Top 5 Social Media Scheduling Tools

it's easy to feel overwhelmed when managing your social media presence, especially when you are managing multiple sets of networks, sites and accounts. The top way I've found to make things easier to handle these overlapping demands is to utilize a scheduling tool. These tools allow you to schedule posts in advance to multiple social media networks and to assess your posts' performance. What's not to like?

There are many options out there to help you schedule your social media posts, but here are some of my favorites. Each of these programs listed below has a free trial as well as paid options, and can publish to the major social media networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn), but there are some important ways in which each of these tools differ. Do you use a social media scheduling tool?

• Buffer. Buffer is probably the simplest and most intuitive social media scheduling tool to use of the bunch. If you have never tried social media scheduling, I would recommend that you start here. You can schedule and analyze posts across networks with ease, and the analytics (which focus on engagement) are easy to understand. Additionally, Buffer has a smart scheduling feature that picks the optimal times of day to publish, based on past post performance.

• Hootsuite. Hootsuite was the first social media scheduler I ever used many years ago, and it is still is at the top of the pack. One of its unique value propositions is that you can do bulk scheduling by uploading as many as many 350 posts at once from an external .csv file. Additionally, Hootsuite is also compatible with a wider range of social networks than pretty much any other tool (30+ app integrations).

• CoSchedule. CoSchedule focuses on content in addition to scheduling, which is a bit different from other social media schedulers, and you can categorize, analyze, re-post and sort the content you utilize. CoSchedule also has a particularly robust content calendar where you can organize your entire marketing calendar and projects (seen above).

• Sprout Social. In Sprout Social you also have the ability to create teams with different access levels, and a calendar that gives you a view of all your upcoming posts graphically. However, where Sprout Social really excels is with its reports, which are sophisticated and in-depth. You can even produce individual-level performance reports.

• AgoraPulse. In addition to scheduling, AgoraPulse excels at helping you manage customer relationships, with a suite of tools for social media monitoring. You can answer messages within the tool (including comments on ads) and keep track of customer interactions on each social media network with ease.

How to Optimize your Instagram Stories

If you are an Instagram user, you have certainly noticed Instagram Stories - little sequential bursts of content that appear in bubbles the the top of your home screen. These bits of content include text, video, images and sometimes even links, but they expire after 24 hours. Though they are as easy to make as Instagram posts, Stories have even more options, and opputunities for engagement. So how do you get the most out your Instagram Stories?

Since their introduction in 2016, Instagram Stories have increased in importance (and popularity), and new features are added regularly, including the ability to add links, polls and even ads. First, if you haven't done so before, Hubspot has a good intro on how to make your own Instagram Story.  One you have the mechanics down you can improve your story technique, and can even make Instagram Stories Ads. So what are some important things to keep in mind when making a story?

1. Make the visuals appealing. Instagram is a visual platform, so this may seem like a redundant reminder. However, due to the ephemeral nature of Instagram Stories, I think they need to be even more eye catching than regular posts, especially since many people tend to click through stories in a rapid-fire fashion. If you can, use video, which tends to be more engaging. Fast company suggests between 5 and 10 second videos for the most impact. Also, unlike the square format of Instagram posts, Instagram Stories are vertical. According to Sprout Social's helpful social media dimensions guide - for Instagram Stories the recommended resolution is 1080 x 1920, minimum resolution is 600 x 1067 and the image aspect ratio is 9:16.

2. Use the extras. Unlike Instagram posts, one of the benefits of Instagram Stories is they are more interactive, and have additional features. With Instagram Stories you can add text, polls, clickable hashtags, animated gifs, location stickers (as seen above), and more. Later has some 13 hidden tips for making the most out of the fun added features in Stories, as does the Verge. Instagram is introducing new Stories features all the time, including the ability to make text-only Stories, which was just released. Of course, everything in moderation! 

3. Identify yourself. As previously mentioned, sometimes people flick through Stories very quickly, if you don't have any identification for your brand, your Story may get (literally) lost in the shuffle. This is an especially important for Stories Ads, where your story may interspersed into the Stories of those who do not necessarily follow you. This brand recognition may also be achieved in subtler ways by using your brand colors or logo. In any case, it is important to stay consistent to your brand, as Spotify has done above with their unique use of typography, brand colors and style. 

4. Include a call to action. Including a link is perhaps the most important addition to a Story, but one that is not necessarily available to all accounts. You can add a link to your Story if you have a verified account, or a business account with more than 10k followers. You can include links to your homepage, a particular post, products, or anything you have in mind. Links themselves are not visible on the post - so make sure to remind the users they are there - the common way is to encourage them to "swipe up," which is how a link is opened. Hootsuite also suggests adding UTM codes - which we covered in a previous post - to your links, so you can track how many people are finding their way to your site (or product) via Instagram Stories. 

One thing about Instagram Stories is that they are constantly changing. While this means that features are generally added, and not taken away, you still have to be on your toes. Just as I was about to publish this post Instagram announced that they were going to introduce text-only Stories. One of the best ways to keep up with these updates is on Instagram itself, where updates are usually, and perhaps appropriately, released in official Instagram Stories. 

4 Easy Ways to Generate Content Ideas

Sometimes it's hard to generate new content ideas for social media or your blog, especially when faced with a daunting blank white post space (I definitely know the feeling!). However, before writer's block really sets in, there are a wide variety of resources to help you come up with content ideas.

1. What's Trending? First, it is useful to consider what is currently trending on social media platforms. A great first stop for this is Twitter Trends, and Trendsmap even put these trending topics and hashtags over a US map if you are looking to reach a specific area. However, this may be too general for your needs. You can use Hashtagify.me to help you find relevant hashtags for your specific topic. Here is the example Hastagify.me for the hashtag #SocialMedia. Google Trends is also another good topline assessment for what's popular online. Alltop shows the top articles on a wide variety of news and other general interest sites.

2. Utilize Your Reading Habit. If you're like me, you probably read a lot of articles (online and offline) during the week, whether they are related to work or not. I am also subscribed to a variety of newsletters that often give me blog fodder. However, sometimes it is just as easy to forget what you've read when you sit down to write an article. When I find an article I want to save for later (potentially for blogging purposes) I save it in Pocket. Pocket is a great, free website/browser extension that lets you easily save web pages for later, and you can organize them by tags. I give all ideas for a potential posts a certain tag to keep things clear. 

3. Check Out Online Keyword Analyzers. I have had some posts about choosing the right keywords for certain topics in the past, and some of the same tools that will help you choose the best keywords will also help you come up with good ideas. BuzzSumo and Quick Sprout have more comprehensive lists, but here are two of my favorites:

• BuzzSumo. You can search BuzzSumo for a keyword and it will give you thew most shared articles containing that keyword, as well as general trending news.
• Moz Keyword Explorer. This is the site that just keep giving! I am a huge fan of Moz, and this handy website allows you to explore the popularity of a keyword, related keyworkds, and related articles. One of the most useful features is the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Analysis, which will show you typical search results for keywords.

4. Brainstorm with Friends and Colleagues. If you are really stumped, it is always productive to ask friends and colleagues what they have been reading lately. You may also ask them if they have heard anything interesting related to your industry. You never know what they have been reading, or watching, and you may get clued into new influencers or sites that will serve as great future inspiration. Plus - sometimes it's good to get offline, too!

Hopefully these will give you some ideas for generating new content ideas. Do you have any additional techniques for generating content?

How do you measure social media engagement?

When it comes to social media, few words are as simultaneously vague and intimidating as "engagement." So - just what is social media engagement? Social media engagement is generally defined as the number of interactions that people have with your content or your social media accounts and it can be defined in a number of different ways, depending on your platform and whether you are measuring inbound or outbound engagement. There is not one key engagement metric that will be most important for any organization - it all depends on your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Hootsuite defines engagement as:

Social media engagement refers to the acts of talking to, messaging or otherwise interacting with other people on social networks. This broad term encompasses a several different types of actions on social media, from commenting on Facebook posts to participating in Twitter chats. At its simplest, social media engagement is any interaction you have with other users. 

Engagement is clearly a term that encompasses many different types of interactions. I like to think of engagement in two ways: inbound - where users are seeking to contact you - or outbound - where your published content is seen or shared by users. Oftentimes, engagement will be defined as only either inbound or outbound, but I think the term is big enough to encompass both uses.

Inbound Engagement:

This form of engagement encompasses people interacting directly with the organization by sending messages or posting comments to the organization's social media accounts. These interactions often require a reply, and may be classed as customer service interactions. As seen below, Sprout Social found that social media was in fact the most preferred customer service channel. This type of engagement may also fall under the umbrella of "social listening," where a company monitors its social media accounts for comments or interactions.

Metrics:

• Response Rate: How many social media inquiries are responded to. Ideally, you or your team would respond to all inquiries on social media, though that is not often possible.
• Response Time: How long it takes to reply to an inquiry, on average. The lower the response time, the better. 
• Brand Mentions: How many times your brand is mentioned across social media - these sort of mentions may be seen in @ replies on Twitter or Instagram. Some of these mentions may require a reply.

Outbound Engagement:

Here, the engagement is more passive, and may be directed towards consumption of content or sharing. In terms of outbound engagement, these statistics are usually readily found in the metrics or analytics of your social media platforms and will inform you as to how well different pieces of content are performing. 

Metrics:

• Reach: the number of people who actually see your content. If you have 1,000 fans on Facebook, and your reach on a given post was 500, that shows that 50% of your fans are active followers and actually saw your content.
• Impressions: the number of times your content is displayed. These impressions may be to the same people, or to people who are not specific followers of your brand (such as when your link is shared by a fan). Facebook provides metrics for both impressions and reach, while Twitter only provides impressions. As you can see in this sample chart from Simply Measured (above), impressions may often be higher than reach for the same piece of content. Reach will never be higher than impressions.
• Clicks, Likes/favorites, Shares/Retweets: the number of times your content elicits these actions on a social media platform. Clicks are often seen as the least engaging, with likes being slightly more engaging, and shares being the most engaging. However, depending on your ultimate objective, each of these actions may be more or less valuable.

Hopefully, this guide will help you demystify the all-encompassing, amorphous social media term "engagement." The goal of social media overall is to increase engagement with your followers and customers, and choosing the right engagement metrics will help you measure your progress.

What is the ideal length for a social media post?

We all know about Twitter's 140-character limit (which has been relaxed slightly in recent months) - but is 140 characters really the optimal amount of characters for a post on Twitter? What about on other social networks? To find out the optimal length for a social media post, I scoured the research to see if there were any definitive answers to which post lengths got the most engagement. The update length limit varies by the social media network, and while only Twitter has stringent, short character limits, I found that just because you can write more extensively doesn't necessarily mean you should.

Ideal post lengths for social media networks:

• Twitter: Twitter was where it all started in terms of artificially shortening posts as part of the design of the network - 140 characters was the limit from the start. However, if you can be even briefer, so much the better. Buddy Media found that tweets with less than 100 characters performed 17% better than longer posts.
• Facebook: Of the big three social networks, Facebook allows the most space for text in updates (a staggering 63k+ characters!), despite this, the best-received Facebook posts have less an 80 characters, according to Jeff Bullas (though it is even better to try to cut your posts to less than 40 characters, no small feat). Facebook shows that just because there is a lot of real estate doesn't mean you should use necessarily it.  
• Instagram: On Instagram the focus is the visual, so Sprout Social recommends you keep your captions short and sweet - between 138-and 150 characters, even though the max allowed is 2,200 characters. But even shorter may be better: Instagram itself specifies that that only the first 3 lines of a caption are shown in feeds, a limit of 125 characters.

What can we learn from these findings? Overall, shorter posts/updates are better. This clever infographic below from Buffer and SumAll illustrates the optimal length for various social media networks. When you are in the process of writing your own social media updates, Sprout Social also has a great social media post character counter to keep you in line. The infographic below also covers optimal headline length, number of hashtags and blog post length, which I will cover in a future post.

How to conduct a social media audit

Before you or you company is join a new social media network or launch a social media marketing campaign, it is a good idea to do a social media audit. So what is a social media audit? Despite the intimidating name, the social media audit process is basically just taking stock of all of your social media properties and assessing how well you are doing on each of them. Here are 5 easy steps to get you well on your way to completing a social media audit.

1. Take stock of all of your social media accounts

The first step is to create a spreadsheet with all of your social media accounts, their URLs, the last date you have posted, the frequency of posting, and the number of followers. You may also include other columns related to metrics you may be tracking on each platform, like referrals to your website, or changes in followers over time. You can create your own custom spreadsheet, but you can also find examples of social media audit templates online. Buffer has shared a great Google Doc that you can copy for your own audit, as seen below. This step of the process is also a good time to consolidate all of your passwords for every social media account, and if you are working with a team, verify who has access to each platform and who is responsible for updating each account.

2. Perform a search on social media and Google.

Though you probably will be up to date with the social media accounts that you are updating regularly, there may be some accounts that have fallen by the wayside over the years (Tumblr, Flickr, etc.). During a social media audit, it is important to do a search on social media networks to check to see if you are missing any accounts that may have gone dormant or have been started before you joined the team. If you have a larger company, others (both affiliated with the company or not) may have even started unofficial pages, or these may have been automatically created.

3. Check your branding

It is important at this stage to make sure that your visual and content branding is consistent across all social media networks. Make sure you have the most current logo and brand identity on each page. It's also important to make sure you have appropriately sized backgrounds and headers for each social media network - since these sizes actually change pretty often. Sprout Social has an always-updated guide to these social media picture sizes. Beyond images, it is useful to make sure your contact information and biography are up-to-date and that your tone is consistent across platforms.

4. Assess how these sites are reaching your desired targets

This part is a bit more qualitative and requires that you engage with your current social media strategy. Example questions you and your team may want to ask are:

• What is the target market for each of these sites?
• Who are we hoping to reach? Are we reaching them?
• How will we know if we are successful? 
• What are our goals on each platform?

You can check how you are doing on your goals, by checking your metrics for each of the social media networks you are active on. Twitter and Facebook, for example offer detailed, downloadable analytics from within their own dashboards.

5. Revise your plan...or not

At this stage you may find that some of your social media platforms could use some work, or perhaps you may be able to identify a gap that would be filled by joining another social media network. Through this audit process you will be able to make more informed decisions on next steps for your current networks, as well as when it is time to expand or consolidate your social media efforts. There is also no singular way to conduct an audit, and a lot of the process depends on your specific objectives and goals.

Developing a social media audit may seem like an involved process, especially depending on how detailed you want to get with metrics - but it is manageable! And it is worth it for the added peace of mind before making any big social media decisions. If you or your company needs any help conducting a full social media audit - New Median can help!

How to make the most of social media holidays

On March 23, images of puppies suddenly seemed to be taking over social media. Sure, puppies are big winners on social media on any given day, but this was something more. It turns out March 23rd was National Puppy Day, a 'holiday' that is - perhaps unsurprisingly - huge on social media. Also known as hashtag holidays - these quirky days are largely recognized and celebrated on social media - and can be dedicated to anything from Mac and Cheese, to sibling appreciation, or even Star Wars (May the 4th, naturally). So how do you find out about what social media holidays are on the horizon?

Where to find out about hashtag holidays

• Hootsuite has a good abridged list of unique social media holidays, and most of the holidays they picked get significant traction online.
• Track Maven has an even more thorough list of holidays to choose from.
• Wikipedia has a list of major religious and secular holidays, as well as some unofficial holidays that would definitely fall into 'hashtag holiday' territory.
• For a truly comprehensive list of even the most obscure of days, check out the National Day Calendar.

Social Media Holiday Best Practices

Many of these best practices are the same for when you are using any kind of hashtag, but especially in this case, context is key!

• Plan in advance. Take a little time to peruse the aforementioned lists and choose which ones may tie into your accounts. You should then add the selected holidays to your content calendar well in advance, which will leave you some time to brainstorm a tie-in. Moreover, not all of these days are widely recognized, so it is probably best to do a little research on the hashtag through Twitter and Facebook to see how popular it was in years past before fully committing to it. 

Happy #NationalDoughnutDay! Celebrate with a free doughnut of your choice http://t.co/DjJ6AW0lsG pic.twitter.com/OCM950Ar50

— krispykreme (@krispykreme) June 5, 2015

• Stay on Message. As with any hashtag, make sure the hashtag holiday you want to participate in ties into your brand or message. Not every holiday is good for everyone! Naturally, National Donut Day was a no-brainer for the Kirspy Kreme social media team.
• Use the right hashtag.  This may seem obvious, but in practice the "official" tag for an "unofficial" holiday may be difficult to discern. Sprout Social shows that the same holiday may have a few different variants - #BestFriendsDay vs #NationalBestFriendsDay - in this case National Best Friends Day was the winner. 

A final key takeaway is to have a little fun. Hashtag holidays are anythign but serious, and are a great way to show your personality (or your brand's) on social media.

The Best Free Online Survey Tools

When you are looking to conduct some original market research on your services, products, customer satisfaction or website, a survey will often be the first step. Fortunately, now you can chose between dozens of free and paid online survey options. Choosing the right survey tool for you also depends on what you are trying to accomplish. How important are aesthetics? Do you need integration with Facebook or email? Do you have respondents - or will you need a service to find them? Will you need to download your data for reporting purposes?

In order to narrow down the field a little bit - here are some of my favorite online survey services with free options:

• Google Forms: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/ For this free survey tool, you will need a free Google account, but it is a great place to start for most survey needs. Making Google surveys may require a little more legwork, but there are plenty of tutorials, and the surveys are highly customizable (especially if you know HTML). Another huge plus is that there are unlimited responses, surveys and downloadable results, which is not true on most other free sites. 

• Typeform: https://www.typeform.com/ Typeform has some of the nicest, sleekest surveys around (see an example below). If you put a premium on appearance, Typeform is the way to go, with its professional looking surveys - which are called "typeforms" on the site. For the free plan you receive 100 responses a month and 10 fields per typeform. Response data can be sent to other apps, through Zapier.

• KwikSurveys: https://kwiksurveys.com KwikSurveys may just offer the most for free, with unlimited surveys and responses, but with little customization. KwikSurveys also has integration with popular social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. You do have the ability to download your data with this free site.

• Survey Monkey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/ Survey Monkey may be the granddaddy of all survey sites. Though it is not the prettiest, we think it gets the job done. Creating SurveyMonkey surveys requires little know-how, and it easy to scale to paid plans. In the free version you are limited to 10 questions and 100 responses. One drawback is that you can't export/download your results.

If you are looking for more responses or a more robust experience, and are willing to pay, SurveyGizmo is a good option. PCMag has a breakdown of some other paid survey sites and their features. What survey tools have you used for yourself or for your company?

How to create infographics for social media in 4 simple steps

A good infographic can make all the difference in really understanding the crux of an argument or story. According to Jeff Bullas, "Infographics are a visually compelling communication medium that done well can communicate complex data in a visual format that is potentially viral." Moreover, they are a great way to repurpose and revitalize the information you already have. Though infographics seem to be experiencing a renaissance, they are nothing new. Artist, statistician and all-around data guru, Edward Tufte points to what he calls the one of the best infographics of all time in his seminal text, The Visual Design of Quantitative Information, and it is from 1869!

In the infographic in question (seen below), Charles Joseph Minard visually depicts the march of Napoleon's troops and their eventual demise in a way that shows both geographic movements as well troop casualties. It is definitely more effective than a laundry list of places and numbers. Though you probably won't be talking about Napoleon's march anytime soon, thinking about the principals of a good infographic can help you with almost any topic.

Even if your data is not number-heavy, an infographic can help distill the larger points you are making. When you used to think of infographics, maybe PowerPoint or Excel came to mind - but not anymore! One of the breakthroughs of the past few years is in SAAS (Software as a service) sites that create great-looking infographics with little to no coding or design experience needed. However, creating the infographics in a design tool is the last step along the way. First, you need to :

1. Distill your Data. What are you trying to say? The first step is to clearly and succinctly state what you are trying to communicate through your infographic, put eloquently by Fast.Co as "finding the narrative." Often (most times...), you will have too much content and data for a single infographic. For both qualitative and quantitative data, pick the major points you are trying to cover, and state them as simply as possible. Don't get carried away! I think we've all seen the huge, vertical infographics that require you to keep scrolling...and scrolling. At this point, you will probably want to create an outline for your infographic, so you can work out details like axis titles, categories and general layout.

2. Line up your sources. If you are showing data from a source that is not your own, it is important to include these sources, both to give proper credit to the person/organization who acquired the data initially, and to give credibility to your own infographic (for example, how credible would un-sourced numbers on state population or mobile data use seem?). If you have many source links, it may be useful to create a blog post or page on your site with all of the links referenced, and then provide that single link on your infographic itself. If you are at the stage where you are still looking for data, check out my earlier post on free sources for market research data.

3. Choose a display method. What is the best way to display your data? Are you trying to show a relationship between two variables? Describing the composition of data? Showing change over time? Figuring out exactly what you are trying to show is imperative to figuring out how you want to show it. A pie chart won't work for everything! Chandoo has a succinct description of what types of charts work best for different types of data, and Extreme Presentation takes it a step further by creating a graphic depiction of chart types (seen above)

If you are representing qualitative data, the types of display are even more diverse. Depending on your data, perhaps you can illustrate your data in a timeline, on a map, in a venn diagram, or through a process flowchart. In some ways, representing qualitative data effectively in an infographic may be even harder (or more freeing), because there are fewer pre-set options. Venngage has a nice blog post with ways to display different kinds of data (both qual and quant) creatively.

4. Choose a Template. Now here's the fun part! There are dozens of online infographic tools at your disposal, once you have decided how you want to display your data. Canva, one of my favorite tools for making visual elements, also has the capability to create infographics. Venngage (an example of which is seen below) is a great tool to use when you have non-numerical data, and it can help you make sleek word-based infographics. For something a little more quantitative, Infogr.am (example above) works similarly to Excel, and provides nice, slightly out-of-the-box charts. Piktochart and Easel.ly have a little bit of both, and allows you to create infographics based on qualitative or quantitative data.

If you are looking to create a timeline, Timeline.js is an online tool to create extensive, professional-looking timelines. Creative Bloq has an even more extensive list of infographic creation sites, especially for quantitative data. If you need some addition inspiration, my favorite infographic sites are Information Is Beautiful and Cool Infographics. Do you have any infographic resources that you recommend?

5 Easy Ways To Repurpose Your Content

If you are a content producer, you already know that it takes a lot of hard work to develop blog posts, white papers and reports. So after you've done all that work and posted it, what comes next? Repurpose it into other social media posts of course! Why bother to repurpose? The shortest answer is: audience. Posting content in new venues will reach a bigger audience than through blogging alone. Plus, since you already created the content, it is just a question of tweaking it a bit.

Here are 5 easy ways to repurpose your content: 

1. Make a Visual. Visuals are so important on social media. Facebook posts with images get over twice as much engagement than those without images. Even if your post does not include any images, you can create graphics by pulling out a particularly memorable, quote, fact, or even just your post title, and create a graphic with text overlaid. You can check out my previous post on the best stock photo resources for some great backgrounds. Canva is another great (and free) resource for making simple, clean web graphics (seen below).

2. Create an infographic. Infographics are a great user-friendly way to share your info (if your data lends itself to an infographic, of course). Don't be intimidated by the design factor, though, there are many great tools to throw together a professional-looking. Canva also has the capability to create infographics, as does Venngage (an example of which is seen below) and Piktochart.

3. Make a Tip Sheet. If you have a few related posts, or ways to expand a little on what you have already written, you can turn your post into a downloadable PDF tip sheet or guide for download. This is an especially good way to make a "lead magnet"  to entice people to sign up for your email (example below from Omnimonster). If you are new to the idea of lead magnets, Amy Porterfield has a great short video introduction.

4. Break it up. With a little tweaking, a long blog post can be broken up into a condensed Facebook post (or two) or a series of tweets. If your post has have bullet points (like this one!), you can tweet them out over the course of a few days - with a link to your blog post - to build interest, and drive traffic to your blog.

5. Add some audio (or video). This is the most ambitious repurposing - turning content on your blog into podcasts, or even Facebook Live videos. In these channels, you can go over what you covered in the blog (you could even consider doing a live Q&A after you discuss the post content). If you have a lot of related content you may even consider doing a webinar. Creating audiovisual content may require the most work, but it can also have the largest payoff. Facebook prioritizes videos in news feeds, and it has been shown that content with videos gets higher engagement.

While each of these steps requires a little extra work, you will reap the rewards of an expanded audience. Do you have favorite way to repurpose content?