Social media strategy, planning, and publishing

You will focus on the first two core pillars of social media marketing: strategy, and planning and publishing. You’ll also learn how to accomplish business goals with a social media marketing campaign and how to identify a target audience while building a brand identity on social media. Then, you’ll learn the differences between paid, owned, earned, and organic social media marketing. Then, you’ll determine how to publish content at the right time and with the right frequency.

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Dedication to study

• Videos: 36 min

• Leitura: 3 h 10 min

• Teste: 1 Teste com avaliação

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Learning Objectives

• Define the goals of a social media campaign.
• Explain how to identify a target audience on social media.
• Determine how to choose social media platforms for a campaign.
• Discuss different types of social media content and the formats in which they can be presented.
• Understand how to build a brand identity on social media.
• Determine how to publish content at the right time and with the right frequency.
• Understand how to use social media management tools. Develop a social media calendar.

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Content

1. Determine your social media marketing strategy
2. Offer conent variety
3. Plan when to publish
4. Review: Social media strategy, planning, and publishing

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1. Determine your social media marketing strategy

Welcome to week 2

Video. Duration: 1 minute

In the vast social media landscape, characterized by a multitude of platforms, diverse content, and intense competition, crafting a well-defined strategy and meticulous planning are pivotal to channeling your efforts effectively towards your objectives. This section of the course delves into the initial two pillars of social media marketing: strategy development and the planning and publishing process.

First, we’ll guide you through the steps to establish a successful strategy for your social media campaign. This includes learning how to set clear goals, pinpoint your target audience, select suitable social media platforms, establish and enhance your brand identity on these platforms, and choose content types and formats that align with and strengthen your brand.

Subsequently, we’ll delve into the realm of planning and publishing your social media content. We’ll explore techniques to determine the optimal frequency and timing for your posts, engage in real-time marketing, create and manage a structured social media calendar, and harness the power of social media management tools.

Are you ready to take the next steps? Join me in the upcoming video as we journey through the exciting world of social media marketing.

Define the goals of your social media strategy

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

Before embarking on any social media marketing campaign, the foundational step is the development of a strategic plan. Think of your social media strategy as a guiding compass that clarifies your objectives, outlines the strategies to attain them, and sets benchmarks for determining success. The initial phase of creating your social media strategy involves the establishment of clear and SMART goals.

In this video, we will explore the significance of goal-setting and how to utilize the SMART method to define your objectives. Setting goals is integral to your campaign for various reasons. Firstly, it imparts accountability; by articulating the goals for your social media campaign, you make a commitment to achieve them. Moreover, goals play a pivotal role in budget allocation. Once you’ve defined your goals, you can outline the actions necessary to attain them and ascertain the associated costs. Goals also serve as a yardstick for measuring your success. Analyzing data related to your goals aids in gauging the effectiveness of your efforts and pinpointing areas for enhancement.

Common social media marketing goals encompass building brand awareness, managing brand reputation, sales and lead generation, increasing community engagement, boosting web traffic, and gaining customer and competitive insights. The selection of which goals to prioritize in your strategy hinges on your business’s overarching objectives. Aligning your social media goals with your company’s broader marketing goals is essential, as it substantiates the value of your work and garners support from stakeholders.

Once you have delineated your social media marketing strategy’s primary goal, the next step is to make these goals SMART. The SMART goal-setting method is a valuable tool for defining and assessing the success of your campaign’s objectives. SMART is an acronym, representing Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Let’s delve into the application of these criteria to your social media campaign goals.

• Specific: Being specific involves pinpointing precisely what you wish to achieve. A broad goal like “improve brand awareness” lacks specificity, making it challenging to determine success. Define the specifics, such as targeting an increase in followers, likes, shares, or mentions, on a particular platform.

• Measurable: A goal is measurable when you can objectively determine when it has been achieved. To make your goal measurable, establish clear metrics and ask questions like “how much,” “how many,” and “how will I know when it’s accomplished.” For instance, if your goal relates to brand awareness, a measurable metric could be increasing Instagram followers by 15% over the last quarter.

• Attainable: Ensure that your goal is realistic, considering any constraints such as time, budget, or available resources. While goals should challenge you, they must remain within the realm of attainability. Setting unrealistic goals can hinder progress.

• Relevant: Verify whether your goal aligns with your company’s broader marketing goals, priorities, and values. A relevant goal contributes to your business’s success. For instance, targeting younger demographics may necessitate increasing followers on platforms like Instagram.

• Time-bound: Impose a deadline on your goal to make it time-bound. A time-bound goal helps in planning your schedule and setting milestones. For example, a time-bound brand awareness goal could be to increase Instagram followers by 15% over the last quarter by the end of the current quarter.

In summary, you’ve learned that the initial phase in crafting your social media strategy is goal definition. We’ve discussed the significance of goal-setting in social media campaigns and explored the SMART method for making your campaign goals specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. In the upcoming segments, we’ll delve into the other integral components of a comprehensive social media strategy.

Identify your social media target audience

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Once you’ve established the goals for your campaign, the next critical step in shaping your social media strategy is to precisely define your target audience. In this video, we’ll delve into the process of effectively defining your social media target audience – the specific group of individuals you want your company to engage with on various social media platforms. Your target audience represents those individuals most inclined to be interested in the content, products, and services you create. They are the people whose challenges you aim to address. Understanding your target audience in detail is instrumental for steering your marketing efforts and making informed decisions about what, where, and when to share your content. Furthermore, targeting a specific audience aids in optimizing the allocation of both your financial resources and time.

Let’s now explore how to go about identifying your target audience. Your target audience typically shares some common characteristics, such as age and location. To determine who your social media target audience is, initiate the process by compiling information about your existing customers and followers. You can obtain some of this valuable data from various sources within your organization, including your research department, analysts, or fellow marketers. Consider demographic information about your current customers, encompassing details such as their age, generational category, or life stage. Are they teenagers, young adults, parents, or retirees? Geographical location is another key factor to take into account. Where do the majority of your customers reside? Understanding this data will assist you in pinpointing which geographic areas to target and when to schedule your social media posts and ads to maximize visibility. Language plays an essential role. In what languages should you communicate with your target audience? Recognize that some individuals may not speak your language or may use a different language at home compared to their dominant language in their geographical region.

Further delve into your audience’s interests. Explore what excites and engages them. Understand what matters to them and the issues they genuinely care about. Additionally, focus on identifying their needs. What challenges do your customers grapple with? What problems or concerns can your product or service alleviate?

With a solid understanding of these characteristics about your current customers, the next step is to assess how people engage with your brand on social media. Reflect upon questions such as: What sentiments do people express about your brand, products, and services? What aspects do they appreciate, and what aspects do they find less appealing? Understand why your audience chooses to follow you and what other topics are they discussing online? Grasping the kind of information people are actively seeking will help you in recognizing your target audience, identifying their needs, and devising strategies for effectively engaging with them on social media.

To aid in this process, consider using social listening tools to uncover conversations about your brand on social media. As previously mentioned, social listening involves monitoring your social media platforms for mentions and conversations concerning your brand. In the subsequent course, we’ll delve deeper into how to leverage social listening to gain profound insights into your target audience.

Now that you possess a clear understanding of who your target audience is and how they discuss your brand on social media, it’s time to explore which social media platforms they are actively using. To make the most substantial impact, it is crucial to target your audience where they are most engaged on social media. Posting regularly on a platform that is not frequented by your target audience is counterproductive. For instance, if your target audience primarily engages on LinkedIn, it would not be wise to invest significant effort into consistently posting on Pinterest.

Lastly, another valuable source of insights into your target audience is the observation of your competitors. Chances are, your target audience shares similarities with those of your competitors. Therefore, observing your competitors’ tactics can provide valuable insights. Consider questions such as: Whom are your competitors targeting? How are they effectively reaching out to their target audience? Identify what your competitors excel in and where they may have shortcomings. Analyze their posting frequency and the content formats they employ.

When you tailor your marketing efforts to a highly specific target audience, you can create content that genuinely resonates with them. This approach can foster loyalty and engagement. As you progress through this course, we will continue to explore the most effective strategies for reaching and engaging with your target audience.

Popular social media platforms

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

There are many kinds of social media platforms available, each capable of achieving different goals. In this reading, you will gain an understanding of each type of platform, and you will review examples of each type.

Common types of social media platforms

Certain social media platforms will be more appropriate and effective for your brand than others—and when you decide which to use, you need to be sure you choose the ones your target audiences use. Even if your company is on 20 different social media platforms, you will need to deliver content that users on each individual platform prefer—while staying true and authentic to your brand voice.

Each social media channel (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) has a certain number of monthly active users. Monthly active users refers to the number of unique customers who visit a platform over a month-long span. As social media shifts and changes over time, this number can change pretty dramatically. Monthly active users is a number you will want to be familiar with as a brand, because it may affect where you place your priorities and focus. Visit this link for more information on each social media platform’s monthly user numbers.

Social networking

Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are known as social networking sites because they allow users to interact with each other. Social networking is often used for both personal and professional reasons.

For instance, Facebook is a great tool for small businesses who want to keep in touch with and share updates with their customers. It’s a great place for companies to post new products or services, sales, hours of operation, and much more.

LinkedIn is an effective social networking site for people who want to manage their professional identity and network with others. Companies (big and small) also use LinkedIn to share company updates and new projects, and even engage with and/or hire other professionals.

Pro tip: The beauty of social networking platforms is that they are designed to encourage users to share various types of content—like visuals, text, and external links—rather than just one primary type. If you’re running a social networking page for your brand, keep your content fresh by sharing different types of content each day.

Microblogging/Blogging

Blogging refers to self-published writing that lives online. Microblogging is blogging, but on a smaller scale. Microblogging platforms allow users to distribute short-form content, quickly and frequently. Twitter and Reddit are good examples of these platforms. While blogging allows you to write lengthy, in-depth content, microblogging allows you to introduce brief concepts to users, and invites those users to interact with that content.

Because of the way it’s formatted, Twitter is a useful platform to optimize engagement and interaction with users. Users can use the search function to find tweets on anything they might want to discuss. Brands often use the “trending” section strategically, by tweeting relevant content based on what topics others are talking about.

Reddit is a platform that encourages web chatter and sharing of posts to create a sense of community. Within Reddit, there are “subreddits” which are niche online communities that cover a certain topic. There are subreddits for all kinds of topics, such as specific TV shows, hobbies, political or religious affiliations, industries, and much more.

Photo sharing

Photo sharing platforms like Instagram and Pinterest offer visually appealing “feeds” where you can engage with content posted by other users, or host your own. They offer users the ability to engage with their own community, but they also include features that allow users to engage with new users and content.

Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking platform. It’s a great place for businesses because it includes a feature that allows brands to post photos and link the product directly in the photo, so users can make purchases from the app. And, even if your brand isn’t creating shoppable content on Instagram, photos are a great way to keep users interested and engaged in your brand.

Pinterest is a useful platform for brands because unlike Instagram, brands can link directly to websites or external landing pages in the captions and replies. Users can save these posts, known as “boards.” So, if you work for an interior design company, you may create design mockups, post them to Pinterest, and link back to your website where users can book you for your services.

Pro tip: Photo sharing services offer users the ability to save photos posted by other accounts within the apps, so users can always reference content they enjoyed, for any number of reasons. Those analytics are available to the account managers, so make sure to check in and see what content your audience is saving so you can keep delivering tailored content to them.

Video sharing

Video sharing platforms allow users to upload and share videos, and live stream their own videos to the internet. Video sharing platforms are becoming increasingly popular within most industries because of the informational aspects and community-building capabilities of video content. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Instagram Live, and Facebook Live are great examples of video sharing platforms. Some platforms are better suited for long-form video while others are best used for short-form video, but both have huge advantages for businesses.

YouTube and Vimeo are great for long-form videos. For instance, a fitness instructor can lead a full exercise class on a platform like YouTube or Vimeo. A carpenter can show off their woodworking skills all while persuading customers to buy their work in a video format on these platforms. The possibilities with video are endless, but keep in mind that creating video—especially long-form—is one of the most time consuming and specialized types of content you can create. So it isn’t right for everyone.

If your brand doesn’t find long-form video necessary, maybe they want to prioritize short-form videos like on TikTok. TikTok is newer than most social media platforms, but it’s quickly becoming a huge asset for brand growth. Brand videos on TikTok can range from informational content like short “how-to” videos, to behind-the-scenes videos, to community-building videos like songs or dances, and so much more.

Instagram Live and Facebook Live differ from the other video sharing platforms because the content is live, rather than created and then uploaded. These platforms are often used for question-and-answer style videos, where users can get a feel for who you are as a brand.

A brand executing a live post on a video sharing platform.

Resources for more information

The 5 types of social media and pros & cons of each: This resource gives you even more tips and information about what to post on each site like for example you can download the Free Social Media Content Calendar Template that includes a guide everything you need to know about reaching your target audience, increasing website traffic, and driving sales with social media marketing campaigns.

Set up a professional social media profile

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

You may already have one or more social media accounts that you use to connect with family and friends. While these accounts probably show a lot about who you are personally, they may not demonstrate much about your professional interests, skills, and experience. Additionally, they likely contain personal content that you may not want to share with professional contacts. For this reason, it’s a good idea to create separate social media accounts for personal and professional use.

In this reading, we’ll discuss how to create a Twitter profile to present yourself professionally to recruiters, hiring managers, and other professional contacts. Then, in an upcoming activity, you’ll create your own Twitter profile for professional use.

Open an account

Start by opening a new account at Twitter.com You can sign up via your Google or Apple account, or you can start the sign-up process by providing your phone number or email address. You’ll be prompted through a series of steps to provide your full name, email address, phone number, birth date, and country. Then, you’ll enter verification codes sent to you via email and phone, and you’ll be prompted to create a unique password for your account.

Select a profile picture

Your profile picture provides people with their first impression of who you are. Select a professional, high-quality photo that clearly shows your face. Avoid suggestive or humorous photos or group photos. Be sure to choose a photo in which you are wearing professional or neutral attire, such as solid colors. Also, make sure your picture looks like how you look regularly so companies will recognize you when you interview.

Select a header

Next, select a header for your profile. The header is the banner image that appears behind your profile image. For a professional-looking header, choose either a solid color or an image representing who you are as a professional. Be sure that your header does not distract from your profile picture. You can upload your own image or download a free image in the public domain from a site like Wikimedia Commons.

Create a handle

A social media handle is like a username. On a platform like Twitter, a handle follows an “@” symbol. Your handle is a way for people to identify you and communicate with you.

When creating an account for professional purposes, your Twitter handle should ideally match your actual name. For example, if your name is Jane Smith, your handle name could be @JaneSmith. If that handle is not available, choose a different one that is both professional-sounding and memorable. Avoid using numbers in your handle; instead, use underscores (e.g., @Jane_Smith). You can also include the name of your business or industry in your handle.

Write a bio

Your bio on Twitter is your opportunity to introduce yourself and highlight your achievements, all in 280 or fewer characters. Write a bio that describes who you are and what you do. You can include schools you have attended, current and past jobs or internships, and even this certificate program. Since Twitter bios are searchable, including keywords in your bio can help your profile appear in search results. This can help recruiters find you.

Add your location

Including your location in your profile can also help people find you. If a recruiter is looking for someone to fill a digital marketing or e-commerce position in your area, having your location listed will increase the likelihood that your profile will appear in their searches.

Add links

Add a link to your website, if you have one. You can also add links to your blog, portfolio, or another social media account. This allows your followers to see more of your work and increases traffic on your other sites.

Explore, follow, and Tweet

Now that your profile is set up, you can begin using it. You can:

• Explore topics that interest you by clicking on the #Explore button. Twitter curates popular hashtags, subjects, and news updates for you, based on your activity.

• Choose topics to follow by looking through categories related to your professional interests, such as “Business and Finance” and “Careers.” Following topics that are related to your professional interests can help keep you informed about industry news and trends. You can also follow someone you admire or would like to get in touch with on Twitter and then follow the people that they follow. This can help you gain insight into their career fields.

• Tweet regularly and post content related to your career interests and goals. Content that works well on Twitter includes breaking news, industry news, GIFs and memes, visual content—such as infographics, images, and videos—and trending topics. Ensure all of your Tweets are professional, and avoid Tweeting about controversial topics like politics and religion. Don’t forget that social media is all about engagement—be sure to join in with conversations that are relevant!

Key takeaways

While this reading discusses the steps to create a profile for professional use on Twitter, many of these concepts can be used to create professional profiles on other social media platforms. You can add links to your professional social media accounts on your resume so that hiring managers can learn more about you, and these accounts can help recruiters find you. Professional social media accounts can also keep you informed about industry trends and news and help make contacts that could potentially lead to career opportunities.

Resources for more information

For tips on how to create professional social media profiles on other platforms, review these resources:

• How Do I Create a Good LinkedIn Profile?

• Tips For Creating a Professional Facebook Profile

• How to Optimize Your Instagram Profile for Business

Choose social media platforms for your campaign

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Choosing the Best Social Media Platforms for Your Campaign

Reaching your target audience entails crafting content that resonates and posting it at the ideal moment on the most suitable platforms. In this video, we will focus on this crucial aspect of your social media strategy – selecting the most appropriate social media platforms for your campaign.

This step is pivotal in shaping your social media strategy and holds significant importance for several reasons. The right choice of platforms not only aids in reaching your target audience effectively but also can significantly boost website traffic. Moreover, selecting platforms thoughtfully ensures that you invest your time and budget where it matters most, ultimately yielding superior results.

However, with a vast array of over 100 social media platforms worldwide and new ones emerging regularly, choosing the right one for your brand can be a daunting task. Let’s explore some strategies for selecting the most suitable social media platforms for your campaign:

1. Learn About the Platforms: Begin by gaining a deep understanding of the various social media platforms and how they are utilized. This knowledge is crucial in determining the platforms that align with your brand’s goals. For instance, Twitter emphasizes real-time information and has character limits on messages, making it ideal for communicating breaking news and brief content.

2. Consider Your Target Audience: Evaluate which social media platforms are most actively used by your target audience. The research conducted earlier to define your audience’s characteristics will be instrumental here. For instance, if your target audience comprises individuals under the age of 25, platforms like TikTok may be more suitable than Facebook.

3. Align with Your Campaign Goals: Your choice of platforms should align with the objectives of your social media campaigns, which, in turn, must align with your overall business goals. Different platforms offer distinct advantages, making them better suited for specific goals. For example, LinkedIn is a platform for professionals to network, making it ideal if your goal is to enhance your brand’s authority.

4. Consider Your Business Type and Identity: Reflect on your company’s nature, products, services, brand identity, and industry when selecting platforms. A visually-focused art distributor may thrive on Instagram, while a business producing educational videos might prefer a video-based platform like YouTube.

5. Analyze Competitor Strategies: Study the social media platforms used by your competitors and assess their performance. Where are they generating the most engagement, and where are they struggling? Successful competitor strategies may offer insights into your own platform selection.

6. Evaluate Available Resources: Recognize that a social media campaign is a significant commitment, demanding investments of time, money, and energy. Assess your available resources, including personnel, time, and budget for advertising, as different-sized companies may have varying resources at their disposal.

Choosing the right social media platforms for your campaign is essential, and the considerations discussed will guide you in making well-informed decisions. These decisions will align your campaign with your audience, goals, and resources, ultimately contributing to the success of your social media endeavors.

Build your brand identity on social media

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

In previous course content, you learned to create customer personas so you can create tailored content that your customers will relate to and engage with. Think back on that content as you learn about building brand identity with social media in this reading.

Reviewing past concepts

When it comes to branding your company on social media, there are many considerations to make. You have learned about several of these concepts already, but use this portion of the reading as a refresher on previous concepts you’ve covered, such as:

• Social media goals: remember that your goals should be SMART, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

• Customer personas: creating customer personas can give you an idea of who you’re trying to reach. Naming them and associating a photo with each persona is a common marketing practice.

• Prioritize your social platforms: choosing the right platforms helps optimize your brand reach and ensures you are using your resources in the right way.

Although these considerations don’t necessarily make up your brand identity, defining them is important for building and understanding your brand identity on social media.

What is a brand position statement?

Now that you have reflected on the tasks you have completed to get here, you are ready to learn more about brand position statements. A brand position statement outlines exactly what your company does and for whom, and what makes you different from your competitors. Internally, it helps guide your team as you navigate through the current trends within the marketing world. Externally, it tells customers about your brand and its goals.

Creating a brand position statement

To create a brand position statement, you will need to know:

• Your audience

• The challenges or needs of your customers

• Your company name

• Your products, services, or differentiator (the thing that sets you apart from other brands), and

• Your company’s mission statement

When you put all that information together, you get a template that looks like this:

• For [audience] who [customer challenge/need], [Company Name] provides [product and differentiator] because [brand promise or mission].

Scenario: EveryWay EveryWear

A company called EveryWay EveryWear manufactures professional clothing that is specifically designed to be comfortable. EveryWay EveryWear is made for people who work long hours giving presentations and pitches and making sales. Their customers want to maintain a level of professionalism in their dress, but they don’t want to be stuck in a suit all day.

Knowing all of this information, how might you structure their brand position statement? It might read like this:

• For [working professionals] who need a [stylish, professional, and functional wardrobe], [EveryWay EveryWear] provides [plush, comfortable clothes to wear in the workplace]—because [when you’re working long hours, comfort should come first].

Now that you know who your audience is, how to find them, what your goals are, and what your brand positioning statement is, you will want to create a look for your brand.

Designing brand identity

The next step in building a brand identity is ensuring your brand’s color palette, logos, and digital assets have some sense of consistency on your social pages, and are visually appealing to your audience. Another important part of your brand identity is your brand voice. A brand voice doesn’t refer to your physical voice, but rather the distinct personality a brand takes on in its communications. Curating your voice is an integral part of creating brand identity.

If your business already has brand guidelines, make sure your posts meet those guidelines. Use the colors, sizes, fonts, and logos detailed in the guidelines. If your company doesn’t have brand guidelines, it may be time to create some. After those decisions are made, follow these tips:

• Standardize your brand’s colors across social media pages

  • You want people to immediately know a specific image belongs to your brand. And, if someone visits your pages or feeds, you want there to be a sense of consistency across all the platforms you use. Achieve this by using the same color palettes and filters for every image.

• Team up with influencers that make sense for your brand’s identity

  • Influencer marketing can be a huge help in raising brand awareness, generating consideration, and converting sales. And, as your brand partners with influencers, you will gradually define an identity among their audiences—and your own—because when you collaborate with an influencer, you are acknowledging your brands align with each other.

• Create a “voice” for your brand

  • Social media users need to be able to identify a post based on your voice—the same way they could identify posts from your colors, logos, and graphic design elements. Make sure to create your voice and stick to it. It may be off-putting for your followers if you switch from a humorous to a moody brand voice on the same day. And, this voice doesn’t just appear in your captions—it should be recognizable in the text you use in graphics, video, photos, and any other visuals as well.

Create brand positioning statements

Practice Quiz. 4 questions. Grade: 100%

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2. Offer content variety

Types of content on social media

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

In the previous lesson, we initiated your journey into crafting a strategy for your social media marketing campaign. We delved into the intricacies of establishing campaign goals, deciphering your target audience, and selecting the most suitable platforms tailored to both your audience and objectives. This lesson takes us further into the realm of social media marketing, focusing on the vital aspects of planning and publishing your social media posts.

Let’s commence by exploring the wide array of content types you can disseminate across social media. The success of your social media marketing strategy hinges on creating content that not only captivates your audience but also fosters engagement. To accomplish this, your social media content plan should encompass an assortment of content types. When formulating a social media post, it is imperative to first consider which “content bucket” the post fits into. Content buckets are essentially categories used to classify your marketing content, serving specific goals or evoking particular emotions among your customers. These themes address various facets of your business and cater to your target audience. Common social media content buckets encompass entertainment, education, inspiration, conversation, and promotion.

Entertaining content is designed to resonate with individuals seeking amusement on the platform. It can help forge a connection between your audience and your brand. Entertaining social media content includes viral videos, humor, comics, contests, giveaways, and memes. Memes, in particular, are widely spread online, especially through social media, and they consist of amusing or intriguing items like captions, pictures, or videos.

Educational content plays a crucial role in establishing trust in your brand and positioning you as an industry authority. This type of content includes video tutorials, infographics, industry research, case studies, FAQs, tips, and how-to posts, all of which are popular forms of educational content.

Inspirational content often features real people utilizing your products or services. It adds authenticity to your brand and reinforces your brand’s message, values, and vision. Creating inspirational content involves building case studies, collecting testimonials and quotes, sharing interesting facts and trivia, and narrating personal stories.

Conversational content is geared towards encouraging your audience to engage with your brand. Initiating dialogues by proposing topics, asking questions, inviting participation in polls, prompting audience interaction, and seeking advice are effective ways to create conversational content.

Promotional content is crafted to highlight your products and services, with the aim of marketing them to current customers and attracting new followers. Elements like coupons, discounts, or free gifts for sign-ups can boost sales and encourage customers to make purchases they might not have considered otherwise.

In addition to selecting content buckets for your posts, it is crucial to decide on their format. Social media offers a plethora of content formats to choose from, including images, videos, written posts, stories, GIFs, links, polls, and live videos. Each format caters to different audience preferences, and the choice of format should align with the content bucket you’re utilizing. Videos, images, written posts, stories, and live videos are some of the most popular and effective formats in the social media landscape.

Videos are an excellent format for capturing your audience’s attention and are more easily consumed than extensive text. They are engaging and can drive traffic to your website while boosting sales. Images are the most frequently posted content type, offering an immediate impression of your brand. Written posts, including articles, blogs, and guides, provide valuable information and foster conversations with your customers. Stories, a collection of images and short videos, are ephemeral and well-suited for announcements and updates. Live videos enable real-time interactions with your audience and foster a sense of community.

Now that you’re well-versed in common content buckets and popular content formats on social media, you’re equipped to create effective content by aligning the format with the content bucket. In the upcoming segments, we’ll delve deeper into the intricacies of planning and publishing content on social media.

How do different content and formats reinforce a brand?

Discussion Prompt. Duration: 10 minutes

In my exploration of various social media platforms, I encountered three compelling examples of social media marketing content and formats. First, I found a visually engaging Instagram story from a fashion brand that showcased behind-the-scenes footage of their latest collection. This content was effective as it provided an exclusive glimpse into the brand’s creative process, fostering a sense of intimacy and authenticity among followers. Second, a Twitter thread from a tech company discussing industry trends and providing insightful commentary showcased their expertise. This format was effective in positioning the company as a thought leader, reinforcing their brand as knowledgeable and credible. Lastly, a short and humorous TikTok video from a food delivery service creatively highlighted their quick delivery process, resonating with the platform’s youthful audience and effectively reinforcing their brand as convenient and fun.

Anna - Use earned, owned, and paid media in social media marketing campaigns

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Hi, I’m Anna, a Senior Program Manager at Google. I manage social strategy for all our developer-facing accounts, totaling around 70 across platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs. Our goal is to make developers’ lives easier by keeping them updated with the latest tech changes, upgrades, and announcements. Earned media involves organic conversations and buzz around your brand, akin to public relations, where you influence journalists or bloggers to discuss your brand. This naturally fosters awareness among a new audience, especially when leveraging influencers.

At Google Developers Studio, we bring developers together at events, aiming to reach relevant developers and keep them informed about announcements. Owned media provides creative control over your channels and narratives. On the other hand, paid media allows you to reach a specific audience through targeted investments. A key advantage is using paid media to boost successful organic content.

While there are various social networks, focusing on one channel and combining earned, owned, and paid strategies can be more effective than a single tactic. If you’re new to social media marketing, don’t hesitate to get started. Your own channels reflect your brand, and potential employers often consider how you manage your social media presence when reviewing your resume. You don’t need extensive experience with big brands, but showcasing your skills through your own channels and prior social media work can make a strong impression.

How to acquire earned media

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

In this reading, you will learn how to acquire earned media. Recall from other course content that earned media is any positive digital exposure generated through personal or public recommendations.

Examples of earned media

Earned media is important to businesses because it relies on word-of-mouth promotion from friends, family, unpaid influencer posts, product reviews and so much more. If someone likes your product enough to post about it for free, not only are you not spending anything to get that positive publicity, but it also means your audience believes in you. It’s probably the most difficult marketing tactic to be successful at because you have no control over it. Some examples are:

• Customer testimonials and reviews

• Blog posts about your product

• Shares and reposts of your content

• Mentions of your product on social pages

Effective earned media strategy

Although you can’t necessarily control earned media, there are steps you can take to set yourself up for possible shares, reposts, mentions, positive reviews, and more. The most important thing when it comes to earned media is to create engaging content. The more engaging your content is, the more likely your audience is to share it. Next, nurture relationships you may have with other brands, media members, and journalists. If you do this successfully, your brand may get positive press as a result. Next, make sure you are providing more than satisfactory customer service to your customers. When your audience is enjoying their journey as followers, customers, users— or whatever their relationship may be to you—they are likely to share your brand with others. And finally, encourage others within your organization to share, share, share. The more people you have sharing your content, the more others will see it, and the more likely they are to share it.

Key takeaways

Earned media, which you now know is any positive digital exposure generated through personal or public recommendations, is the most difficult marketing tactic to be successful at because you have little control over it. If you want to try to acquire more earned media, create engaging content; nurture relationships with brands, media members, and journalists; provide satisfactory customer service; and encourage members of your organization or business to share your products.

Case study: How Name Glo acquires earned media

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

You may recall that earned media is any positive digital exposure generated through personal or public recommendations. In this case study, you’ll learn how a real company, New-York based Name Glo, acquires earned media through effective social media marketing.

Company background

Name Glo is a New York City-based neon light studio specializing in custom designs. It sells neon lights business-to-consumer and business-to-business. Name Glo’s mission is to light up people’s lives by creating personalized neon lights. Its customers purchase lights to celebrate milestones, decorate homes, create ambiance and branding in small businesses, and simply add some light to the world. Customers often request lights in the style of written text that spell out people’s names, business names, personal mantras, or catchy phrases.

Name Glo’s founders Lena Imamura and Sas Simon credit a portion of their company’s success to the sharing of their designs on the photo and video sharing platform, Instagram.

The challenge: Acquire earned media

As a small business, Name Glo doesn’t have the resources or time that a major corporation has to devote to digital marketing. Since Name Glo is a small business, Lena and Sas are in charge of managing Name Glo’s social media and making strategic marketing plans. Currently, all of their content and growth is organic, meaning their social media activity doesn’t require any paid promotions. This means its posts aren’t sponsored and don’t currently run as ads, making its success even more impressive. Name Glo’s entire strategy is to acquire earned media.

The approach: Create a post-worthy product

Name Glo includes their customers in every stage of creation—from ideating, to planning, to creating. This makes its customers feel like they received an experience rather than just a beautiful product. That is because Name Glo’s customers are involved with a piece from its inception, so they feel particularly invested.

Since Lena and Sas know they won’t be paying for social media marketing campaigns, their goal is to create a unique, high-quality product that customers will want to take photos of and post on social media. Since Name Glo’s customers have invested in a custom neon light piece, many want to show them off in the best way possible. This means the photos Name Glo’s customers share on their own social media accounts are often high quality. It also means Lena and Sas don’t have to stage photos with props and lighting, saving them time and money.

When a client posts a photo of the piece they purchased from Name Glo, Name Glo makes a point to repost them as an Instagram story, and most of the time, their Instagram feed as well.

The results

Name Glo’s organic social media strategy has resulted in high conversions and a steady increase in clients and sales over the few years they’ve been in business. Lena and Sas attribute this to their clients’ happiness level with the product.

Name Glo’s growth is also due to the types of clients it has. Several of its customers are interior designers—some with large followings of their own—which means they’ll commission pieces from Name Glo with the intent of making a space feel extra special. The designers then post images of the space, and Name Glo reaps the benefits of the earned media.

Sometimes, when a client loves a product Name Glo creates for them, those clients refer them to friends, spouses, and family members who open new businesses, and Name Glo’s products end up in those businesses as decor.

Collaboration success

Working with artists and brands has proven effective for Name Glo on a few occasions. First, Name Glo partnered with the online plant store, The Sill, to create a neon light based on the tropical Monstera plant for their holiday gift shop. This originally started as a giveaway, but blossomed into something much more. Every time someone received their plant and posted an image of it, Name Glo was tagged. As a result, Name Glo had a large increase in Instagram followers who wouldn’t have heard of their brand otherwise.

They executed another successful collaboration when they were invited to create a rainbow neon experience at Bergdorf Goodman’s flagship store in New York City. Because of the experience they helped create, Name Glo had an uptick in reposts of their content by 10 to 15%.

Conclusion

Name Glo is a prime example of how to cultivate growth and success without spending money on ads. The company has had major success through relying solely on acquiring earned media. Name Glo does this by producing a product that people feel involved in creating and that people truly love. The end result is so pleasing to clients that they want to post it and share with their friends and family.

All brands want to generate earned media because of its authenticity. Earned media is especially important to a brand that may have minimal money to spend on ads and marketing. An effective marketing strategy for every brand is to try to create a lasting impression on customers through frequent communication, collaboration, and a memorable final product. As a result, a brand’s social media following is likely to grow, and this may result in higher conversions.

Test your knowledge: Social media marketing strategies

Practice Quiz. 6 questions. Grade: 100%

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3. Plan when to publish

Determine the frequency and timing of posts

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

We have discussed creating a social media strategy, including defining your target audience, choosing the best platforms for your campaign, and the different types of social media content you can post.

Now we’ll talk more about how to effectively plan and publish your posts. In this video, you’ll learn how to manage the timing and frequency of your social media posts.

Having a consistent presence on social media allows your brand to be seen and discovered by potential customers. However, more is not always better when it comes to publishing on social media. You want to stay in the audience’s mind, but you also don’t want to post so frequently that you overwhelm their feeds and potentially drive them away.

How frequently you post on social media depends on a number of factors; In particular, each platform itself and how it works. For example, Twitter gives its users the option of viewing their posts in a chronological feed. When users customize their feeds in this way, the stream displays the latest published content. For platforms with chronological feeds, posting multiple times a day gives you the opportunity to reach your target audience in different time zones and at various points throughout their day. If Twitter is a relevant platform for your brand, you might aim to post at least several times a day.

You’ll need to plan the frequency of your posts differently on platforms that are primarily algorithm-based. Social media algorithms are a way of sorting posts in a user’s feed based on relevancy rather than the order in which they published. That means these platforms prioritize which content a user sees in their feed first by the likelihood that they’ll actually want to see it. For algorithm-based platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s better to publish quality content less frequently, as too many posts can result in a drop in engagement. On these platforms, your posting cadence will vary depending on your brand. The frequency that works best for your brand might be once a day, but for others it could be several times a week.

These are just general guidelines. Finding the best frequency to post will require some trial and error. How often you post should also be informed by testing and analyzing your results and the resources available to you. We will discuss testing and analytics in depth later on in this course.

In addition to considering the frequency of your posts, you need to think about their timing. The optimal time to post on a given platform will vary. Posting first thing in the morning is generally very effective because this is when people are catching up on their social media feeds. It’s also good to post around lunchtime because people tend to have a gap in their schedules then. Just after working hours, is also an effective time to post because people like to find out what they’ve missed throughout the day.

In order to find the best times to post for your brand specifically, you need to consider a number of factors. First of all, you want to find out when your target audience is active online. By researching when your followers are on a particular platform and then posting at those times, you maximize the chances that your content will reach them. Make sure you consider your target audience’s time zone and schedule your posts accordingly. You can also decide when to post by analyzing your best-performing posts from the past. Review the times of day and the days of the week you posted successful content to determine if you can identify any patterns.

You can gather data about your top-performing posts and about your audience’s activity online using analytics tools, which we’ll discuss in a later course. When determining when to publish content, you should also consider seasons and holidays. For example, consumers tend to be more likely to book a vacation in January. If you’re a travel brand, this is a good time to post appealing images of travel destinations. You should also consider current events when planning your posts. If a national disaster or conflict occurs, for instance, you should be prepared to unschedule posts in order to be sensitive to these events or add a post to show your support.

Let’s recap what we’ve discussed about the frequency and timing of your posts on social media. To determine the best time to post on social media, you should consider things like when your target audience is active online, patterns in your best-performing posts, and seasons, holidays, and current events. When and how often to post on social media differs for every business and every platform, but by following the best practices we have discussed here and analyzing data, you can optimize your posting schedule to achieve results. Later, we’ll discuss social media calendars and how they can help you organize, schedule, and publish all of your posts.

Real-time marketing

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

The news cycle in the age of social media is fast-paced and ever-changing. A story might break on Twitter and—in what feels like an instant—the discussion might suddenly end. In this reading, you’ll learn how to market in real time so that your content remains fresh and interesting to your audience as the news cycle on social media changes.

The importance of real-time marketing

Real-time marketing (RTM) is marketing that is happening in real time. RTM is often implemented on social media because of how quickly commentary and engagement takes place there. If millions of users are talking about a big story on social media, brands will want to be a part of the conversation in an attempt to boost engagement. Capitalizing on these moments can have a huge payoff for brands that do it right. Real-time marketing is an opportunity for companies to connect with their audiences and position their brand wherever they want in certain discussions. So, the question is, what does it take for a brand to effectively market in real time?

Effective RTM

Effective RTM can be incredibly powerful for your brand. To successfully market in real time, your content must be:

• Relevant: What is happening right now? What is most of the discussion about on social media at this very moment?

• Clever: How can you package your content in a way that shows your brand’s personality and wit?

• Fresh: If the trending topic happened Wednesday and you weren’t able to turn around a piece of content until Thursday, is it still fresh enough to get engagement?

• On-target: Is this trending topic or current event of interest to your audience?

• Attention-grabbing: What will it take for people to see your post, stop scrolling, and engage with it immediately?

RTM strategies

Now that you have an idea of what makes a real-time post engaging, follow these tactics to capitalize on trends and successfully market in real time:

• Always be listening. A company’s social media manager will typically be the first to know about trends that are relevant to any real-time marketing plans, so keeping communication open with the social team is important. If you are a member of the social team, aim to be present on social media as often as possible so you can catch any trending topics that might be worth capitalizing on.

• Use your brand’s resources. If you have a design team and a copyediting team, enlist their help to create quick, clever posts of the highest quality possible.

• Leverage social media influencers. If your brand partners with social media influencers, ask them to help amplify your RTM assets by reposting them or interacting with them.

• Know where the conversation is happening. There will be moments that happen on one social media platform that may not be a topic of discussion on others. Make sure you engage in the conversation where people are talking about it.

• Promote some of your posts. Since algorithms determine when and to whom your organic posts are shown on different platforms, your RTM post may not reach a large enough audience in time to still be relevant using organic means alone. This could be a good opportunity to promote the post to generate more engagement and potential new followers. A promoted post is a social media post that you pay the platform to make more visible.

Key takeaways

Social media users can become desensitized to current events and trending topics quickly because of the fast-paced nature of the news cycle. The best way to stay relevant and boost engagement is to capitalize on those moments through real-time marketing. Aim to create content that your audience will find relevant, clever, fresh, on-target, and attention-grabbing.

Use a social media calendar

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

As we’ve discussed, figuring out when and how often to post content is a key component of your social media strategy. Once you’ve determined the timing, and the frequency you’d like to publish content on different platforms, a social media calendar can help you keep all of your posts organized and scheduled.

A social media calendar is a calendar of all your social media posts. This tool can help you manage and organize your social media publishing schedule, in a variety of ways. A social media calendar enables you to schedule your posts in advance. This saves you time and enables you to maintain a consistent posting schedule. Also, by planning your posts ahead of time, you can make sure that there are no upcoming coverage gaps.

A social media calendar allows you to organize all of the content for your Posts in one centralized location. It can also help you make sure all of your content assets such as images, videos, or links are attached to the correct posts. You can also share your social media calendar with other stakeholders, in order to have them review or approve your posts before they go live. And scheduling your posts ahead of time, allows you to plan around cultural and national events, and holidays that are important to your customers. For example, you might plan post to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage month, International Women’s day, or Veterans day depending on what feels relevant to your organization. This type of calendar can help you avoid major mistakes in your posts.

Reviewing your posts in your social media calendar ahead of time allows you to copy edit, check for spelling errors and typos, fact check, and make sure that all of your links and images are correct.

You can build your calendar in a spreadsheet or even a table pasted in the document. You can start with a template, you can even use social media management software to build your calendar. Each entry in a social media calendar usually includes some combination of these elements: the date and time the post will be going live; the topic of the post; the platform where the posts will be published; the posts written copy; links to any assets, such as photos or videos; and any related documents or information.

Once you’ve chosen a format template or tool, you can start developing your calendar. You can use these steps to guide you, first identify the social media platforms you want to post on. Previously we discussed some strategies for how to do this. Knowing where your audience spend most of their time online, can help you decide on platforms and create platform specific content strategies.

Then review your current social media platforms and content, assess things like what type of posts get the most engagement. When your audience is most active online, and what tactics have been most successful in the past. This will help you identify areas from improvement and new opportunities. Next decide what data you want your social media content calendar to track. Social media calendars can be used to keep track of information like platforms, dates, times, text, visual assets and links to published posts. You can later use the data you collect to analyze trends, track what works and doesn’t work and refine your social media campaigns.

Then make a content library for all your assets such as images, videos and audio files. You can organize your assets in a file storage system like Google drive or Dropbox and add links to them in a spreadsheet or document. Then you can easily share these links with other team members and insert them into your calendar. You’ll also want to establish a workflow and review process, think about when and how often you’d like to post on each platform. Who will review and approve content and how you will develop new content, now you’re ready to start crafting and scheduling your posts.

Getting organized and proactively planning your work can greatly improve the result of your campaigns. And social media calendars are an excellent tool to help you achieve these goals. You’ll get to practice creating your own social media calendar a bit later.

Create a social media calendar

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

If you are taking this course in order, you may have watched the video on creating a social media calendar. The video covers each step you should take when building and using a social media calendar. To recap, these steps are:

• Identify social media platforms

• Review, or audit, current platforms and content

• Decide which data you want to track

• Make a content library, containing all postable materials

• Establish a workflow and review process

• Craft and schedule posts

In this reading, you will review some benefits of using Google Sheets as a social media calendar. Then, keeping what you have already learned in mind, you will learn how to add content to a calendar using templates.

Using Google Sheets as a social media calendar

Google Sheets is completely customizable and free to use. You can create a calendar that fits your company’s needs, especially if they don’t have a huge budget.

Below is an example of a calendar for a dog food company called Best for Dogs.

This social media calendar includes detailed information, so that anyone on the Best for Dogs team can easily understand what should be posted that day. Information such as the concept, social copy (or caption), channel, topic, posting date, location of postable assets, and other important information help to make the posting process as smooth as possible.

To best understand Google Sheets, you should practice using its features. You can access this template by clicking here.

Note: To create a new month, right click the Blank Template tab and click ‘duplicate.’ Then, right click again, click ‘rename’ and type in the month name. You are now ready to fill out a new month!

AND

Pro tip: Hootsuite offers its users an internal social planner that integrates directly with Google Sheets. You can find more information below.

Resources for more information

For more help building out social media calendars, visit the following links:

• Hootsuite: How to create a social media calendar: Tips and templates, or download directly from here.

• Asana

  6 step guide to creating and managing a social media content calendar

Activity: Create a social media calendar

Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

Activity: Create a social media calendar

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

• Link to Activity Exemplar: Create a social media calendar

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed social media calendar. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

• The Platform column contains three social media platforms for both days.

• The Time column includes optimal times for scheduled posts on each of the platforms on both days.

• The Topic column includes topics related to the holidays, events, and promotions occurring in the given time period.

• The Content Type column contains descriptions of the format of each scheduled post.

• The Copy column contains bullet points describing the copy for two of the posts.

• The Assets column contains a description of the visual assets for two of the posts.

Social media management tools

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Social media management tools can help digital marketers perform all kinds of tasks. Whether your goal is to create content, find content to share, schedule posts, or collect analytics, there are social media management tools to handle almost anything. In this reading, you’ll learn about some tools that can help you meet your goals.

Design tools for content creation

To run social media campaigns, you’ll need to create content. These tools can help you design posts and other content:

• Canva offers free and paid memberships and allows you to create your own original content or use templates.

• Adobe Creative Cloud Express is a free tool that offers similar capabilities when it comes to building content from templates.

Tools for content curation

Curating content refers to the process of selecting, collecting, and organizing pieces of content. To keep your social media feeds fresh, you’ll want to source content from other outlets, in addition to creating and posting your own. These tools can help you find, collect, and organize content:

• Feedly compiles news tailored to your industry and allows you to immediately repost it to all your brand’s social accounts. If you don’t want to repost right away, you can save the content for later.

• Pocket delivers content relevant to your interests and allows you to save it so you can repost it later. With Pocket, you can access your saved list from mobile, desktop, and tablet.

Tools for content scheduling

Digital marketers always have a long list of to-dos. Scheduling content can help you get everything done because it means you don’t have to stop what you’re doing to create and publish a post. This isn’t to say you will just schedule posts and forget about them completely, but it does allow you to create posts whenever you want and make sure they get posted at an optimal time for your audience. These tools can help you schedule and publish content:

• Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to create social media calendars. It integrates directly with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms so you can schedule posts in advance.

• Buffer also allows you to draft and schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Tools for analytics

When it comes to learning about campaign performance, you will need a social media analytics tool. If you learn what worked and what didn’t work, you can adjust your strategy for future campaigns. These tools can help you collect and analyze data from your campaigns:

• Hootsuite Analytics is an analytics tool featuring a dashboard that fully integrates with all your social media platforms.

• Brandwatch allows you to easily track brand reputation, trends, influencers, and competition.

• Mentionlytics focuses on tracking mentions and keywords across all your social media platforms.

Key takeaways

Social media management tools can help streamline your processes so that you save time, stay organized, and push out quality content at times when you know your audience will be most likely to engage with it. Digital marketers rely on these tools to have the most effective campaigns possible.

Resources for more information

For more information about social media management tools, visit the following links:

• The 20 top social media management tools for businesses of all sizes

• How to choose the best social media marketing tool for your business

Compose and publish posts using Hootsuite

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

Social media management tools allow you to perform all kinds of tasks to help you organize, schedule, and track your content. Hootsuite, for example, is an all-in-one social media management tool that enables you to plan and create content, schedule posts, listen to and engage with customers, advertise, and collect analytics. A tool like Hootsuite essentially enables you to address all of the pillars of social media marketing in one place.

In this reading, we’ll focus on how to use Hootsuite to compose and publish posts. Then, in an upcoming activity, you’ll have the opportunity to practice using Hootsuite to create and schedule Tweets by linking a Hootsuite account to the Twitter account you created previously.

Open a Hootsuite account

To start using Hootsuite for social media management, open a Free student account at hootsuite. You’ll be asked to enter your full name and email address and create a password. Then, click Back to Hootsuite

Link your social media accounts to Hootsuite

To publish posts to social media using Hootsuite, you’ll first need to link your social media accounts to your Hootsuite account. Add your social media accounts to Hootsuite by clicking the My Profile icon in the bottom left and then clicking Manage accounts and teams.

The directions for how to add social media accounts to Hootsuite vary depending on whether the type of account (business or private) you are adding, and on the social media platform type. Hootsuite supports linking to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Select accounts to publish to

One of Hootsuite’s key features is the ability to schedule and publish posts to multiple social media platforms at once. Instead of signing in to each platform separately, you can use Hootsuite to manage activity for all of your connected accounts in one place, which can save you time.

To create a new post, select the Create icon from the sidebar, then select Post.

Then select the account(s) you want to publish to from the Publish to list.

Compose your post

After you’ve selected social media accounts to publish to, you can compose your post.

In the Content area, enter the text of your post. You can also include:

• Mentions: usernames of businesses, brands, or people preceded by the “@” symbol (for example, @Google)

• Links

• Emojis: small digital images or icons used to express ideas or emotions

• Hashtags: words or phrases preceded by the pound symbol that indicate that a piece of content relates to a specific topic or category (for example, #DigitalMarketing)

Hootsuite copies the content of your post into tabs for each social media platform you’ve selected. In each tab, you can customize the content so it’s optimized for your unique audiences on each platform. For example, you can make the post shorter on Twitter, remove the hashtags on Facebook, or remove the link on Instagram.

Add media

When the body of your post is complete, you can add media—such as images, videos, and GIFs—to your post. Adding media to your social media posts increases the likelihood that your audience will engage with them.

Hootsuite offers a media library of royalty-free images and GIFs that you can add to your post. Or, you can upload your own.

• To search for media in the tool, click Browse your media. Then select Free images or Free GIFs from the menu, type a keyword into the search bar, and select the media you want to include in your post.

• To upload your own media from your device, drag content to the media area or click Or select files to upload.

You can edit images in your posts using Hootsuite’s built-in photo editor. For example, you can add effects or crop images to fit a specific platform. When you upload a video, Hootsuite automatically formats it for each platform you’ve chosen to post to.

To make images and videos more accessible, you can add alt text—a brief, written description of an image with the primary purpose of assisting individuals who are visually impaired—or subtitles.

Preview and publish your post

After you create your post, you can select a social media platform tab and preview how your post will look on that platform.

To center the sixth image, you can use the same method as before. Here’s the modified code for centering the image horizontally:

This code will center the image both horizontally and within its containing <div> element.

When you’re satisfied with your post, you can choose from the following publishing options:

• Post now: Publish the post to your chosen platforms right away.

• Schedule for later: Select a time and date to publish the post. Scheduling your posts in advance helps you keep your social media presence active and publish your posts at high-engagement times. If you have a paid plan, Hootsuite provides recommended times to post based on your historical data.

• Save draft: Save a draft of your post if you’re not ready to publish or schedule it yet. Your customized content will be saved for each social media platform tab.

View your scheduled posts

You can view and manage your social media posts in one place by clicking the Planner icon, which is Hootsuite’s built-in social media calendar. Review your scheduled posts and plan new content based on what you already have scheduled. You can create new posts in empty time slots, and reschedule, edit, or delete scheduled posts.

Key takeaways

Hootsuite is a powerful social media management tool that you can use to save time and organize your social media marketing content. With Hootsuite, you can manage all of your social accounts, across different social media platforms, in one place. Hootsuite allows you to schedule and publish posts to multiple social media platforms at once and to customize your content for each platform. And by scheduling posts in advance and then viewing them in Hootsuite’s social media calendar, you can more effectively plan and maintain a consistent social media presence.

Resources for more information

• Hootsuite Platform Training: Series of instructional videos showing how to use the various features of the Hootsuite platform

• Add a social account to Hootsuite: Article providing detailed instructions on how to link accounts from different social media platforms to Hootsuite

• Create and publish posts: Article describing how to create and publish posts on Hootsuite

• The Best Time to Post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn: Article discussing the best times to post on different social media platforms

Test your knowledge: Plan and publish content

Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

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4. Review: Social media strategy, planning, and publishing

Wrap-up

Video. Duration: 1 minute

We’ve covered the first two pillars of social media marketing, strategy and planning and publishing. Well done. You’ve learned how to build your social media marketing strategy. This includes defining goals for your social media campaigns and making them SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. You also learned some strategy for identifying your target audience such as compiling information about your current customers, researching how people engage with your brand and where they spend their time on social media, and observing the competition.

Next, we discussed how to choose platforms for your campaign by considering how each platform works, as well as your target audience, goals, company, competitors, and available resources. We also explored how to use various types of social media content. You learned about different content buckets such as entertaining, educational, and inspirational content. You learn about some of the different formats for social media posts like images, written posts, and videos.

Then we moved on how to plan and publish posts on social media. We discussed how to plan frequency of your posts and how to determine the best time to publish, such as when your target audience is active online or in response to current events.

Finally, we went through how to use a social media calendar and other social media management tools to help you organize, schedule, and track your content. Once you’ve set up your social media strategy and have planned and published some posts, you’re ready to get insights into how your audience is responding to your content and start communicating with them. That brings us to the next section where I’ll introduce you to the next pillar of social media marketing, listening and engagement. Meet you there.

Glossary terms from module 2

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Terms and definitions from Course 3, Module 2

• Open Link to access Glossary module 2

module 2 challenge

Due, Nov 5, 11:59 PM WET. Quiz. 10 questions. Grade: 85.50%

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END! - Week 2 - Course 3