Congrats, you took that first necessary step to create an official Facebook page for your business. Now what? Creating engaging and relevant content on a consistent basis may seem overwhelming, but here are seven quick post ideas that you can refer to when writer’s block hits.

1. What’s Trending

Go to news.google.com to do a quick skim of today’s news headlines; then login to Facebook to see what’s already trending on the platform. On your Facebook newsfeed, the trending topics show up in the right-hand column where you can sort by categories:  politics, science & technology, sports and entertainment. Think about how a trending topic relates to a program, service or product that your company offers and then join the conversation that’s already happening on Facebook.

2. Unofficial Holidays

Did you know that Thursday, April 19^th is “National Garlic Day” or that April 16^th was “Wear Pajamas to Work Day”? We didn’t either. If you want to piggyback on some of these wacky, but popular “holidays” check out nationaltoday.com and start planning your editorial calendar. Just remember to keep it relevant to your brand. Don’t just say “Happy National Garlic Day” and leave it at that. Find a way to creatively tie it back to your business. Maybe you’re a dentist and you say something like, “If your garlic breath is lingering long after #NationalGarlicDay you could have a case of Halitosis. Schedule a free consultation and we’ll help you tackle that garlic breath for good.”

3. Did You Know

Share an interesting fact about your company or industry that most people might not know, or something that might address one of the common pain points of your customers. People love sharing quick, digestible and interesting stats on Facebook. Even better if your interesting fact is accompanied by an image or graphic, since according to Hubspot, if a relevant image is paired with information people retain 65% of the information three days later vs. 10% when the information is shared without an image.

4. A Question

There is no easier way to drive engagement and start the conversation than to ask your followers a question. Make sure to be direct and ask questions people actually want to answer though … no hypothetical questions. Furthermore, giving people multiple choice or fill in the blank options usually results in even more comments.

5. Caption Contest

Caption This! Post a photo of something that is relevant to your business or even people in your office and ask for a photo caption. Tip: If you have an office dog or two (like we do) they make great photo subjects!

6. Day of the Week Hashtags

There are dozens of weekly hashtags that most Facebook users are very familiar with such as #ThrowbackThursday or #MotivationalMonday. We like using “Throwback Thursday” posts to showcase past client work that we’re still proud of.

7. Office Life or Behind-the-Scenes

One of the most significant benefits of Facebook for Businesses is the opportunity to humanize your brand. Showing behind-the-scenes snapshots or spotlighting employees is a great way to make your business more approachable and relatable.

While consistency is important, we definitely stress quality over quantity. It’s better to post three to four well-thought-out and relevant posts than six or seven pieces that have nothing to do with your brand. While these post ideas may seem arbitrary, they aren’t — there are ways to leverage “generic” content for your specific marketing goals and with your target audience in mind. If you aren’t sure how to do that you might want to consider hiring a social media manager or someone who can help craft your social media and content strategy.

To find out if you need help with your social media strategy, schedule a free 30 minute, no-strings-attached marketing consultation with our team.

Related: 10 Ways to Increase Engagement with Your Facebook Content

You are probably well aware by now that as a business it is imperative to have some kind of social media presence. And, while what platforms your business uses will vary based on industry, target market, digital marketing strategy and growth goals — as a general rule of thumb, it’s safe to say you should have a presence with the three major players: Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Instagram is a social media platform and mobile app that allows users to share photos and videos to their followers and social network. For consumer-based businesses, using Instagram is a no-brainer: it is an excellent tool to showcase new products in a visually appealing way. For service-based companies, Instagram is still a heavy-hitter in the marketing game because it offers opportunities to showcase the tangible results of your intangible service offerings. For all industries, Instagram is a way to become relatable, humanize your brand and “lift the curtain” so to speak.

Check out our 10 tips to improve your business’ Instagram presence:

1. Make sure your username is consistent across all channels. 

If you are @VDGATL on Twitter and Facebook, then name your account @VDGATL on Instagram as well. We also recommend creating a domain name and e-mail address with that username as well to further promote your brand.

2. Cross-promote on your other social channels. 

If your priority for this quarter is increasing Instagram engagement, then it’s important to drive people to your Instagram page whenever you can. If you’re hosting a social media contest, promote it on Facebook and Twitter with a link to your Instagram page, prompting people to follow you on Instagram to enter. You could also post a video on Instagram and promote it with your other accounts, making the user navigate to Instagram to view the video. Be sure to also include links to your Instagram account in your bios on Facebook, Twitter and e-mail marketing campaigns.

3. Make your post captions short and concise. 

Instagram has a character limit of 2,200 characters, which is approximately 300+ words…aka, way more than you should ever use. Every photo and video you post should include a caption describing the image, but keep those captions short and concise. If you must post more information, it is better to drive people to your blog to learn more.

4. Use 4-5 #hashtags per post.

Hashtags are important to aggregate content and to help your post be found by the community you’re targeting, but reports have shown that Instagram’s algorithms lessen the possibility of your post showing up on followers’ feeds and on the Instagram “discover page” if you use more than five at once. We recommend having one hashtag that you use on everything (ie: your company name) and then choosing the other 4 most popular and recently used hashtags that relate to the content of your post. Hashtagify.me is a great, free tool to search for hashtag popularity and trends.

5. Create a coherent layout, look and feel for your page.

Plan a specific color palette each month or use the same filters and editing tools on all photos to create a consistent look for your brand. We’re not saying that all photos need to look exactly the same, but the goal is for people to go to your page and recognize your brand. Check out these 14 brands that are killing it on Instagram.

6. Think about having weekly or monthly “themes” or “series.”

Developing a weekly or monthly theme gives your fans something to look forward to and count on. You can build off of already-popular social media trends, such as #throwbackThursday or #motivationalMonday, or you could create your own series, like “behind the scenes” or “client spotlight.”

7. Reply to comments and engage with fans.

Reply to all comments in a timely manner, we recommend within 24 hours. If somebody tags your page or uses one of your hashtags, you should comment on their post too. People love seeing brands engage with them on Instagram. For example, our Jr. Art Director, Shay Harbaugh, did a hand-lettering post on her personal Instagram page and tagged Sharpie. When they commented on her post and then asked her if they could share it on their business page, she was ecstatic. This is a simple way to connect with your fans and increase brand loyalty, creating customers for life.

8. Ask questions.

Another simple way to encourage engagement is by asking a question in your post.  Just make sure that when your fans answer your question that you reply or “like” their response by clicking the heart next to the comment. Social media is all about sparking conversation and prompting further discussion, so don’t just post and walk away.

9. Use emojis (sparingly).

Adweek reports that emojis lead to higher engagement on Instagram. Emojis help your brand come across as more personable and friendly; but, there is a fine line between looking like an excited 12 year old who just got her first phone and a professional business that people want to talk to. Stick to just 1-4 appropriate emojis per post and don’t make your fans try to decode or translate what you’re saying. You can even reply to your fans with an emoji, for instance a “fist bump” or “thumbs up” when they compliment one of your products.

10. Post multiple photos at once. 

The Instagram carousel feature allows users to publish up to 10 photos in one post. This is a great way to showcase a line of products, multiple photos from one event or before and after pictures. We do recommend, however, that if you are applying filters to the photos, then use the same filters and photo-editing techniques to all photos within the post.

Bonus Tip:  Post at the optimum times when your followers are most likely to be actively using Instagram.

In the top right corner of your Instagram profile you will see a bar graph icon, which will lead you to Instagram Insights. Once there, go to “Followers” and “see more.” This will break down the demographics of your fans, such as gender, age range and locations. It will also show you what days of the week and times of day your followers are most active on Instagram. In our experience, the best times of day are weekdays around noon-1pm, when people are scrolling through their phones during their lunch breaks and evenings around 8-9pm when people have settled down for the evening, finished dinner and are vegging out before bedtime.

We hope these tips help boost your brand on Instagram. For more insight on your company’s social media pages, schedule a free marketing consultation with our team.

Related: 5 Social Media Metrics Worth Paying Attention to and How to Track Them

It’s hard to believe that we only have one more month before Q1 of 2018 draws to a close. Like most businesses, you probably have quarterly goals, benchmarks and KPIs to measure your marketing and sales efforts. And most likely, social media is part of your overall marketing strategy.

Social media ad spending accounts for 16% of the digital ad market but for many people it is still a crapshoot. This is why it’s important to set clear goals and actively measure your social media efforts to help you identify useful insight and trends, increase your reach and deliver the content that your followers are most likely to engage with. So, if you are interested in measuring social media effectiveness (which you should be), here are 5 social media metrics to pay attention to and how to track them.

1. Page Likes & Followers

The most basic metric you should pay attention to is the growth of your social media pages’ Likes and Followers. You can do that by manually going to the insights or analytics page on each individual platform and downloading reports, or you can aggregate that data by using a social management tool such as Sprout Social or Hootsuite. This is especially beneficial in streamlining your efforts if you are managing multiple pages and brands or want to perform a more in-depth competitive analysis.

2. Post Engagement

Increasing your social channel’s following is great and all, but that can be irrelevant if those fans aren’t actually engaging with your content. There are several ways to measure the engagement level of your posts across social media platforms. For Twitter this could be tracking mentions, retweets, favorites and use of your specific brand hashtag. For Instagram it could be likes, mentions, comments and use of your brand’s hashtag. On Facebook, engagement equates to likes, comments, shares and mentions. Each platform offers insights and analytics to view levels of engagement, giving you the ability to analyze what type of content your followers react and respond to. It can be pretty exciting to see those notifications for retweets, shares and mentions roll in.

3. Impressions and Reach

• Impressions = the number of times your posts or tweets were displayed on someone’s social media feed or homepage
• Reach = the number of individual people (accounts) that saw your content

Facebook describes Post Reach as “the number of people who had any posts from your Page enter their screen.” And, in the “Reach” tab under Facebook Insights, they break it down into organic vs. paid. Paid will obviously only play a factor if you are creating ads. Typically, impressions will be higher than reach because one person might see the same piece of content multiple times if their friends share it. Instagram Insights will display your posts’ overall reach and impressions over the past seven days. Twitter Analytics measure “tweet impressions” over a one-month period and will display whether you are trending up or down. Facebook Insights are the most robust out of these three primary social platforms, giving you the option to analyze data within the past week or month; and shows a breakdown of all published posts with levels of reach and engagement for each. Here are some tips to easily increase your organic Facebook reach.

4. Audience Demographics

Understanding the demographics of your digital audience is imperative to creating content that they will relate, respond and react to. This information can be accessed in the Insights or Analytics section on each platform. On Facebook there is a tab under “Insights” called “People” that shows what percentage of your followers are men or women, what age groups they fall into and where they live. You can dive even further into the analytics by clicking on “People Engaged” to see who in your audience is the most interactive. This can be especially helpful if, for instance, your target audience is young adults between the ages of 20-25, but the people that engage with your posts the most are 35-44 years old. Based on that info, you can then adjust your messaging and types of content to speak to a younger audience.

5. Lead Generation

To track leads coming through social media, you will need to setup Google Analytics conversion goals. Here is a step-by-step process how to set up specific goals in Google Analytics. Once you set up a conversion goal within Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > Social > Conversions to view a report of how many leads your social media channels are bringing to your website and which platforms are performing the best. This will help determine where to focus your efforts and your advertising budget (if paid social is part of your strategy).

According to Hubspot, over 84% of marketers had an increase in web traffic from investing even just 6 hours per week in social media efforts. 

While there are ways to measure social media ROI and effectiveness, there are also many intangible benefits, such as increasing brand visibility, building customer relationships, dialogue with prospective clients and humanizing your brand. Your website and social media pages are the first places that customers go for information about your business, so make sure they represent your brand well and are optimized to achieve your goals.