Instagram

17Apr

A little bit of to-do lists…

Whether it’s a grocery list, a cleaning list or a list of books to read, nothing feels better than crossing an item off a list. Lists help create order and leave you with a feeling of satisfaction. Because we spend our days planning and running and never getting everything done, a little order is necessary.
To-do lists can even be used in the world of social media. Newspapers use editorial calendars. Fitness buffs use workout routines. Even fast food joints have a certain way of closing and opening their restaurants. Why should social media be any different? I don’t think it should, so I came up with a basic checklist that would work for Twitter.

Two times per day:

  • Tweet a blog post relevant to your field. Whether it’s your own blog or someone else’s, this is a must. Your followers follow you because they want to stay on top of trends and ideas. They want to read about topics related to your industry and they want you to provide this to them.
  • Tweet a news article related to your field. You’re most likely staying up to date with news affecting your industry. Share this kind of stuff. Not sure what to share? Search news sites for keywords and share any recent news items with your followers.

One time per day:

  • Tweet a tip based on your experience in your field. To your followers, you are the expert. Share what you’ve learned with them. Share what works and what doesn’t. Share photos and videos. People eat this stuff up.
  • Tweet something personal. People love being in the know, especially when it comes to people they admire. Your followers want to know more about you and it’s a good conversation starter.

Five times per week:

  • Talk to an industry expert via @reply. Use twitter to learn more or to meet people in your field. The more you talk to people, the more they will feel comfortable talking to you. Twitter should feel like an ongoing conversation.
  • Retweet items related to your industry. Like we said before, your followers want information. They want you to provide it. Retweeting items from other industry experts shows that you want to help your followers and it may help you get retweets in return.
This is just an example of a to do list. Every industry is different, as is everyone’s schedule. Make a list that works for you and apply it to any social media you like. Have questions? Let me know. It’s kinda what I do.
29Mar

A little bit of Instagram…

You might notice something different and maybe a little annoying in your Instagram feed. In a recent blog post, the social network announced it would begin using an algorithm to sort what you see. Up until now, the photo sharing network arranged everything in simple reverse chronological order. Now, the accounts that you spend the most time liking and commenting on will appear prominently. The feeds that you follow as a courtesy, and typically scroll past, will appear less frequently.

This may sound familiar. Facebook did something similar earlier this year. And while these small changes usually cause an uproar at the time (remember when the company announced that Timeline was happening? made it clear that a user’s face was fair game for ads? or OH MY GOODNESS, hashtags became a thing? ), we tend to adjust and fall back into our normal social media routines. Also, Twitter did this too, with a lot less backlash. 

200HWhat’s this mean for you as a consumer? Nothing really. Want to continue to see things you like? Be sure to interact with posts via likes and comments and apparently even lingering will do the trick. So, what’s with the arrow? Instagram, which by the way, is a unit of Facebook, is allowing users to turn on post notifications. If you don’t want to miss out on a single post from an account. You turn on notifications and BOOM. The arrow pictures are accounts pleading for users to do this. People are annoyed. I get it. But that didn’t stop me from doing it for my Bows and Branches account. Because why not? If one person turns them on, that’s good for me. In other words, calm down people, it will die down. (I have since taken it down. After reading more and more about it, I felt weird having it on there.)

Right now, the media is kinda all over the place with this, so who knows what will happen. But if it does, what should brands be focusing on rather than making arrow pictures? Like anything else we do online, we need to analyze and now is the time. Photographer Jasmine Star did an amazing blog post explaining how a small business can better understand what their audience enjoys.

So, what do you think? Honestly, we have no say so we might as well just deal. Me? I will be running numbers all day.

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