Social media is essential to your marketing strategy. Not only will it help gain exposure for your business and increase traffic to your website, but it will also generate conversation about your brand and services. In this episode of Three Things livestream, Lauren Forbes, Social Media + Marketing Manager at LISI, is joined by LISI’s Director of Client Strategy, Kristyn Brophy. They discuss what tips and tricks you can use to up your social media game now and in 2023.

Lauren:

Hi, everybody, and welcome to LISI’s Three Things on this lovely Friday. I’m Lauren Forbes, LISI’s Social Media and Marketing Manager. And I’m joined today by the Director of Client Strategy at LISI, Kristyn Brophy. Today our livestream, we’re going to be talking about some tips and tricks that you can use to up your social media game.

Hi, Kristyn.

Kristyn:

Hi, Lauren. How you doing today?

Lauren:

I’m good, how are you?

Kristyn:

I’m okay. I will first say to our audience, I am still getting over COVID. I had COVID last week and it’s a doozy. So just apologies in advance if I have to take a beat and start coughing a lot. That’s the symptom that is still just lingering and doesn’t wanna go away, so.

Lauren:

Yeah, it took you out, didn’t it?

Kristyn:

Oh my God, it’s exhausting. And I was starting to think that I was not going to get it because it’s the first time I’ve gotten it. And I thought it was just my flu shot symptoms ’cause I got my flu shot last week. So I chopped it up to that and then I all of a sudden couldn’t lift my head anymore. So here we are on the mend.

Lauren:

Yes, we are glad that you are feeling better.

Kristyn:

Thank you.

Lauren:

And that you’re here with me today to do Three Things.

Kristyn:

Exactly.

Lauren:

So, while we’re talking about that, let’s get started. Do you wanna take tip one for our audience?

Kristyn:

Sure. I mean, the first thing that is a quick success tip, although it’s not quick, is building a community on social media. And you build that community by being authentic and genuine. I just told you all I had COVID last week and I might start coughing my brains out today on this livestream. So that’s being genuine, that’s authentic, that’s just me. But anyway, creating a community means creating not just a brand for yourself and a presence for yourself, but also uplifting others through your platforms. And this could be on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, whatever your social media platform is of choice. 

Building that community and making sure that there is regular, thoughtful engagement is really going to help not only your brand, but help everybody else out there too. And when I say building a community with thoughtful engagement, I mean don’t just post things and don’t just be posting valuable content, but also curate content. So you don’t just have to be a creator, you can also be a curator too. And social media, it’s supposed to be social, right? It’s one of those platforms that are meant to start a dialogue. 

So social media is meant to start conversations, have a dialogue, and not to have you stand up on a soap box and shout into the void and just speak monologue after monologue at people. So kind of getting a consistent conversation going will also help.

Lauren:

Yeah, and even I think, commenting, making sure you at least take some time to read through others’ posts and comment. Don’t just… You can obviously like with one of those emojis, but definitely comment, start a conversation, get the ball rolling, ’cause then who knows, they might reciprocate and do that to you or do that for you when you post something.

Kristyn:

Exactly. I mean, a lot of people have heard these terms or the term engagement pod thrown out there, and I know that’s one thing that Robyn Addis, our COO, actually says a lot and recommends a lot forming this engagement pod, which is just a group of individuals with whom you are really close to and you can build connections with, just like sharing out your content or sharing their content and then inviting them to interact on your content and engage with that content, comment on it, and kind of build that conversation for you. 

And then by having that built-in engagement pod, so this group of people who you connect with regularly, then you’re able to build that community a little bit more and maybe third-party vendors or third parties who are out there, maybe not you, not the second party, the person who is going to be commenting on you and your content, but another third party might see that content through this engagement pod. Because it’s a whole circle of interaction. You have you, you have your connections, who are interacting with your content, and then you have all of their connections that can see their interactions. So it really helps spread your reach even more.

Lauren:

Yeah, absolutely. You gotta kinda get the ball rolling somewhere. And so the best place to start is to start with your friends and colleagues.

Kristyn:

Exactly. And another way to build that community is talk to your competitors on social media. Interact with, we call them frenemies in some circles, but interact with your competitors. There’s enough business for everybody out there, so there’s nothing wrong with interacting on content that is created by somebody else, especially if it’s something that you also believe in and you also think is really valuable information for your followers to be seeing. It will not only boost your visibility and your engagement, it’s also going to help that competitor out a little bit.

Another way to build community is to use collaborations whenever possible. And what I mean by a collaboration is maybe co-author an article or something that you can then push out on your social media channel, as well as somebody else’s social media channel, or tag other users and other brands on social whenever possible. If you took a quote from one of their Instagram posts or maybe you saw an Instagram post that they created and you think it’s really great, share that post to your story on Instagram and then tag the original creator. That way they can see that you are sharing their content, and then your followers will also see, like, this is really valuable, I’m going to share this with my community. And then maybe your followers will then go follow this person as well. Instagram and other social media platforms also have a collaboration tool built in where you can actually tag another user or another account on Instagram and invite them to be a collaborator. And if they accept that collaboration request, the post will appear in both feeds, yours and the collaborator’s feed. So that’s another great way to kind of keep that community engagement up.

Lauren:

Yeah, two for one.

Kristyn:

And last little trick I wanna dispel is to create or use branded or community hashtags. So a friend of mine is a photographer who gets all of her business, literally all of her new business comes through Instagram. And it’s because she has her own Instagram profile and she uses, on Instagram, you can use up to 30 hashtags per post, and you should be at minimum using 10 on every post that you’re posting if you want to extend your reach even more.

She uses community hashtags, such as #Bostonphotographer, #ladyphotographer, #photog, #Instagramphotographer, #photographer, #weddingphotographer, just all of these different photography-related hashtags for that community. Or #Bostonphotographer brands her as a photographer in Boston, #weddingphotographer brands her as a wedding photographer. And people who follow those hashtags are then able to see her content. 

Or she’s able to then see other people posting from those hashtags and can go comment on other photographer’s content and say, wow, this is a really great picture. I would love to post it on my platform and share your work. And then that actually builds that engagement a little bit where you’re able to interact with other people, doing the exact same thing as you on the same platforms. And ask each other questions, learn from each other.

Lauren:

Yep. No, that’s a great point. I like that. And then using all of those hashtags, obviously she can be seen multiple, multiple places. 30, God, so think of all the places and all the people that are following those 30-something hashtags.

Kristyn:

Oh my God, I know. I could do an entire program about hashtags. I really could. 

Lauren:

You should. That should be on the list to do.

Kristyn:

There we go. We’ve joked about this before. Maybe we actually need to just do it.

Lauren:

I think we do. Okay, well thank you for that tip. I’ll take the next one. The next tip that we have for you is recycle and repurpose. Now that we’re in the fourth quarter, we obviously hope you’ve done a ton or put out a ton of content the past three quarters. So we’re talking about blogs and webinars and livestreams and articles, whatever kind of content you’ve put out. We talk about evergreen content. So evergreen content means content that you continually used over a period of time that is relevant. It doesn’t ever really change. There’s no statistics in there, there’s really no numbers that would change over time. So evergreen content is something that does not change that you can repurpose. 

So we talk about that and we repurpose our own content. So let’s say we have a blog. We can turn that blog then into an infographic. Let’s say you’ve done a webinar. You can then take bits and pieces of that recorded webinar and create snippets or create quote graphics out of those. And then what you would do is then take those pieces of content and put them out through all the other different platforms, depending if they were specific for those things. So the idea of creating new formats for these new content ideas is that you are then expanding your reach and then you are also then reaching new audiences.

 So you really wanna make this work, or how you wanna make this work is when you are creating blogs or writing those articles, you kinda wanna keep in the back of your mind that you can then repurpose. So, what can you say that you can then pull out later that you can then repurpose for a different platform? Anything to add to that? 

Kristyn:

Yeah, I think that pretty much covers the repurposing. I also think that when you are taking a piece of evergreen content and pulling out different things to repurpose, you could share the same thing, even though it is repurposed. So share the same blog on your LinkedIn multiple times, but each time you’re sharing it, pull out a new snippet from the content. That way people who haven’t seen it yet might be seeing it for the first time, are enticed to click on it. But people who have seen it and maybe didn’t click on it before will get a new piece of information that then will drive them to click on it when maybe they didn’t click on it last time.

Lauren:

Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with repurposing stuff three months ago, even two months ago, because the likelihood of everybody seeing that last month or so is very slim. So by repurposing it, you’re not only introducing it to new people, but maybe you’re reminding somebody that may have seen it and didn’t stop the scroll, maybe they’d stop the scroll this time.

Kristyn:

Yeah, exactly. And this kind of leads into my next tip that I wanted to share where you diversify the different types of media in your post. So this is actually a really good segue going from repurposing, reusing, recycling into different things that you can be doing. So for example, repurposing a webinar. Maybe you wanna write a blog post, the key takeaways from your webinar, and just turn it into a written piece of content. Take that transcript from the webinar and put it up as a post, as a blog post on your website, so people can actually just be reading through the transcript. Maybe they just want to see things and read things at their leisure instead of listen to a webinar or sit and watch a webinar.

And using different types of media during those repurposed posts will actually attract different types of audiences. So maybe one month you use a static image, maybe the next month you use a handout, so a PDF document that you can upload to your LinkedIn post, which then people can download and keep as a little handout or printout that they can reference back to, or use a carousel post. Multiple images or multiple pieces of media put into one post that are easy to scroll through, and bonus points if you can make them look like a continuous scroll. That’s always a fun thing to do. And then you can use a video, or this is a big trend on Instagram right now, use an image as a reel. Basically just put some sound over it or put one of those little animated stickers on it and it turns it into a video post, even if it’s just a static image. 

There’s also a trending audio on Instagram right now. It’s like, oh, an Instagram image or an image post as a reel? Don’t mind if I do. And you can see that audio trending everywhere. Audio, that’s another type of media that you can reuse or use to diversify your media on your posts. On Instagram alone there are different types of media you can be doing. You can be doing a static image post, you can do a carousel post, you could do a reel, which is a video, you could do a story and link people back to different things on your website from your stories. So many different things that you can do for that one piece of content. 

And set up some templates for yourself for these diversified media types. That way, if you might have one static image with a pink background, you can just use the same template, but make the background green. So if your brand colors are pink and green, you can just kinda flip them around, even if it’s the same template, and then just swap out the text on them.

Lauren:

Yeah, no, I think they’re really great points. I also think swapping out different formats for different platforms is also really great for A.D.A. as well.

So you’ve got your people that whatever disability they might have, whether it’s hearing or sight. Diversifying your medium, you’re presenting that information in multiple different ways so that you’re also targeting multiple different people who might actually have some impairment. So I think that’s a really great thing to do as well.

Kristyn:

And even if it’s a video and you’re adding captions, a lot of platforms now default to sound off for any videos. So by adding captions, you’re not only catering to those in your audience who might have a hearing disability or something that allows ’em not to be able to listen, you’re tapping into this whole audience that might just scroll and watch a video with captions and not turn the sound on ever, even if they can hear.

Lauren:

I mean, I must admit, especially late at night when I’m kind of scrolling, I never usually put the sound on anyway. So I appreciate the captions sometimes.

Kristyn:

There’s this joke going around Reddit and it so targets me. But a lot of millennials, I guess, actually watch TV with captions on, even if it’s in English or their native language.

Lauren:

Really?

Kristyn:

They watch it with the captions on. And I am guilty, I am one of those people.

Lauren:

No, I can’t do that.

Kristyn:

Everything, I have to watch it with the captions.

Lauren:

Maybe I just showed my age, I don’t know.

Kristyn:

Okay, I’m showing my age. I’m a millennial that watches everything, even though I am a little hard of hearing in one ear, that’s beside the point. I still like having the captions. And captions are another great way to showcase inclusion because that way you are able to maybe pronounce or show how something is spelled that might be spelled very differently from how it is pronounced, such as a name, a company name, or a person’s name, or a town from which this person came from or whatever. There’s also a nice component to having those captions on there. 

Lauren:

No, that’s a good point. Yeah, really great point. I think that is our three tips. I think we’ve covered it all today. So thanks to everybody who’s tuned in and joined us. We hope you at least found one of these tips helpful and we’ll get to use those in the near future. Tune in next Friday for our Ask Me Anything livestream. Thanks, guys, hope you have a great weekend.

Kristyn:

Thank you. I’m lucky I only had one coughing fit, so.

Lauren:

Have a good one.

Kristyn:

Bye, everybody.