10 Ways to Spring Clean Your Social Media
Set-it-and-forget social media strategy? Nope. Don’t even try it. The importance of social media optimization is more relevant than ever, and there’s no better time than spring to take a brief step back and clean it up, to spring forward! Here are ten ways to spring-clean your social media and ensure you don’t miss a single nook or cranny.
- Update Your Profile Photos and Bio
Your profile photo, cover photo, and bio are your first impression. This is what people notice as soon as they pull up your account, whether it’s on Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Pinterest, or Facebook. And, while consistency is key and you want people to recognize you each time they land on your profile, it’s also a good idea to refresh it regularly or anytime launch a new product or service.
Do an audit of your current photos and bio. Do these reflect who you are today? Are they in line with your brand guidelines? Even your profile photo can echo your brand color palette. Make sure the entire look is polished and professional.
- Check for Consistency Across Platforms
While you’re updating your profile, make sure that it’s consistent across all platforms. Photos, colors, images, design elements, and copy should all relate back to your brand guidelines. Incorporating brand strategy into marketing through social media is an opportunity to flex your creative muscles. Someone shouldn’t find themselves switching between LinkedIn and TikTok wondering if it’s the same person. You want to make it as easy as possible for someone to connect with you on one platform and find and follow you on others.
Also, if you have contact info on your profiles, make sure they’re each leading to the same email address and phone number. You don’t want info@ in one place, while another has questions.
- Switch Up Your ‘Pinned’ Posts
Your pinned posts are just as important as your profile photo and bio. This is where you can tell your story and keep it front and center. Use your pinned posts to highlight more about you, promote current offerings, drive traffic to fresh content, or share your current messaging. This can be a blend of evergreen and time-sensitive content — just make sure you swap it out when a timely offer is over.
- Reorganize Your Story Highlights
Also there with your profile and pinned photos are your Instagram story highlights. These help you tell even more about your brand story, including the verticals that are important to you. It adds to the look and feel of your content, and it organizes your profile in a way that lets people get to know you quickly. Think of them like different menu tabs of a website! A well-organized and visually appealing profile is more likely to attract more followers and more engagement, putting you in a position to grow your reach.
- Clear Out the Bots
It’s not your fault. Everyone gets bot followers, and it might be nice to see that follower count with a little bit of padding. But it’s time to clear the fake friends out. By omitting spam bots, you’ll cultivate an audience that’s authentic and engaged. You’ll watch your engagement metrics increase, including likes, comments, and shares, and, as that engagement increases, so will your visibility. Social platforms reward content with engagement, so engagement begets more engagement — and that comes from a real audience.
Plus, bots and spam followers can hurt your credibility. They may have ended up on your page without your permission, but others may think you bought followers. And, in the worst of scenarios, these fake followers can try to hack your account.
- Test Out New Platform Features
You’ve probably noticed many brands and accounts you follow on Instagram trying out a new tactic. “Comment GUIDE for my latest travel guide!” You’ve seen it enough times to realize this is something new, and others are using it for marketing, but you haven’t had time to explore it yourself.
Now is the time. Use your social media spring cleaning as a time to get ahead of trends. Check out what others are doing and see where you can stretch your creativity or try innovative new features. Social media platforms also prioritize content that utilizes their latest and greatest, so it’s a win-win.
- Audit the Hashtags You Use
You may have several sets of hashtags you use depending on the type of post and the content, but you shouldn’t let those hashtags get stale. New ones are continuously popping up, and they’re one of the best ways to stay on top of trending content. Take this opportunity to audit your hashtags to optimize your reach and visibility within your industry and target audience. Look at what people are talking about. What topics are trending? When you leverage the right hashtags, you improve your content discoverability.
- Look at Who Has the Keys
If you’ve had recent (or not-so-recent) turnover, it might surprise you who still has access to your accounts. Spring clean your social media passwords and clean out your admin access. Facebook is notoriously hard — and your former employees will be just as glad to no longer receive your notifications.
- Assess Your Feedback Strategy
Replying to comments and direct messages thoughtfully is one of the best ways to build trust and credibility with your audience. Even if you’re a brand or business account, replying with an individual voice adds a personal touch. It reminds people there’s a human behind the screen.
Take this time to look at how you’ve replied to feedback and create a plan going forward. Will you check in daily? Once in the morning and once in the evening? Will it be a consistent person responding each time and will they sign their name on the message? This should become part of your brand guidelines.
- Create or Update Facebook Albums
When you create or update a Facebook album, it shows up as a new post on your page, which pushes it to people’s feeds and allows them to like, comment, or explore the album. This is an engagement tactic to keep recirculating your content to your audience and keep it organized so they can go into your archives and find what they’re looking for.
Let’s Get to Work!
Want to dive deeper into your social media presence? Let us do the heavy lifting! Our team has their eye on the ball of what’s trending on social media and how it can be realistically leveraged on your channels in a way that feels both attainable and exciting. Contact us today and let’s discuss your social media brand.
