Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Dakota Berg

Feel like your brands social media game has fallen off a bit lately? I definitely do at times. My pages still need a lot of work. But that’s alright. Life gets in the way, businesses get in the way, friends, family, holidays, food, your cat laying on your keyboard when you’re trying to work, whatever. Well, the new year is upon us and there’s no better time to make a change than now. Let’s dig in to 6 strategies you can start implementing today to step up your feed for 2018. These strategies are mostly geared towards brands, but many can certainly be applied to personal branding and personal social media feeds as well.

1) Content Consistency

Keep in mind that visitors to your social media pages will be seeing all of your posts at a glance as opposed to your posts individually showing up on their news feed. Because of this, your posts should be able to live alone or alongside the rest of your content. Your brand should maintain a similar “look and feel” for all imagery, videos, quotes and anything else you can dream up. Consider consistencies like lighting, colors, typography and the tone of voice used, but make sure everything feels fresh. Mix it up every once in a while.

2) Repost Relevant Content

Don’t burn yourself out trying to create all of the content yourself. Many successful pages repost relevant content from other pages. If you’re a travel brand and you follow some other good pages that post quality content in your niche, reach out to them for a partnership so you can cross promote. This is one of the best ways to freshen up your feed and get new followers.

If you do this, make sure you credit the owner and don’t try to pass it off as your own. The idea is to supplement your own content with content that will accent your brand, enhance your own content and provide value to your audience.

3) Find An Influencer

When somebody is scrolling through your feed and sees somebody they recognize, it instantly makes them more connected, especially if they are a fan of that person. Influencer marketing has quickly grown into one of the most effective forms of direct marketing via social media. Social media influencers will generally partner with brands they like to promote their products or services to their audience. The influencers are generally given some kind of compensation, but it varies depending on the brand and the influencer.

4) Delete Old Posts

Doesn’t deleting old posts seem counterproductive? You spent hours pushing every pixel into the right place or setting up the lighting and environment for that beautiful photo. But have you ever had one of those “memories” pop up on your Facebook feed and you wonder to yourself “OMG! Why did I post that?” Yeah, me too. Your feed should evolve and adapt over time, and that means that older posts may clash with your current posts. Keep your feed looking fresh by deleting posts that no longer fit your social media strategy or brand image. However, don’t overdo it. People understand that brands evolve over time and they like to see growth. If they can only see your last 3-5 posts, you may just appear like an inactive account that nobody wants to follow.

5) Provide Value

Why do you think people are following you anyway? You may have a cool product, be funny or attractive, have a cool job or a cute pet or a number of other things, but at the end of the day, you need to provide something of value to your audience. If your company is researching trends in an industry, maybe you can publish an infographic visualizing some of the data you found or maybe you showcase quotes from thought leaders in your industry. Or you could write helpful blog posts and pass on a nugget or two that you’ve learned. There are a myriad of ways to provide value to other people, go find yours.

6) Have A Personality

This is more along the lines of branding, but your brand and social media page should have a personality, a voice. It should feel as though there is just one person running the page, unless your thing is to highlight your individual contributors… that’s another story. For most people, the language used should stay consistent over time. If you’re texting one of your friends and they type out “laugh out loud” when they generally type “lol”, you would inherently pick up on that and find that to be weird.

Who are you and what have you done with my friend?

These are some basic strategies you can begin using today to level up your social media feed to the next level. I imagine there may be a follow up post to this one in the future with some more advanced techniques and potentially some downloadable templates you can customize for your brand. If or when I do, I’ll link to it here. Thanks for reading this and any of my other posts from 2017, can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2018. Upward & onward!

About the author

Dakota is an entrepreneur & designer from the Pacific Northwest. Owner of DKTB Design, Partner at Black Hatchet & Lead Designer at SportsCastr.

6 Strategies to Step Up Your Social Media Feed for 2018 was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

6 Strategies to Step Up Your Social Media Feed for 2018

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