It can be tricky to navigate social media as a business. There is a balancing act between posting too much or too little, it can be tough to predict what kind of content will best resonate with your followers, and social media algorithms are always changing – so even if you do create a high-quality post that your followers would love, how can you make sure it shows up in their newsfeeds?
As much as social media “rules” are ever-changing, there are a few constants. These proven rhythms allow you to leverage your social strategy as much as possible despite the challenge of keeping up with social media trends.
Social Platform-Specific Best Practices
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Facebook sees most of its shares and “likes” on posts between 1-3 p.m., and the most successful days to post on are Thursdays and Fridays. Organic reach is claimed to be “all but gone” on Facebook, which continues to be the most dominant social media platform, so investing in sponsored/boosted posts and Facebook advertising is a huge piece of growing your business page.
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Tweets see the highest click-through rate at noon and 6 p.m., with Wednesdays and weekends being the best days for B2C activity. Twitter has always been an outstanding resource for cultivating relationships, making it vital to engage in conversations with your followers on this platform.
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Pinterest is an underrated platform for retailers. It’s all about saving and sharing images, creating an opportunity for you to showcase your boat inventory and entice buyers. Organize your Pinterest boards by boat type, as well as accessories and parts. You could even create boards with ideas for summer fun on your local lake, tips for reeling in the biggest fish in your region, or how-to guides for cleaning and maintaining your units. Take what you know about your customers and cater your pins and boards to their interests and hobbies. Saturdays are generally known to be the best day to pin, with 9 p.m. being the peak time of day.
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As the second largest search engine after Google, YouTube is the place consumers go to watch videos of the boats and other marine products they are interested in. A video of your newest wakeboarding boat in action will sell it faster than any image can. The highest engagement activity on this platform takes place Thursday through Sunday, with engagement rising after the workday ends at 6 p.m. The ability to share YouTube videos on other social media channels is key, because video is only becoming more popular and more important to a successful social strategy.
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Instagram is the newest platform of the bunch, but it’s not a trend – it’s here to stay. For younger generations especially, Instagram is a major player in the world of social. Any day is a good day to post on Instagram – the platform shows consistent engagement all throughout the week. The best time of day to post is between 3-4 p.m.
General Best Practices for Social Media
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Don’t post too often…especially if most of those posts are focused on selling. For example: “End of summer discount on our pontoon models! Hurry in – sale ends Sunday!” While you may be providing your followers with valuable information that many of them will be interested in, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too many promotions. At best, they’ll start ignoring them because you post them so often. At worst, they’ll get annoyed and un-follow you.
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Make sure to post enough. If your followers barely hear from you, they’ll be confused when you do post. Social media is a huge piece of advertising, and if you’re not regularly showing up, your potential customers may forget about you or get the impression that you don’t care enough to make the effort. Try to achieve a good balance by posting once per day, with only 1-2 promotional posts per week. Look at your engagement to guide your strategy from there – if you’re getting tons of “likes” and comments on every post, consider bumping up your number of posts. If engagement per post is beginning to wane, it might be a signal that you are posting a bit too frequently.
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Engage with your followers. The whole reason you’re on social media in the first place is to connect with your followers, AKA potential customers! If people are commenting on your posts and especially if they’re asking questions, you need to respond to them! Not only will your participation help your followers and make them more likely to follow through on a purchase, but it will also help you drive further engagement, earning you even more followers.
The bottom line – there’s no secret trick to mastering social media as a business, but there are a handful of proven methods and best practices that can give your dealership a leg up. Use this blog post as a “cheat sheet” to best leverage your activity on the most popular social media platforms, but also use your best judgement. No one knows your business and your customers like you do – so don’t glue yourself to any “rule” that isn’t a good fit. Whatever you do, make social a priority for your dealership – it’s an important aspect of marketing and keeping you in touch with your customers.
Thank you to research from MarketingProfs for platform-specific statistics.
