SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT & STRATEGY

Manayunk Development Corp - Manayunk.com

This is a personalized and developed plan for your social media, to identify and illuminate your brand's intent while attracting the right following and turning them into customers. Creating a social media strategy to follow and preparing your content about a month in advance will not only relieve the immediate ‘omg I need to get a post up ASAP’ urge that usually ends up as rushed and not properly branded, it will also allow you to create a beautifully curated and flowing feed that attracts your ideal customer and gets them to click the follow button.

Typically a person decides within 3 seconds if they want to follow an account or not. We’re dealing with super short attention spans, so you want to make sure your bio and feed are attractive and interesting enough to make that person want to follow you immediately. It’s equally important that you keep consistent in your quality of content and frequency so that your followers continue following you.

Every time you create content and put together a post for social media you want to keep the following question in mind: “Will my ideal customer find this entertaining, informational, or inspiring?”. Social media should be used as a conversation piece, developing relationships and building community as much as it is to help you promote sales.

Social media should be part of every business’s marketing plan, but with so many platforms to choose from it's important to be selective about where you put your time and energy. It's better to consistently engage with 1-3 platforms than to spread yourself too thin over all of them. Manayunk.com’s main focuses right now are Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, a great place to start, so we’re going to focus on those strategies here. It is important to set guidelines to refer back to and remind yourself of your main goals to represent your brand properly and reach those goals - and that’s exactly what we’ve outlined below.

Index

CREATE A PURPOSE-DRIVEN ACCOUNT

PLAY UP YOUR PROFILE
YOUR IDEAL CLIENT - WHO YOU'RE SPEAKING TO
THE MAIN GOAL OF THE ACCOUNT
DEFINING THE ACCOUNT CATEGORY
ADJECTIVES TO DESCRIBE THE FEEL OF THE ACCOUNT
KEYWORDS TO DESCRIBE THE VISUAL STYLE

PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTITY

CREATE A PURPOSE-DRIVEN ACCOUNT

PLAY UP YOUR PROFILE

Make sure your bio is strong, including what you offer and what to expect from the account. This is important for all three platform profiles. It’s great that on the Instagram and Twitter profiles you’re mentioning Live, Shop, Dine, Play but it is currently inconsistent messaging and Facebook doesn’t have a description at all. You’ll want to create a very consistent profile bio by stating the most important items and exactly WHAT the viewer will get out of your account and WHY they should follow your account and join your journey. You’ll want to create a concise and consistent message with keywords that will tell the viewers on all three platforms exactly what they’ll be getting from your posts - your “promise”. Essentially think of your bio as a quick promise you’re making to your followers about what your brand offers them. It should be something along the lines of “Bringing you the best of Manayunk! COME LIVE, SHOP, DINE AND PLAY! Urban Experience, Small Town Charm” and could include an emoji or two to bring color and an eye catching element to your bio.

Many people don’t know this, but the name section of your profile on Instagram and Twitter is actually a searchable element! So just like your @manayunkdotcom account tag, when people are typing in keywords to search, your account can be found based on what is in your @ account tag or your “name”. Switching up your name from “Manayunk.com” to “Manayunk, Philadelphia” will help boost your visibility when people search both keywords “Manayunk” or “Philadelphia”. Right now you don’t have Philadelphia as a searchable keyword at all, so I think adding that will help maximize your searchable reach, and also inform people who are unaware that Manayunk is part of Philadelphia. (Seems obvious, I know, but as a transplant to this city you’d be surprised how many people don’t know that Manayunk is in fact within Philly’s city limits). This search-ability is a little secret not many people realize, but you want to use the searchable keywords as much as possible in the correct locations so your account pops up when people type those words in!

On all accounts, make sure your profile image is clear, readable, and a good representation of your brand. We recommend choosing one iconic image or logo to represent your brand and make it the same across all three accounts - this creates the consistent brand recognition you want your brand to have so viewers know that it’s Manayunk.com no matter what platform they're on. We want to see your brand represented the same way consistently across all platforms (websites, marketing materials, etc.) Overall there is brand consistency between the three accounts with the MNYK logo, but right now your profile image for Twitter and Instagram is slightly cut off, compared to Facebook which fits nicely in the circular crop. You should adjust Instagram and Twitter to fit like Facebook’s so none of the letters are being cropped out and they are all exactly the same.

On Instagram, you should have your profile set up as a professional account, which you have - great work! With the features and tools available under the business account you will be able to track analytics and insights to understand your following, engagement, best times of day to post, and more. It is essential to Instagram success that you pay attention to these. We recommend at the end of every month doing an analytics review to understand the past month, and adjust your strategy as needed going forward based on this information. If /when we are doing Social Media Management for you we will be doing an in-depth analytics review at the end of each month and report it to you.

Another great feature about having the business profile is that you have the ability to categorize your account. Currently you have it listed as a “local business”, but I would recommend possibly switching it over to “community”. Since your goal for the Instagram account is primarily to bring attention, awareness, and traffic to the community and businesses of Manayunk this may make more sense, especially because you are a nonprofit rather than a for profit business that is selling something directly.

A business account will also allow you to add a location tag, which you should take advantage of and are not currently. Using location tags in your profile and individual posts allows for the account to be found through location searches. In each post on Instagram and Facebook, you can use geotags to tag the “location” of the post, which you should do every time and you can mix them up to widen your reach - for example rather than using “Manayunk” each time you can use more specific locations such as individual businesses, etc. These geotags are used in a similar way as hashtags to broaden your visibility. When people are searching through those locations, your posts will show up.

For the website link on Instagram, we usually recommend creating a page on your site that includes all the links you want to share on social media rather than using a third-party site like Linktree, for example. The reason for this is that it can drive traffic to your site rather than giving it to a third-party. In your case, because there are so many moving pieces to your business I recognize that your social media manager may not have access to editing a page on your website easily, so using a Linktree is acceptable. Right now you don’t have a direct link to the Manyunk.com home page and I would recommend adding that to the bottom of the list of links. If you can offer a freebie you should add that in the bio directing them to your link as well. Unlike Pinterest and Facebook where you can have live links in the post, Instagram only allows you to have them in your bio, so you will always want to keep these links updates and current. We recommend using call to actions anytime you have the opportunity, try to direct people to your website. If in a caption if you are directing them somewhere specific make sure that the link is accessible and at the top in your Linktree.

YOUR IDEAL CLIENT - WHO YOU'RE SPEAKING TO

Your ideal customers are adults who are in the Philadelphia area - but not leaving out the tourist either. We’re going to be targeting people with disposable income who can enjoy dining and shopping regularly. These target customers live in or near Manayunk, but for larger events especially we are looking to pull in a crowd from a wider net in the tri-state area. Remember those geotags we talked about? You can use them to target these locations where your target markets live, work, and are searching on social media.

To target these ideal customers you want to ALWAYS keep them in mind when creating any type of content. Remember to ask yourself, “Will my ideal client find this entertaining, informational, or inspiring?” Tailor everything you do to them.

To help you get in this mindset you can create an “Ideal Customer Profile” and make a person up, from their name to history to personal lifestyle and hobbies. What are their interests? What do they do for work? How do they spend their time? Write it all down on a piece of paper or type it out on your computer, and create this fictional person who is YOUR perfect customer. Then every time you create content re-read it and keep her or him in mind like everything is created exactly for them.

THE MAIN GOAL OF THE ACCOUNT

Ideally, the goal is to attract people to become patrons of the businesses in Manayunk, but as mentioned above developing relationships and building community in this social space is important in that process as well. Rather than simply posting new events/promotions/businesses, take advantage of the opportunity to have direct contact with your community and potential customers by sharing the story behind the business, event, mural, or something that makes that subject of the post unique and special. How can your customer use this item? How will it benefit their life? In what ways can they make memories with it? When posting it is important to make things personal, sell them on the idea of how this will change or affect their life in some meaningful way. So if you are sharing a story of a business owner or an event thats coming up, finish it with how you know/hope this can bring joy into their family too - or whatever makes sense to entice them to come to that event or support that business for themselves. Just like with blogging and email, think about what additional benefits you can share to inspire, entertain, or educate your followers. By being personable and building relationships your followers will begin to feel like they know you, your brand, and begin to trust and want to support you. This is what converts followers into customers!

DEFINING THE ACCOUNT CATEGORY

Lifestyle: tastemaker, follow because they look up to the “the life experience”

You’re sharing the lifestyle, tastes, feelings, and businesses of Manayunk. You help your followers see how they can make the joys in Manayunk a part of their lifestyle.

ADJECTIVES TO DESCRIBE THE FEEL OF THE ACCOUNT

Your brand is "friendly" and "familiar". Try to incorporate images of families, dogs, and kids often to attract your target audience. Feature the faces of our business owners so your followers can get to know them too, this helps build that sense of community and takes things deeper than just promoting a “business”. People connect with other people and their stories. Also feature things in the district that can't be found anywhere else like the unique public art, scenery/greenery, holiday light displays, etc.

KEYWORDS TO DESCRIBE THE VISUAL STYLE

Bright, Colorful, Natural, Clean, Lifestyle

Just like how you’re creating content specifically for your ideal customer, you will want to keep the visual style and feel of the account in mind. Have these words written down on that same sheet of paper so that every time you read it over before creating content you have them at the forefront of your mind. This will create consistency in your visual content and make your branding recognizable and memorable for your customers. It will also create that cohesive look that is so desired when looking at your account pages as a whole.

PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTITY

Your photographic identity is conveyed not only by the pictures you show but also by the ones you don’t show. A good social portfolio helps customers look forward to what they can expect during their experience. Not only does it share what to expect, but also your brand’s personality. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Here are a few community focused Instagram accounts whose aesthetics, categories, and goals are similar to yours and who you might draw inspiration from, and can use as market research to get ideas from since they may be competitors:

1) @cityofphiladelphia (Some great photos, some not so great but they have a good following and you can see how they incorporate some bigger events and elements of what’s going on worldly into their posts.)

2 @oldcityphilly (They are doing amazing job of showcasing beautiful photography that is bright and colorful, though they could incorporate more faces to create more of a sense of personalization and community.)

3) @southstreephilly (Not bad but could be done better, notice how some of the info graphics get cropped off in the square formatting, and some of the photos are dark and unedited, these are the sort of mistakes that we want to try to avoid. They do however have Philadelphia in their name on the account, so I was able to find them easily when searching “Philadelphia”.)

Manayunk.com’s photographic identity on social media will mostly consist of photos from reposts from accounts and images sourced from the locals and businesses, but whenever possible you should always uses professional photography.

iPhone photos are fine to use, however, one thing that reigns true time and time again is that high-quality photos ALWAYS get better engagement and make your brand look more professional. So, if you’re going to take photos on your phone consider staging and editing them in a way that makes them come across as high quality and represents your brand in the best light. We also recommend using sourced professionally photographed images from the businesses whenever possible, doing this will save you time and energy while making sure you’re sharing quality imagery - it’s a win-win! Keep in mind though, your visual style keywords to make sure that if you are using sourced images that they fit your visual style, and if not, then you’re better off taking the images yourself or directing a photographer to do so. NEVER share blurry or pixilated photos! This immediately makes the brand look unprofessional, and will reduce engagement on the post. We want to put our best foot forward, so even if a business sends you photos that are low resolution ask them to send better shots or go take some new ones (when possible). This should be a rule for your member businesses who want to be promoted on social media. They don’t have to hire a professional photographer, they can use iPhone photography, but it needs to be high resolution enough that when posted the images will not show up as pixelated or blurry. I would recommend adding this to the document that you share with the members so that the expectation is set in advance.

We noted some pixilated and blurry posts on Instagram specifically, but a few on Facebook as well. You will want to improve the quality of the images as the brand continues to grow to continue using higher-quality images over time. It seems that the posts that are shared through the re-share app especially don’t look as highest quality, but there are others as well. We recognize that this is hard because you were pulling images from so many different sources, re-sharing, and not taking all of the photography yourself. There’s only so much you can do, but keeping in mind that you should never share a blurry or pixelated photo will help you choose content in the future that is higher quality from the start, which will help! For the most part you’re doing a good job of posting photos that fit the “bright, colorful, clean, lifestyle, natural” look that you’re shooting for in your visual style. There are a few images here and there that don’t 100%. into that, but it’s not enough to be problematic currently. As mentioned above, just keep these visual style adjectives written down on your document when you’re creating and pulling content so they’re at the forefront of your mind with all the images you use.

Your chosen brand colors should always be represented in your social media feed, not necessarily in every image, but when you look at the feed as a whole it should look like your unique brand. This creates cohesiveness across your platforms and marketing avenues, making your brand more memorable and recognizable. In your case this is simple because your main color is red, with the addition of white and black. Make sure that read is included frequently in your posting whenever possible, as we’ve discussed above, this creates a sense of brand awareness even if it is subconscious just through color repetition.

With Facebook, you have the added benefit of the social sharing image being shown when you add a link to a post, so here you’ll want to continue uploading high-quality and high-resolution images. Graphics could be implemented when it makes sense, but overall great photography usually will suffice as you can add the information in the text of the post as well as any live link that is applicable.

Another thing to consider about your photographic identity is how specialized or generalized your brand should be. From a branding perspective, the specific categories you pursue will make you more proficient in certain areas and will be what your audience begins to know you for. We will break down the categories of your branding here and cover how Manayunk.com can best utilize category posting to attract your ideal audience.

IMPLEMENTING YOUR STRATEGY

GATHERING CONTENT

Gathering content in advance will allow you to pull from a large group and ease that stress of having to take or pull a last-minute photo which usually doesn’t end up looking as good as pre-planned and edited content, specifically in the grid view of your feed. Initially, I’d recommend gathering as much photo and video content as you can, that way you have a good foundation to start from and that you will continue to build on overtime. Doing branded photoshoots a few times a year is also encouraged because you’re able to get a lot of imagery in one session and can pull from that for months. Photoshoots can be used for specific campaigns as well.

Determine what content you have and what content you need. When using monthly themes you’ll easily be able to determine in advance what content needs to be created from scratch, or what you already have to pull from. The content you need you can plan to create yourself and/or pull from other accounts’ social media for reposts, or schedule with a professional photographer/videographer if it makes sense. As mentioned above, source any high-quality images from featured brands/businesses that you can (as long as they match with your visual style) this will save you time and energy from having to create the content yourself while also making your brand look professional.

Create a Google Drive or Dropbox folder for gathering content where you can create internal folders for each category, season, or holiday. You can also have a folder for “used” images so make sure you’re not repeating, unless intentional. Planning your months/quarters in advance with us allows you the time to create the content in a timely manner without the stress of a quick deadline or turnaround.

PLANNING CONTENT

On a monthly basis, you should create a new posting schedule for the following month following your monthly/quarterly themes and taking into consideration national holidays, social media holidays, events, sales, your marketing strategy, etc. Start with a content calendar that follows the posting schedule and content frequency we outlined below. We’d recommend designation a couple of days in the middle of the month to plan and schedule as much social media content for the following month as possible. If that doesn’t work for your schedule you can break it up to fit your availability - don’t stress yourself out, it should be a fun process! Create each month's posting schedule on the content calendar using a Google Calendar created specifically for your social media strategy. Break up your posts per platform so you can see all your content mapped out and how it should overlap. Remember, each piece of content can be maximized by making it into multiple pieces of content across all your marketing channels! This is great for brand consistency and recognition, as we discussed above, while also helping you get the information to the masses by maximizing all your platforms.

We can help get you set up with a platform to help plan your monthly content, track analytics, designate categories, store your hashtag collections, and more. We use Later because you can schedule for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn, but have also seen success with PLANN or Planoly For Instagram and Facebook. Here you’ll be able to upload your content in advance while organizing posts to view your feed, write captions, and schedule posts to go live on the days you’ve planned in your content calendar. You can also host your custom hashtag collections in these apps as well!

CONTENT TYPES

You may have heard that Instagram is moving towards video and it’s absolutely correct. In order to compete with TikTok, Instagram is encouraging video over static photography posts much more now. This means that they are favoring videos, and videos are much more likely to get higher engagement rates and be boosted by the algorithm. That’s why they have introduced Reels, to be in direct competition with TikTok. This means that you should be using video whenever possible. Videos can be actual recorded videos or photographs compiled into videos. Either way, you should be trying to post at least one video a week in your feed, as Reels, IGTV, or Live - and if more that’s even better! These days video is Queen.

It looks like previously there were more videos being posted to your account, like the Manayunk Mornings series, for example. If you can get back to posting one video like that, or a new series, or even just in-house-made videos once a week (especially as Reels) that would be great for boosting your account's visibility! Reels are the number one way to gain new eyes to your account currently. These videos can be maximized by sharing to Facebook and Twitter as well. Ask yourself as you’re creating every post “could I turn this into a video?”. We’d recommend that for featured posts that your member businesses request for you to share that you ask them to share a few videos as well as a few photos, so you have the option of choosing which is the best!

Instagram and Facebook Live are other great features to use, and you can save the videos to your profile as posts so it’s double the content and reach! Instagram notifies your followers when you go live, so that is a great way to get people to immediately start interacting with your account, and once you post the recorded video to your page you can double up on the engagement because that post functions as a regular post. But remember how he said that video on Instagram is King? This is one of the easiest ways to maximize a video into multiple pieces of content to benefit your accounts. Any time there is an event, you should be going Live even just for a few minutes. Now, You don’t have to share the Live recorded video to your feed if it wasn’t that great, or if it would break up the feed and look wonky, but it is an option! Either way, the videos can continue to live under the video tab on your profile. It looks like previously some of the featured businesses and brands were going live during their takeovers, they should be encouraged even if it’s just a short couple-minute video.

As you begin to make more videos, you could begin to use TikTok. TikTok is a great way to get new eyes and reach new audiences because it would be a new platform for you. While most social media platforms have a lot of overlap in their audience, they do each cater slightly to different audiences, and while TikTok is somewhat for a younger generation, that generation will be your target market before you know it. There are also a lot of people within your target market that are using that app only to consume content as well. Like we talked about before, maximize and content you make into as many posts as possible to get as much reach as possible. Why not double up on any videos you make and post them to every platform you can. If you are going to start using TikTok though, you would probably want to be sharing at least a few new posts a week, so this is something that you should build up to rather than starting right now. As video becomes more prominent in your content creation you can take all those previous videos and begin uploading them to TikTok once you have a collection of past videos and know you have a good stream of new videos coming in as well.

FREQUENCY

Remember, it’s about quality, not quantity. With that being said, consistency is key, and the more often you post the more outreach you have to potential new followers (aka customers) and your current followers will begin to rely on your regular posting.

For Instagram and Facebook, your goal is to share 1 post a day, but if you scale down it would be really acceptable to shoot for 5 posts per week which would maintain frequent and consistent posting. On Instagram stories 5+ times a day is ideal. Stories (unlike carefully curated and executed feed posts, Reels, and IGTV) can be more raw and organic showing your followers the reality behind the businesses and community. You can still plan curated stories, but it’s okay and actually encouraged to be more natural, unscripted, and spontaneous there. Especially now, stories are doing better than ever to boost engagement and viability when used in the right way. We’ll discuss this more in detail in the section below. Reels and IGTV videos should be a part of the 5-7 weekly posts, because as we have forementioned, video content is highly favored on social media platforms now, and will greatly boost your ranking in the algorithm. You may notice immediately that your video content gets more views and engagement, and that is just because the platform is favoring that content.

For Twitter, 5-7 posts per week would be ideal. Start with doing 1 a day and use different content with different links whenever possible (events, business features, etc). You can build up to multiple posts a day as your content and business grows.

We’ve outlined recommendations for how many posts per category you should include each month, assuming you post 20-31 times a month on each platform, not including stories. Just like everything, this is flexible, but it will help create a structure for your monthly planning and content calendar that we discussed above.

When thinking about categories and frequency there are other aspects of your business that you will want to consider. How much of your brand is business features versus how much is a lifestyle? We want to strike a sweet balance. This can help direct your category frequency and help you shape your menu of highlights.

You should always be using your insights and analytics to help optimize when the best times to post are based on your follower’s peak activity times. You want to post 30 minutes to 1 hour before the peak time each day, to optimize the number of viewers seeing your posts on their feed.

Categories + Frequency per month based on 20-31 posts a month for Facebook + Instagram:

Instagram + Facebook:

Business Features 8-12 per month, that would be 2-3 per week
- Business Takeovers Weekends
- “Feature Friday” or “Fitness Friday”
- “Takeout Tuesday”
- “Sunday Shopping”
Lifestyle/Community 4-12 per month, that would be 1-3 per week
Events 4-12 per month, that would be 1-3 per week (completely dependant on time of year and events schedule)
News (Updates & Announcements, not related to events or business features) 4-12 per month, that would be 1-3 per week
Current Events (Local/National/Global) on a relevant basis, doesn’t need to be forced, but when makes sense

Categories + Frequency per month based on 20-31 posts a month for Twitter:

Lifestyle
Events 4-12 per month, that would be 1-3 per week (completely dependant on time of year and events schedule)
News (Updates & Announcements, not related to events or business features) 4-12 per month, that would be 1-3 per week
Current Events (Local/National/Global) on a relevant basis, doesn’t need to be forced, but when makes sense
Retweets whenever relevant

CAPTIONS

When writing the captions imagine you’re speaking directly to your ideal customer (review the ideal customer profile that you created before making content and writing captions). Captions are an essential part of building a relationship with your followers. Ways to engage with your following are a call to action and asking questions that provoke easy and short answers in the comments, specifically for Instagram and Facebook.

The most successful accounts use a combination of short and long captions. Use longer, more thoughtful cations when necessary, but keep in mind that people have short attention spans so you don’t get too long-winded. Long captions can be a way to give insight into the business you’re featuring, the importance of an event, etc. - being personable will gain your follower’s trust and support. People respond well to things they can relate to. When redirecting to another piece of content, like an event page, think of the caption as a way to give them a taste of what they're going to get, but not so much that they’ve had enough and don’t want to click through to finish the meal. Give them the quick information they need, but also encourage them with a call to action to go get all the juicy details through the link. This will help boost your website traffic. You are including a nice mix of long and short captions currently, keep this up.

On Facebook and Twitter, remember that you can include live links. Use this whenever possible. Sadly on Instagram, you will only be able to use live links in the stories, so whenever using a call to action in your caption direct them to the link in your profile and include your @manayunkdotcom tag so they can easily get to your profile.

HASHTAGS

Right now hashtags are rather confusing. In the last few months Instagram has released that instead of using all 30 hashtags and posting them in a comment, you should be posting your hashtags in the caption and only using 8-12, but then shortly after they release that you should only be using 3-5. The reason for this is because they partnered up with Google and hashtags that are included in your caption are now going to be able to be found on the Google search engine. Always put the hashtags in your caption now. We recommend doing them at the very bottom of the caption and including some breaks between the actual caption in the hashtags, by making a few returns and including spacers like periods, dashes, or something else. You don’t want to distract from the actual caption with the hashtags. With all that being said, they’re always making changes and I think for every single account it makes the most sense to see what works best for your account. This will take a little bit of figuring, but generally, if you shoot to have around 12 hashtags that’s a great place to start. Try using a few more, then a few less, and see how the engagement and reach on the post does. Whatever posts are getting the best reach and engagement you want to continue using that number for your hashtag strategy.

Each social media category should have a cohort of hashtags to boost the searchability of your posts on Instagram. I recommend using a few hashtags for each category and adding another few custom tags that relate specifically to each individual post. When choosing hashtags remember to use those that attract customers, not just other businesses in the industry. What are your ideal customers looking at? What are they interested in? What are they searching for? Use these questions to direct your hashtag choices.

The hashtag collections can live in the planning app we discussed before, for easy access. Whether you have us help you with your social media management moving forward or not, there are a ton of planning apps that can help you optimize your hashtags. You don’t want to necessarily use the same copy-pasted hashtags every single time you post, that’s why you break them into your categories and add a few unique hashtags for every post. Each post should have organic tags for what is trending and what is directly in the image/post for relevance. Now that Instagram has partnered with Google they are really encouraging having very targeted and specified hashtags, the more specified you can be the better. By that, we mean to make sure that the hashtags you are using are very relevant to the actual post.

We recommend revisiting your hashtag collections at least once a year to keep them fresh, current, and relevant. Over time hashtags will build in quantity, and you don’t want to be using only oversaturated hashtags with over 1 million uses. It’s best to have a mix of some different ranges from 5,000 to 750,000. Hashtags with a lower number of uses will allow your content to stay up near the top of the hashtag pages longer but may have fewer eyes overall, while hashtags with more uses may have more eyes in general but your content is likely to get bumped down faster. Just like everything with social media, it’s about striking a balance. We can create hashtag collections for you based on your categories once we go over this strategy with you and you are ready to move forward with everything we’ve outlined. These are also something we include, and continue to maintain, with our social media management subscription if you’d like to work with us on that going forward.

Right now you are averaging about 15 hashtags a post on Instagram, which is a great place to start.

On Facebook keep them fewer, about only 5 per post, but you can include them in every post. You’re currently not using any hashtags on Facebook and we recommend starting to use a few, up to 5, With every post. Make them extremely relevant and targeted to the post.

When it comes to Twitter hashtags should be kept to 2. You can use as many as you like, just like with Facebook, but 2 is the sweet spot. It’ll be best to use very relevant and targeted hashtags here as well.

ENGAGEMENT

Routine engagement in your social feed is essential for building relationships and community. For 30 minutes each day, we recommend that you "engage" on all the platforms you are using for your social media marketing by liking, commenting on others’ posts, replying to comments on your posts, and direct messages. If you can periodically through the day as well, but setting time aside each day can streamline the process, ensure that you’re staying consistently engaged, and also prevent you from spending too much time on social media (it’s an easy rabbit hole to fall into and waste a lot of time).

Good following habits are engaging with and/or following suggested users and brands, but no more than 20 users an hour or 100 a day to avoid being shadowbanned or blocked on Instagram. Avoid following too many other accounts, be discerning when choosing who to follow to keep your followers following at a good ratio. Usually, you want to be following less than 50% of the followers you have. If you follow too many people it can seem spammy, which is why Instagram will shadowban users who follow or unfollow too many people within a certain period.

Gary Vee created an engagement strategy that helps boost your engagement while you engage with other accounts similar to yours. This is called $1.80 method, and they even created a website in Chrome extension for it. I’d recommend having your social media manager or an intern spend time every day using this method to engage with other similar accounts. This will help Instagram‘s algorithm understand what kind of account you are and help get your content in front of the eyes of people who are Following accounts similar to yours. This is a great outbound engagement method. It's different than the engagement that you're going to be doing on your own content and in your inbox, that is more internalized engagement, but both are very important.

STORIES AND STORY HIGHLIGHTS

People love social stories (as we mentioned before)! Remember those short attention spans? This is a quick and easy way to connect with your followers, and you don’t have to be as strict or curated with these. Your stories can be more fun, personal, behind the scenes - think of them as a slightly different platform than your curated feed. They only last 24 hours (unless saved to your highlights) and your viewers don’t see them compiled together in the same way they do your feed. That being said, you should still keep in mind your branding and the ideal customer when creating every story.

Re-sharing businesses post on your story is one of your main focuses is right now, and you should definitely continue doing this try to limit your overall story post to 20 or less a day. The sweet spot is between 5-20 stories a day. We recommend posting at least 1 authentic post to your story every day. This means content that is your own, not a re-share of someone else’s post or something found on the internet. Events, announcements, news, etc. are the perfect opportunities to create original story content. Videos always get more views and engagement, so consider using stories to do more of those and talk directly to your audience. People tend to love the directness of speaking to your audience on stories, so this is a great opportunity to encourage the brands that are taking over Instagram to do stories talking directly to the camera. In stories you can also encourage engagement by using features like asking questions, taking polls, etc. Entice your audience with a quick and easy call to action button, this will not only build a relationship with them but also benefit your algorithm ranking! Use at least one of these a day. Remember when creating this content to think of your ideal customer and if they will find it inspirational, educational, or entertaining. (Say it again for the people in the back!)

Currently, you have five highlights, which is the perfect amount, but sadly the LIVE highlight doesn't have any stories. Stories should be added so it is being utilized. The other highlight sections have stories, but those stories are getting older, and there aren’t many new ones. Highlights are best for sharing information that can be evergreen, meaning stories with information that will always be relevant. They can also be used for information that’s very important and you want to highlight right now, but if it is not something that is evergreen it should be removed after it’s relevant (like after an event or campaign ends for example). You want to strike a balance between the number of highlights and the number of stories in them. Too many will overwhelm a viewer and they are more likely to skip. It is best to go through and remove super old stories from your highlights every few months, especially if they’re no longer relevant. You can include dates to do this quarterly in your content calendar so it doesn't get forgotten.

ANALYTICS

Pay attention to these. You’ll want to continue producing content that gets high engagement and refrains from sharing things that don’t appeal to your audience as much. It’s also important to not let the numbers frustrate you if they’re not exactly what you want to see - the algorithm is always changing and social media is ever-evolving. It’s easy to get caught up on the numbers of your most recent post, but it’s not about individual posts, it’s about the collection of the account as a whole. Consistency and high-quality contents are the bread and butter to social media success, so keep your focus on producing and serving your audience over anything else. You should check your analytics monthly, and make adjustments to your strategy if needed.

After consistently following this strategy for 3 months go back and check month-to-month analytics to see the improvement in engagement, followers, and clicks to your website and other media. Analytics are the best way to determine what’s going well, and what is no longer serving your audience. Use them as a road map to direct you further. We include monthly analytics reviews with our social media management, and use them to help redirect our custom strategy for your brand.

COLLABORATIONS/CROSS-PROMOTION

You can reach a wider audience by taking advantage of collaborations and cross-promotions. Cross-promotion is mutually beneficial and usually, cost’s nothing. With the many businesses you have as members it makes sense to have them cross-promote you too as you promote their products on your site, magazine, and on your social media. This can direct more eyes that you know already have similar interests and will likely be your target market. Rather than only re-posting stories that your members and local businesses are tagging you in, consider posting original stories featuring and tagging them. This will likely be met with them re-sharing the story on their own story, and get your account in front of their followers. I recommend that every time we feature a business, or multiple businesses, in a post on the feed that we also have a coordinating story or a story sequence.

Another way to expand on this is to consider giveaways, shoutouts, features, etc. with other similar business accounts. Here, the possibilities are endless and we would be happy to explore them with you in developing your monthly themes and marketing strategies for continuity.

SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT & STRATEGY

Manayunk Development Corp - Manayunk.com

Index

CREATE A PURPOSE-DRIVEN ACCOUNT

PLAY UP YOUR PROFILE

YOUR IDEAL CLIENT - WHO YOU'RE SPEAKING TO

THE MAIN GOAL OF THE ACCOUNT

DEFINING THE ACCOUNT CATEGORY

ADJECTIVES TO DESCRIBE THE FEEL OF THE ACCOUNT

KEYWORDS TO DESCRIBE THE VISUAL STYLE

PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTITY

CATEGORIES

RECOMMEND SOCIAL MEDIA CATEGORIES

IMPLEMENTING YOUR STRATEGY

GATHERING CONTENT

PLANNING CONTENT

CONTENT TYPES

FREQUENCY

CAPTIONS

HASHTAGS

ENGAGEMENT

STORIES AND STORY HIGHLIGHTS

ANALYTICS

COLLABORATIONS/CROSS-PROMOTION