By Debbie Gregory.

In Part 1 of this article, we went over properly naming your profiles, adding consistent logos or images, utilizing reviews to build trust in your brand and proper image sizes for the most popular platforms. Below you will find more tips to help make your social platforms more professional and engaging for your followers.

6.) Untag yourself from inappropriate posts

Tags are an excellent way to connect with more fans, but only if they are used in a correct manner.  When tagged in an inappropriate photo or post, you can actually harm your company or brand’s overall image and this can also result in you losing followers, which is the last thing you want.

Almost all social networks allow you to:

• See where you’ve been tagged
• See who can see your tagged photos and posts
• Approve photos you’ve been tagged in before they appear
• Remove tags from unwanted photos and posts
• Restrict who can tag you in photos

Make sure to keep a close eye on any photo you are tagged in and remove any that do not align with your brand or image. Never leave yourself tagged in inappropriate or spam posts.

7.) Cross promote your social media accounts

Almost every social media platform allows you to add one or more websites to your profile. The first one is usually your company’s main website. but don’t forget to add links to your other social media pages here as well. LinkedIn, YouTUBE, Facebook, and Pinterest all allow you to add multiple links to your profile.

8.) Use the right keywords so that you are discoverable in a search

Adding the right keywords to your profile allows you to be discovered much easier for your business, industry, or niche. Keyword tools such as SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner can help you identify the right words and terms to use. Don’t simply stuff the keywords into your profile in places they do not belong. Make sure that you are using the keywords naturally in the text of your profile and posts.

9.) Make sure to fill out your profiles

Make sure that every field, for every profile, is fully filled in with engaging content. This makes your page appear more professional. You need to clearly and succinctly explain what you do, what your followers can expect from you and a clear call-to-action for what your followers should do next.

10.) Test all of your links

When you post a link to your profile or page, it is important that you make sure that the link works as intended. There is nothing more frustrating for a follower than to click on a broken link. Typos do happen but make sure they are not interfering with your customer’s experience with you.

Social media is part of almost everyone’s daily life. Make sure that your profiles are as professional and recognizable as possible. Utilizing all these quick tips will help you craft the clean, professional, and optimized social media profiles that you need to succeed.  VAMBOA hopes that this information is helpful to your small veteran or military owned business.

By Debbie Gregory.

VAMBOA wants to provide our veteran and military business owners some ideas and suggestions to help increase your social media standing.  This will enable your veteran or military owned business to gain new followers and showcase your expertise.

1.) Pin your best content to the top of your profile

A pinned post stays at the top of your profile and is the very first things that people see when they click on you or search for you. You can pin posts to the top of your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages. This is an excellent place to add and showcase your very best work. Add items including a video, a special offer, a new landing page, a new product or an important message.

2.) Use a consistent page or handle name across all platforms

Using the same handle makes it easy for your followers, fans and customers to find you across all of the social networks that you utilize. You need to make it as easy as possible to find, follow, and mention you. Make your handle as short and simple as possible and as close to your company or brand name as you can.

3.) Use a consistent profile image across all platforms

Your company or brand logo should be consistent across all of your social media accounts. Using different photos or logos for each platform dilutes your visual identity and recognition.

4.) Build trust through reviews

Ask for reviews, endorsements, and recommendations from friends, family as well as past and current clients. People trust peer recommendations more than paid ads. The more reviews you can obtain, the better.  Keep in mind that some platform reviews carry more weight than others. For example, a recommendation on LinkedIn will go much further for you than a Yelp review.

When you do ask for recommendations or reviews, try to make it as easy as possible for the person to write the review. Send them a quick, personalized, message with a few questions that are relevant to your industry that you would like the person to include in your recommendation. Questions such as:

• What successes did we experience together?
• What’s one thing you get with me that you can’t get anywhere else?
• What talents, abilities and characteristics describe me?
• What am I’m good at?
• Are there any other distinguishing features you think I possess?
• What can be counted on?
• What was my impact on you?
• What was my impact on the company?
• How did I change what you do?
• What are five words that describe me?

A great way to gain reviews and recommendations is by giving them first!  Most people are happy to reciprocate a positive review.

5.) Use proper image sizes for each platform

Optimizing your profile images based on the platform you are using makes your brand look more professional.

Below are some of the most common you may need:

Facebook

• Facebook profile picture: 170 X 170 pixels
• Facebook cover photo: 828 X 465 pixels

Twitter

• Twitter profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels
• Twitter header image: 1,500 X 500 pixels

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels
• LinkedIn custom background: 1584 X 396 pixels
• LinkedIn cover photo: 974 X 330 pixels
• LinkedIn banner image: 646 X 220 pixels

Instagram

• Instagram profile picture: 110 X 110 pixels

Pinterest

• Pinterest profile picture: 150 X 150 pixels

YouTUBE

• YouTUBE profile picture: 800 X 800 pixels
• YouTUBE cover photo: 2,560 X 1,440 pixels

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article. It will cover topic including tagging, cross promoting, keywords, and more.

By Debbie Gregory.

Our last two articles went over what a hashtag is, why you need to use them when posting on social media, as well as how to find the best hashtags to use for your posts. In this article, we will go over tips on how to use those hashtags on each of the popular social platforms.

TWITTER

We will begin with Twitter because this platform was the first to utilize hashtags. Hashtags on Twitter are best sprinkled into the post itself to emphasize or highlight important parts of your Tweet.

Keep in mind:

• Utilize relevant hashtags
• Twitter recommends no more than 2 hashtags per post
• More is not better, too many hashtags looks spammy

INSTAGRAM

You want to put hashtags after your photo caption, in your stories, in your profile as well as in the comments section when you are engaging your followers.

Keep in mind:

• Instagram recommends no more than 10 hashtags per post (the largest number of all the social media platforms)
• Instead of posting your hashtags with your images caption, consider adding them as the first comment on the post so that your followers can focus on your caption without being distracted or put off

PINTEREST

You want to add hashtags when writing a pin description or a description for a pin you are re-pinning.

Keep in mind:

• Pinterest recommends no more than 5 hashtags per post
• Pinterest is more like a search engine than a social platform so make sure that your hashtags are searchable, specific, and contain relevant keywords

FACEBOOK

You can include hashtags in any part of your written post or in the comments.

Keep in mind:

• Facebook recommends no more than 2 hashtags per post
• You can search for a hashtag using Facebook’s search bar
• You can click on any hashtag to see the posts using that same hashtag

YOUTUBE

You want to add relevant hashtags to your video title or video description.

Keep in mind:

• YOUTUBE recommends no more than 3 hashtags per post
• Adding too many hashtags to your video can get your content flagged as spam
• Hashtags are made into clickable links in titles and descriptions on YOUTUBE so followers can find other content with the same hashtags
• If you don’t include hashtags in the title of your video, the first three hashtags in the description will show above your videos title

LinkedIn

You want to add hashtags in your LinkedIn updates and any articles you post to the platform.

Keep in mind:

• LinkedIn recommends no more than 2 hashtags per post
• LinkedIn is more of a professional platform than other popular social media sites You need to be sure that you keep your use of hashtags professional too
• You can follow hashtags on LinkedIn to see recent posts that include hashtags
• Hashtags can be searched using the platform’s search bar
• Trending hashtags will show in the “news and views” section on your home page

Regardless of which social platforms you use, make sure that the hashtags you add to your posts are timely, relevant, specific to your business, and make sure you don’t use too many of them.

We hope these articles on Hashtags have been helpful to our VAMBOA members.

By Debbie Gregory.

Our last article went over what a hashtag is and why you need to use them when posting on social media. The question that comes next is “how do I find the right hashtags to use in my posts?” To find hashtags that are specific to your company, your brand, your industry and your audience, you will need to do a little research. Below are a few tips that can help you.

1.)  Keep an eye on which hashtags are trending on each platform

It is always a good idea to know what hashtags are trending on the platforms you use. Some will be relevant to your company and others will not be relevant. You can keep track of these manually but that can be very time-consuming, especially if you use more than one social platform. Utilizing tools, such as RiteTag, allows you to research what hashtags would be best to pair with your content and saves your valuable time. Basically, you simply type in the caption you plan to use for your post, along with the post image, and RiteTag will generate trending hashtag suggestions based on your content.

2.) Use Hashtagify.me to check hashtag popularity

Hashtagify.me lets you search any hashtag and gives you a quick picture of how popular it is. Hashtagify.me shows you the hashtag’s overall popularity, its recent popularity, and its trends are broken down by both month and week.

3.) Look at the success of hashtags on your past posts

Keeping track of hashtags, you have used on past posts and analyzing their success will provide you a good idea of hashtags to include in future posts. It is also makes sense for you to type the successful hashtags into the other tools listed in this article in order to check their overall popularity. Make a point to re-use hashtags that have been helpful to your posts.

4.). Keep an eye on relevant social media influencers as well as your competitors

To be successful in any industry, you need to know who your business’ influencers and competitors are. You have a target audience in common and need to connect with those people in similar ways. Once you know who your influencers and competitors are, make a note of what hashtags they use the most in their posts. This information will help you better engage your shared audiences and potentially grow your influence in your market.

5.) Utilize social media management tools

There are quite a few platforms out there that will allow you to do your hashtag research directly from the platform as well as pre-schedule all of your social posts. These types of social media management platforms usually have built in analytics and other helpful insight tools. One of the more popular ones today is HootSuite.

Hootsuite allows you to search social streams and discover which hashtags are the best to use for each of the different platforms. All you need to do is setup an account, attach your social networks, and search streams. It is easy to see from the streams which hashtags are the most popular and the most effective for your chosen social platform.

6.) Find and use related hashtags

Once you have a good handle on what hashtags work best for your specific business, you may wish to consider using popular related hashtags on your posts too. These types of hastags are usually more specific than the ones you have already been using. Additionally, they can help you connect with a more targeted audience.

Figuring out which hashtags would be best for your posts, your industry, or your audience does require a bit of work.  Keep in mind that this work will pay off in better customer engagement, increased followers, and wider brand recognition.

VAMBOA hopes that this article is of value to you.  Please feel free to let us know.

By Debbie Gregory.

With all the new social media terms popping up all the time, it certainly can be very confusing to keep up with all of them as well as trying to understand what they mean or how to use them. Below are even more terms to add to your glossary.

Social Selling

Social selling is the practice of using social tools to find leads, connect with prospects, and nurture business relationships.

Snap

Snap is the company that owns Snapchat, the photo- and video-messaging app launched in 2011. Each post on Snapchat is also called a Snap. Users can add filters, text, drawings, or emoji to their content before sending it. Direct messages last only up to 10 seconds before they disappear forever and are erased from the company’s servers. Snap Stories allow users to share re-playable Snaps for up to 24 hours.

Spam

Spam is unnecessary, unwanted, or repetitive content that clogs inboxes and clutters social media feeds. The term “spam” has been used to refer to junk messages since the earliest days of the Internet.

Sponsored Posts

Sponsored posts are social media posts in which an influencer or celebrity highlights a brand or product that they have been paid to promote. These posts must be identified as ads using a hashtag like #ad or #sponsored.

Sticker

Stickers are a feature of stories formats like Snapchat and Instagram Stories. They allow users to add extra information to a post, like a hashtag or location. Some stickers offer interactive features such as questions and polls.

Stories

Stories are a form of ephemeral content on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat that disappears after 24 hours.

Tag

A tag is a keyword added to a social media post to categorize content. You can also tag someone in a post or photo, which creates a link to their social media profile and associates them with the content. Users have the option to remove unwanted tags from their profile.

Targeting

Targeting is the practice of selecting a specific audience for social ads to maximize conversions. Social networks offer many targeting options based on factors like demographics, location, and interests.

Thread

A thread is a string of messages that make up a conversation. Threads begin with an initial message and then continue as a series of replies or comments. Threads are essential to keeping track of conversations in most forms of online communication, including social media and email.

Throwback Thursday (#TBT)

Throwback Thursday (#TBT) is a hashtag used to share old photos on social media.

Trending

A trending topic or hashtag is one that is popular on social media at a given moment. Trends are highlighted by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to encourage discussion and engagement among their users. The “trending” concept was first popularized by Twitter and has since been adopted by other networks. The trends that you see on Twitter and Facebook are based on your location, who you follow, and the content you like.

Troll

A troll is a social media user who makes deliberately offensive or annoying postings with the sole aim of provoking other users.

Tweet

A Tweet is a Twitter post. Tweets are limited to 280 characters and can include photos, videos, and links. They are public by default.

Unfollow

To unfollow someone is to unsubscribe from their social media account. If you would prefer to maintain the social connection but don’t want to see their posts, you can mute them instead.

URL

URL is short for Uniform Resource Locator. It means the address of a website page or other resource on the Internet. URLs can contain codes called UTMs that help with tracking and analytics.

URL Shortener

A URL shortener is a tool that condenses a long URL into a shorter (and more social media friendly) format. URL shorteners such as ow.ly can also provide link tracking capabilities, which allow businesses to measure click-throughs from social media and attribute website conversions to individual social messages.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content is content created by the regular people on social media, rather than brands. Brands collect that content through contests, branded hashtags, or simply reaching out to ask permission. When brands re-share that content with their own followers, they are implementing a UGC campaign. User-generated content can help increase brand awareness and loyalty by allowing businesses to tap into the excitement and creative energies of their customers.

Vanity Metric

A vanity metric is an analytics item that can be measured but is not a signifier of real return on investment. Examples include the number of followers, likes, or comments. These metrics are best contextualized by more concrete numbers such as click-through rate or visitor-to-lead conversions.

Vanity URL

A vanity URL is a web address branded for marketing purposes. Vanity URLs replace common URL shortened formats with something related to an organization’s branding. For example, Time Inc.’s vanity URL is ti.me. The New York Times uses nyti.ms.

Verified

To be verified on social media means that you have proven your identity to the social media platform provider and gained a verified label in return, usually in the form of a checkmark. This is usually reserved for brands, journalists, and other public figures as a way of preventing fraud and protecting the integrity of the person or organization behind the account.

Viral

To go viral on social media is to have a specific post bring in an unusually large number of engagements. An exceptional number of shares is the clearest sign of going viral, as your post spreads across the internet like a virus.

Virtual reality (VR)

Virtual reality immerses the user in an experience so that what they are doing looks or feels real. VR headsets are a common way of engaging with virtual reality.

Vlogging

Vlogging is a combination of the words, “video” and “blogging.” It means to create and post video blog content. Someone who vlogs is known as a vlogger.

Webinar

Webinar is a combination of the two words “web” and “seminar.” A webinar is a digital broadcast of a presentation intended to educate or inform. Webinars allow users to watch a presentation from their computer or other device, and often interact directly with the presenter or fellow attendees through chat or video.

Whew! That is a one long list.  VAMBOA hopes it is valuable and you learned some new terms.   Please print out your glossary and share this article.   Everyone stay safe, healthy and we wish you prosperity!