media best practices, then make sure it’s this one.
That said, you don’t have to follow these posting times to the dot, especially if your audience’s peak hours don’t coincide with the recommended times. You can experiment with different posting times and frequencies or utilize automation tools to find your optimal hours.
Tools like Publer, for instance, take the guesswork out of your posting schedule and automatically present your audience’s most active hours in the Best Times to Post graph.
#4. Use a Scheduling Tool like Publer
Utilizing a scheduling tool like Publer in your strategies is one of the essential social media best practices for 2024.
As we explained in the previous tip, posting during the best times will do wonders for your content’s reach and engagement. But what if your audience lives in a different time zone?
Instead of staying up at odd hours just to reach your target demographic, you can use our platform’s extensive scheduling options to publish your content during their peak hours. From content recycling to bulk scheduling, Publer has a ton of features to optimize your posting schedule.
Scheduling content in advance also allows you to maintain a strong online presence, even during busy times. Plus, it gives you more time to create high-quality content that performs better and encourages more interactions.
#5. Incorporate Hashtags and Keywords in Your Captions
The simplest and most effective way to ensure that your posts are visible on the platform is by using the right hashtags and keywords in your captions.
We can’t finish our list of social media best practices for posting without discussing social media SEO, and knowing how to leverage it in your strategy will enhance your content’s discoverability on the platform.
Social media algorithms use hashtags to categorize your content, so it’s important to use the most relevant ones to reach your target audience. Fortunately, there are several tools you can use, like Publer’s hashtag analysis, to determine the best hashtags for your posts.
Keywords, on the other hand, are important for context and search results. For instance, if you have “dog toys” in your Instagram caption, your post will likely show up when a user searches for that specific keyword.
4 Social Media Customer Service Best Practices
With these social media best practices for customer service, you’ll be able to foster a relationship with your audience and achieve success on social media.
#1. Focus on Responsiveness
Responsiveness is first on our list of customer service social media best practices for a good reason: it can make or break your brand’s image online. In a survey featured on Statista, 31% of respondents stated that they expect a business to respond to a query or complaint online within 24 hours or less.
Moreover, Comm100 found that more than 65% of consumers (age 25-34) believe that their customer experience improves significantly just by a brand’s quick response, regardless of the outcome of the interaction.
By responding to messages or emails in a timely manner, you show your audience that you value them, which can help you maintain a lasting relationship. With thousands of brands on social media vying for attention from the same target market, knowing how to keep your audience’s favor will help you succeed on social media.
#2. Leverage AI for Automation
Instead of manually responding to customer queries, look into how you can utilize AI in your customer service processes. Artificial intelligence is at the forefront of all current social media trends, and we’re not surprised. With its rapid output times and versatility, AI can be integrated into all aspects of social media, from content creation to customer service.
As we previously explained, faster response times should be one of your top social media best practices. But it’s nearly impossible to stay online for all hours of the day unless you have a team to take shifts, which would be quite costly to maintain.
A common method that brands use is creating templated responses to frequently asked questions so customers can quickly find a resolution even if the brand is unable to actually respond.
AI chatbots have also significantly developed in recent years and are now capable of holding conversations with customers, further improving the entire experience.
#3. Interact With Your Audience
As part of your social media best practices, make sure to interact with your followers and keep them engaged by liking or responding to comments. It can be easy to confuse responsiveness with interaction, but these are two completely different concepts. While a response is a reaction, interacting requires active participation.
If all you’re doing on social media is responding to complaints and messages, you won’t be able to connect with your audience on a deeper level. By taking the first steps to engage with your audience, you can make them feel valued and help build a loyal community around your brand.
For instance, if an Instagram comment generates lively conversation, consider pinning it to keep it at the top of the comment section and encourage even more interactions.
#4. Check Social Media Profiles Frequently
It’s important to check each of your social media profiles frequently in case you receive any comments or messages. However, when managing multiple social media accounts, most brands tend to focus only on the platforms that perform well.
By overlooking your other profiles, you may miss out on opportunities to connect with your audience and improve your branding on the platform. According to a survey by Telus International, 50% of respondents say they would recommend a brand with quick response times across multiple sites, “even if they were not initially happy with their product/service.”
Additionally, regularly checking your profiles will help you address any negative feedback or false information about your brand.
4 Social Media Marketing Best Practices
By considering the following social media best practices for marketing, you can improve your brand’s visibility and overall performance:
#1. Research Your Audience
Researching your audience is crucial to the success of your marketing efforts. After all, it’ll be hard to make content that’s relevant or interesting to users if you don’t have a thorough understanding of their interests and goals on social media.
Consider conducting some research, such as A/B testing, surveys, and other methods, to help you identify your main demographic and their online behavior. Then, use this data to tailor your content and branding to appeal to their interests.
If you use Publer to schedule your social media posts, you can easily access this information on our analytics tab. There, you’ll find performance metrics that can help you determine what content and topics are popular among your audience, as well as information about your top countries and main demographic.
#2. Create a Social Media Strategy
Creating a social media strategy to guide your marketing efforts is one of the key social media best practices for success.
An effective strategy should include your:
- Business goals
- Target audience
- Social media platforms
- Content plan
With a clear guideline for your objective, it will be easier to maintain consistency in your content across social media platforms, which can maximize your impact. Still, don’t forget to review and refine your strategy, especially if you aren’t seeing results or if there are some new social media trends you can capitalize on.
#3. Build a Strong Social Media Presence
Having a strong social media presence can improve brand awareness, drive traffic, and foster loyalty among your audience. Some ways to achieve this are by elevating your social media profiles with high-quality image content, optimizing bios and descriptions for SEO, and using relevant keywords and hashtags whenever possible.
Creating a profile on different social media sites can also help you establish a social media presence, as each platform caters to a different demographic. Plus, having multiple accounts means you can cross-post your content and save time on content creation.
#4. Understand Social Media Algorithms
Social media algorithms are a set of rules and guidelines that dictate how content is ranked and presented on different platforms. While the algorithm can vary per social media site, they generally observe the same metrics. For instance, the Facebook and TikTok algorithms may have different processes, but both consider content quality and audience activity in their ranking.
Since social media algorithms are constantly changing, it’s important to stay updated with the latest developments and align your content strategy accordingly. By leveraging your knowledge of the algorithm, you can create more targeted and effective content and maximize the results of your social media marketing strategy.
4 Social Media Best Practices for Businesses
These social media best practices for brands and businesses can help you gain a competitive edge on social media.
#1. Prioritize Authenticity
If you want to appeal to your target audience and build a genuine connection with your followers, it’s important to showcase your authenticity on social media. Social media users are tired of blatant advertising and overly polished social media posts; they prefer seeing people and content that they can actually relate to.
You can post user-generated or behind-the-scenes content to humanize your brand and give your followers a break from promotional content. For example, this is one of the social media best practices for nonprofits to follow, as staged photos during charity events can be off-putting.
#2. Perform Competitor Analysis
Performing competitor analysis can give you valuable insight into what strategies and keywords your competitors are using. You can use this data to identify gaps and opportunities in the market that your business can fulfill.
This is also quite easy to do with Publer’s competitor analysis tool. With one click, you can view detailed insights into your competitors’:
- Post performance
- Followers
- Engagement
- Reach
#3. Monitor Analytics and Performance
Aside from analyzing your competitors, it’s also important to monitor your own analytics and performance to understand what parts of your strategy are working and what needs improvement.
There are several tools you can use for this, including the built-in analytics feature on social media sites. However, to access more comprehensive data, you need a social media management tool like Publer.
Our analytics tool provides a complete overview of your social media performance. It also tracks metrics like post engagement, profile views, and link clicks to help you make informed decisions about your social media strategy.
#4. Choose Social Media Platforms Strategically
While creating accounts on different sites can help you establish a social media presence, this doesn’t mean that you have to make an account on every platform; it’s still important to be strategic.
Rather than dividing your attention across a bunch of websites without seeing any results, focus on the platforms that can help you achieve your goal. For instance, if your current objective is to reach more millennial audiences, then you need a TikTok or Instagram account. On the other hand, if you want to market to a more professional demographic, then LinkedIn is the place to be.
Key Takeaways
- The social media best practices for posting on social media involve maintaining your brand voice on all content, posting during the best times, and using specific tools, such as Publer, to streamline your posting schedule.
- Some customer service best practices to keep in mind are leveraging AI tools to improve response times, interacting with audiences, and monitoring all social media profiles.
- Researching your audience and creating a social media strategy are some of the best practices for social media marketing.
- By following the social media best practices for businesses, such as showcasing authenticity and analyzing performance and competitors, you can significantly boost your brand’s growth.
Ervin Kalemi
