Do you think you should be active on social media but don’t know where to start? In this article, Sreenivasan explains how to professionally set up one of the most popular social platforms today.
Do you think you should be active on social media but don’t know where to start? What kind of content should be posted and how often? Which is more effective, “like” or “retweet”? Whether you want to expand your network, start a new company, or find gig opportunities, this article explains in detail how to set up a professional setting for today’s most popular social platform, which is the practical knowledge you must know.
Why do we use social media?
From businesses to governments, social media today has become the key to communication and work cooperation among people in all walks of life. To reflect how important social media is today, starting in September last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stated that it would collect social information from all people who want to immigrate to the United States as part of the review process.
Social media can help you achieve at least four things:
- Discover new ideas and current trends
- Connect more deeply with existing and new audiences
- Bring more attention and traffic to your current work
- Build, hone and strengthen your personal brand
As social media grows in popularity—statistics estimate that at least 81% of Americans have a social media account—there are more examples of how people can get into trouble because of their social habits.
In fact, it is absolutely impossible to completely separate the way people use social media from the professionalism of their work. Anything you say online will be used against you in the future.
There are many ways you can protect your privacy and control who sees your specific content; however, this vigilance is entirely your responsibility.
Therefore, the more seriously you take your social media activity, the better. Social media is always changing over time, so we have to constantly track the evolution of the platform and continue to improve marketing methods to optimize the efficiency of using the tools (for example, Twitter and Snapchat have recently released some platform major changes, which we will mention below)
If you are not obtaining information from the community for yourself, pay attention to the terms of use published on the platform. More and more businesses are developing and revising their usage policies.
LinkedIn has 500 million users and is the most typical professional social networking site. Many people do not make full use of it. When I teach students a class on social networking sites, I ask them, “What’s on LinkedIn?” Almost all of them raise their hands, but when I ask, “Who knows what they’re doing on LinkedIn right now? ” Almost everyone put their hands down.
Most people take LinkedIn’s job search feature for granted and don’t panic to start using it until it’s time to change jobs, but by that stage it’s usually too late. You’d better learn how to use it before you need to use it, because LinkedIn’s biggest function is not to find a job, but as a career management tool.
Expand your network and influence
LinkedIn can search and connect to experts in your industry, thus providing a variety of channels for you to expand your network. The key is to discover, approach, and connect with the friends you “already know,” “want to know,” and “should know.” You should also post regularly on LinkedIn to showcase your expertise.
Learn to use LinkedIn’s official suggestions feature to give recommendations to people you’ve worked with in the past, and to receive their recommendations for you. The only people you can recommend are people whose work you are willing to endorse. I’ve heard of many employers taking LinkedIn recommendations as seriously as they take traditional recommendations.
Therefore, if someone comes to ask you to recommend something, as long as you hesitate even a little bit, you have to quickly find a gentle way to refuse to endorse them.
Build and expand your business
LinkedIn offers a variety of ways for you to deploy your company, depending on your business. Recruiting from newbies to sales leaders . Just like on other platforms, you can also see if advertising on LinkedIn is cost-effective for you.
On LinkedIn, you can create a company page and build an online community around it, allowing consumers and potential consumers to follow you further. If you want to learn more about the services LinkedIn provides for enterprises, please refer to the official guidelines .
Looking for a job
For individual users, job hunting is the most important service on LinkedIn. You can use the LinkedIn website to track specific people, companies or job openings.
When you’re looking for a new job, numbers are pretty important. So take the time to build your profile, but make sure you do it in a smart way: send out a bunch of invitations to complete strangers in the hope of meeting them or their company. Having connection channels is not a good strategy. Instead, try to find legitimate connections to people, such as your alma mater, before sending an invitation with a complete description.
In mind
LinkedIn’s free version account already has many features, but if you want to try out the paid version, LinkedIn offers a variety of pricing plans, with the lowest price starting at $29.99 per month. The price is hefty, but if you happen to be looking for a job, the features brought by the paid version are also worth it–it allows you to send emails to someone before you even know them, and connect with recruiters in new ways. Tie it up.
The character limit for a tweet may change over time, but Twitter remains designed to connect quickly and share ideas
Twitter, which has 328 million users, recently changed one of its most famous and infamous features: its 140-character post limit. By doubling the word limit to 280 words , users will have more space to express their thoughts and ideas.
But we still need to keep this simplicity in mind. You don’t need to write 280 words in every tweet; strategically using photos and videos together will continue to help you stand out in your posts. .
Twitter allows for more conversations than any other platform. However, be aware of the difference between retweets, replies, and direct messages.
Retweeting allows you to share other people’s tweets and choose whether to leave a comment; selecting “quote tweet” means you have added a comment to someone’s post. If you just click “Retweet” ” means you just want to send it to your followers without leaving any comments.
While you’re at it, it’s a good idea to always use the quote-tweeting feature so people can understand why you’re sharing this information.
A reply is a public display of what you want to say in response to someone’s tweet, and allows everyone to continue reading the conversation below. Direct messages allow you to private message someone; if you want to private message someone, he must follow you, or he has adjusted the settings to allow anyone to private message him. Group conversations are a way to facilitate communication in large groups.
Twitter lets you have private accounts (they call them “protected accounts”), but if you’re using Twitter for business, it’s recommended to use a public account.
Expand your network and influence
The real-time nature of Twitter means you can:
- Stay up to date on the latest developments in your areas of interest
- Share, comment and participate in global conversations to add new friends
Twitter’s live video tool allows you to share videos and interact with those posted videos. Twitter Polls allows you to provide users with at least 4 options to vote and see the results in real time.
You often see companies create product-specific polls on there to gather feedback from consumers and potential consumers.
Build and expand your business
Tweets that are interesting, relevant, and frequently updated can help increase your company’s visibility, especially if you use a professional approach to hashtagging . When some popular tags are related to your current business, remember to participate in the event.
Use tags from time to time when publishing products or services. The key is: simple, clear, and special. This will ensure that your label will not be stolen and used by competitors with similar properties.
Twitter’s advertising platform allows you to choose to target specific audiences and reach them, letting the audience know about the company’s business, and at the same time have the opportunity to become a follower of the company’s Twitter and interact with you. You can refer to Twitter’s official guide to see how it can assist your company’s online business.
On Twitter, everyone is obsessed with getting more followers. But when it comes to job hunting, who you focus on matters more. By building influencer lists based on industries and topics (these lists can be public or private) , users will be able to see the content they’re interested in and the ideas they’re thinking about, and how to connect with them. When someone in your industry asks a question or says they need help, you can demonstrate your expertise by participating in the conversation. There were many Twitter conversations that later developed into face-to-face meetings.
In mind
Maintaining correct grammar, pinyin, and pronunciation rules can help your tweets stand out from the crowd and leave a good impression on the crowd. Also helpful: a clear introduction that explains who you are, what you do now, and a profile picture.
With the largest number of users, Facebook is a global focus and is loved by businesses and your relatives.
With 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook is the most influential of all social networking sites. It can easily connect with your family, friends, and friends of friends. It maintains most of the social networks in a person’s life, and is also very suitable for companies to expand their business.
We have all seen the impact Facebook had on the 2016 Russian presidential election , with the platform playing a key role in spreading both correct and incorrect information.
Facebook Live, a tool that allows you to instantly broadcast to the world, is also very useful. For journalists, companies like to use Live to share some behind-the-scenes content, including employee Q&A or other activities.
Like most social platforms, Facebook provides privacy settings for user content, so users can choose what content can be seen by whom. Privacy settings include what can be made public for everyone to see, or only friends, or only customized groups (colleagues, family, high school classmates, etc.) For users who don’t care about these settings, Sometimes their Facebook friends see things they shouldn’t.
Expand your network and influence
Facebook can be used to:
- Connect with influential people in your field
- Share articles or content to show the public your interests
- Help others create an impression of you
Of course, your posts may not be visible to everyone. Facebook algorithms determine which content is shown to specific groups, along with your personal privacy settings and factors including the relevance of the post to the audience and whether Facebook will comment or comment on this group of people. The prediction of sharing this post will affect the number of people who can see this post at a certain point in time.
Build and expand your business
In addition to your bio, creating a business fan page can help people who are interested in your company’s business or products. You can share updates, progress reports, or ideas with users who visit your site regularly.
Use Facebook Live Strategically Helps you analyze the audience behind the screen. And Facebook’s stable advertising tools can help you target potential customer groups under specific conditions.
study How Facebook ads work For today’s businesses, it is very important to formulate a digital marketing strategy, which depends on how to promote your content to a specific audience. The more merchants do, the more they find that promoting posts is filled with pressure to reach a large number of people.
For businesses that want to succeed on Facebook, it’s about connecting the community to the content they publish. Just like in the offline world, if a company has a product or service that people like and want to connect with, they will want to be connected on Facebook. If you want to know how to use business services on Facebook, please refer to official guide .
Looking for a job
Use Facebook to follow companies that interest you to get information about relevant job openings. Bringing your personal social network to work can help you identify clients or talent opportunities. Also, your friends and family may be able to offer some help if they know what you’re looking for.
In mind
Facebook offers a program called commemorative account agent unusual features. It allows users to designate a person who has the authority to take over their personal account after their death, without the user having to provide account access to the designated person while they are still alive. No matter what your job is or what your goals in life are, you should follow the guidelines provided by Facebook and apply for a memorial proxy until the very last moment.
It’s not just about uploading beautiful photos, Instagram is becoming more and more commercial
Instagram, built around photos, videos and captions, now has 800 million users and is increasingly becoming a part of the business world.
If you and your work are visually oriented to engaging consumers, Instagram should be part of your business toolkit. Any consumer-facing company, including travel, beauty, and more, can do well on Instagram, but we’ve also seen established B2B companies like General Electric and IBM use Instagram.
Instagram-loving users will revel in the great visuals, so you can use your content to build an audience here.
Patience and constant experimentation are key, as it can be difficult to find the right way to do business directly. For example, take the time to look at popular hashtags to see if your posts on Instagram are appropriate; if you want more people to discover you. It’s also a good idea to tag other related accounts with the @ symbol. allowableDigitalTrends Find more advice in the guide.
Build and expand your business
Features like Instagram Stories, which allow you to use multiple photos and videos to tell a story, are one way to use Instagram in your business marketing strategy. These limited-time updates last for 24 hours, which means time constraints should be a deciding factor that must be taken into consideration. In most cases, businesses are better off creating photos that can be used on multiple platforms and will have a longer shelf life.
In addition, explore Instagram’s advertising options and see how they fit into your business’s overall strategy. Instagram is all about stimulating existing and potential customers to become interested in your product or service, so be sure to do your research. To understand its business potential, check out its official guide .
Looking for a job
Like so many other platforms, job hunting on Instagram is about exploring and interacting with relevant companies or people. You can use Instagram to learn about a specific company and its culture, as well as understand what influences decision-makers across different sectors.
In mind
A lot of what you see on Instagram is mass-produced by businesses hiring professionals, and it’s unlikely you can replicate its scale and success if you’re an independent developer and operator.
Snapchat
The popular social network is undergoing major changes
Thanks to 250 million users and Shanda’s IPO in March 2017, Snapchat once became the most popular social networking site. However, the craze for Snapchat has cooled down recently due to Instagram copying away some key features of Snapchat, and because Snapchat itself redesigned the layout once and received a lot of negative reviews from users.
Snapchat provides businesses with a variety of tools and marketing techniques based on the establishment of paid advertising. Snapchat also promotes a range of ways businesses can use the platform and provides official business guides .
The above are just general marketing guidelines for these five common social platforms. (There are many other social platforms that target niche markets.) Everyone’s experience and success with social media in their career is different. It’s more of an art than a science. . Changing algorithms and technologies (as well as the ideas of other users) make running social media a constant state of flux.
Keep this in mind: Just using various platforms and trying to think of a bunch of things to post every day is exhausting. Sometimes you can also choose to dive in and analyze what other people or companies are doing on social media, which can also allow you to re-evaluate what types of posts are best for you and your business.
The best way to ensure success is to think carefully before posting and continually evaluate the relevance of your content to your overall online activity. It is unlikely that you will have time to devote to all the social networking sites mentioned above, so you should only choose the platforms that make the most sense for you or your business to post on your topic area and plan your posting timeline. .
One last important point I want to share with my readers. I’ll always remember the advice they gave users when I was introduced to Facebook in the early days: “What’s common sense in real life also applies to social media.” life is common sense on social media.)
