Back to Basics: Multiplatform Social Media Management

Social Media is a great free tool to build brand awareness, however if we don’t understand the basics behind them, they can feel like our worst nightmares. Let us help you get some weight off your shoulders through the following guide, so you can use social media to its full potential.

Key Takeaways: 

• Goal setting is key prior to planning content.

• When we understand our audience, we understand how to approach content creation.

• Knowing how algorithms work, we can figure out how to stay relevant in our audience’s feeds

• Knowing how often to post allows us to plan ahead and make sure we’re on top of our content creation game.

First Steps: Research & Set Goals

How are we going to have great performing content if we don’t know who we’re making our content for? When we understand our target audience, we can create a clear vision of who we’re trying to reach and how we can reach them. Try answering the following: 

• What Demographics & Identities are our target audience?

• What are their interests?

• What are their values?

• What do they know about your brand?

Create your goals using the SMART goal-setting approach. After understanding your goals, you can then determine which platforms best align with those goals. Let’s explore, shall we?

Understanding Algorithms

Social Media platforms will use AI in order to rank content to fit users, meaning they provide content based on your likelihood to complete certain actions (liking, reposting, etc.) and rate those from high to low. We will be going over three platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and understanding their algorithms.

1. Instagram

   
   

This app has a couple of different algorithms through the same platform, because they have the normal feed, reels, explore page, and stories. 

• Feed: Highest to lowest ranking

  • Likelihood of viewing the post longer than 10 seconds

  • Likelihood of viewing the author’s page

  • Likelihood of you viewing the comments or creating a comment

  • If you might reshare/repost

  • Whether you might scroll past 

• Reels: Highest to lowest ranking

  • If you might comment on the video

  • Likelihood of following the creator of a Reel

  • If you may share the Reel outside of Instagram

  • If you might use the Reel’s audio in your own content

• Explore Page: Highest to lowest ranking

  • Likelihood of following the creator of the post

  • If you might view the post for at least 5 secs.

  • Likelihood of you viewing around 95%+ of a video

• Stories: Highest to lowest ranking

  • Likelihood of you clicking on the story

  • Whether the story creator may be a friend/relative

  • Likelihood of you going from the story to the creator’s page

  • If you will exit the story

2. Tiktok: Highest to lowest ranking

• Your Interactions: Things you like, share, comment, follow, favorite, watch longest

• Video Info: Hashtags, captions, sounds, effects, length

• User Info: Language, Country, your device type, categories you picked for content preference, time zone

3. LinkedIn: Highest to lowest ranking

• How relevant the post is to you (your job, prior engagement, interests, etc.)

• Posts with lots of likes, comments, shares within your network

• Posts from people you engage with the most (or message)

• Content you spend a while engaging with

• Types (format) of posts you engage with the most

• How recent the post was made

I know, lots of information! Once you understand a little bit about the algorithm, when creating content you can apply your goals to it. For example, if you want high engagement on your reels or tiktok videos, you might want to encourage people to like and comment because it will boost your video onto the “For-You” pages of people in their networks. 

Now, how do we plan out our content?

For highest engagement with your page, each social media platform uses a certain amount of times per week/day for users to build brand awareness. Continuing with our previous examples:

1. Instagram:

   1. Stories: Twice a day.

   2. Posts: 3-5 posts per week.

   3. Reels: 1-2 per day.

2. TikTok:

   1. 3-5 videos per week.

3. LinkedIn:

   1. 3-5 posts per week.

Once we understand what we want to accomplish with using social media and understanding its algorithms and recommended posting frequency, you can now look into what types of content to make and create a content calendar. Ready to take your social media to the next level? Follow Creativa for more tips and guides for more social media strategy insights!