When you think about tidying up your social media pages, you might immediately think it’s going to take exorbitant amounts of time. Well, we’ve got some good news for you. Improving your social media presence can happen in minutes, not hours.
In fact, we’d bet you can perform some light housekeeping without a ton of time or effort. Making even a few small tweaks will instantly help you start making a bigger impact online.
Granted, if you invest a little more time on your social media presence — or pay an agency like Rallio to help — your results will be exponential. Rather than get overwhelmed with the idea of tearing yourself away from your business for a day, however, simply get started with the five power moves below.
Size Your Images Correctly
Every platform has its own image size requirements. For instance, on Facebook, you have a profile image, a cover photo and shared images — each with its own set of image guidelines. Your images will also look different depending on the placement and the device used to view them.
Knowing the ideal dimensions, file sizes and file types will help you optimize images for each platform. It’ll also help you avoid having any part of your image cut off or uploading low-resolution photos that don’t display properly.
Rallio also offers a simple image editing tool if you need to crop an image or touch it up before uploading it.
The link below has complete guidelines on image sizes for the different platforms. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with them, download the Rallio app to start posting! We offer both mobile and desktop technology to make it easy to post to your pages.
Read more: Your Bookmarkable Guide to Social Media Image Sizes in 2020
Brand Yourself Across Platforms
Nothing says “branded” for your social media presence like having the same profile images across social media platforms. Whether it’s your logo or a branded image, make sure you’re using the most updated version on all your pages.
That goes for franchises, too. Keeping a consistent social media image across all your locations builds brand awareness and makes you look more professional for your followers.
If possible, you should also keep your social media handles the same across platforms — like @rallio does on Facebook and Instagram. Even better, make sure it matches your website URL. This makes you easier to find and prevents anyone confusing you with a similar-sounding handle.
If someone already owns the handle you want, you can try reaching out directly to that account owner and see if they’ll let you take it over. To learn more, check out this article, “The Importance of Having Consistent Social Media Handles.”
For individual locations, keep a consistent pattern. For instance, if Rallio had individual franchisees (we don’t, but we work with a lot of them from other companies!), we might want them to use something like @ralliolosangeles or whatever the city name is.
Rallio makes this process easier for franchises because you can control everything from one dashboard. Need to update the cover photo for corporate, plus 400 franchisees? Do it in just a few clicks. Everything is centralized.
We also encourage brands to develop social media brand guidelines for themselves and their locations. Tell everyone what they can and cannot do on social media so everyone gets (and stays) on the same page.
Improve Your Profile
Your profile description and business information are some of the first things people see when they land on your page. Make sure it’s not only accurate, but also fully optimized to work hard for you as people are searching for businesses like yours.
Here are a few quick upgrades you can make:
- Update your directory listings. Your hours, contact information and location need to be consistent everywhere your business information appears online. Using a directory listings service like Rallio’s will help you get this done in a few clicks.
- Update your bio. Add keywords to make you more discoverable — a keyword planner like Google’s will help you choose the right ones. Work these keywords naturally into the text; don’t just stuff them in there, hoping something will stick.
- Fill in every field. Don’t skip over anything — it might take more effort, but you’ll appear more professional and “on the ball” if you provide helpful details about your business.
- Get creative with your bio, too. Your bio should represent who you are and what you’re all about in a fun, memorable way. Hootsuite’s guide gives you templates to get you started.
Highlight Important Content
Take advantage of opportunities to highlight content at the top of pages. On Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can “pin” important posts up at the top. This could be a special offer or updates about your business. Maybe it’s an invitation to join your subscriber list.
On Instagram, you can add content to Story Highlights after you post to your Stories. Create a fun Highlight Cover image for different sections (you can download an app or use Canva.com), and generate interest for people who visit your profile.
For example, a fitness trainer who posts workouts to their Stories could create a Story Highlight called Workouts. This way, your Stories — which disappear from feeds after 24 hours — will still live on and potentially attract new business.
You can also update your website URL on Instagram to point to different types of content. If you have a new blog post up, add a link in your bio and point to that content in your Stories or in a post.
Automate Where You Can
Do the work to automate upfront, and then you won’t have as much upkeep to do over time. Facebook autoresponses to direct messages are one example. In Messenger, you can set up answers to frequently asked questions.
Make sure you provide customer service contact information even if you have autoreponses set up. Give people a way to contact you if their question isn’t addressed properly by an FAQ.
Reviews are another opportunity for automation, but proceed with caution. Rallio lets you set up pre-approved messages you might want to send out if someone leaves a five-star review, for instance — maybe a simple “Thanks for the great review!”
However, you always want to be sure a real human is monitoring these conversations. If someone leaves a one-star review and includes details about their experience, it’s not enough to say “We’re sorry you had a bad experience.” You’ll want someone — either on your staff or from our Rallio Local division — to craft up a response that helps to ease tensions with the customer.
Start Improving Your Social Media Presence Today
Do a little light housekeeping on your social media pages, and you’ll find they start working harder for you. Especially when you add great content to those pages, your social media presence has the ability to go from “meh” to “wow!” within a short period of time.
