Best Practice Makes Perfect
Best practices are a set of guidelines, ethics or ideas that represent the most efficient course of action in a given business situation. What does this mean for you as a marketer? It means building an audience that trusts you and sees you, which will in turn maximize their efforts and campaigns. No one said its easy, which is why it takes best practice to make perfect!
ItsKristensKingdom best practices focusing on one platform and genuinely getting to know its audience. By social listening, one is able to see what others are saying about their social media channel and track, analyze, and respond to those conversations. Social listening involves monitoring channels to see when your brand is mentioned, looking at competitors, and relevant key words. ItsKristensKingdom practices listening to the audience, learning from it, and applying everything learned. As the owner of this account, I have been working on establishing my brand voice and tone. Making my account more personalized and talking like I would a friend, it allows me to build a better relationship with my audience as if they are all close friends.
Quick Tip: We always hear about the rule of thirds when it comes to photography, but have you heard of the social media ‘Rule of Thirds’?
1/3 of your posts should promote your business
1/3 of your posts should be ideas from others in the industry
1/3 of your posts should be personal stories to help build your brand
Using Instagram, it is important to learn the algorithm and learn the right time to post. ItsKristensKingdom uses best practice by analyzing which posts perform best on what days and what times. Instagram insights can let you know the best days and times it suggests posting. Here are a few quick steps broken down to take a peek:
1. On your business profile, click on insights.
2. At the top, I usually change it from ‘Last 7 Days’ to ‘Last 30 Days’ to get a larger date range.
3. Click ‘See All’ for Your Audience.
4. Here you can see your Follower Breakdown.
5. Scroll to the bottom and you can see your Most Active Times.
6. Toggle between Hours and Days
7. This will give you a quick insight on the best time and days to post!
It is important for a brand to know ideal posting times to be seen by their audience. Various studies have suggested the best times to Instagram. HubSpot suggests Thursday as the best day between 3PM and 4PM. SproutSocial suggests Wednesday at 11AM and Friday, between 11AM and 12PM. Later suggests 9AM-11AM. All of these times being Eastern Standard. Knowing the most ideal times to post on Instagram helps their audience see and interact with their posts. Otherwise, only few users would actually see the post before it gets lost in their feed. Although there is no single best time to post on Instagram, it is important to get a general idea of popular times and combine it with your specific audience’s Instagram Insights to learn the habits of your audience.
Good timing plays a large role in your social media campaigns because it increases your digital engagement rate and enhances the traffic to your site. If you post at the right time, you will have more likes, shares, and follows. Timing is everything! It will help your online presence succeed.
One of my favorite free tools to use outside of Instagram Insights that gives ideal posting times is the Instagram Post Planner on Influencer Marketing Hub. It is the easiest tool to use that pulls all of the information from your business profile. I have tried using other platforms before that help schedule your posts as well, but I find it easier just to do it myself since I don’t run multiple accounts. All you need to do is enter your Instagram username and the location of your largest following. If you don’t know this, you can check your Instagram Insights. This Instagram Post Planner calculates everything for you at the click of a button! It calculates your followers, engagement rate, and benchmark engagement rate. Underneath those metrics, it pulls the best times to post based on your most active followers time zones. This is beneficial if you have followers across various time zones. It goes further to show you Monday-Sunday best times laid out very easily and aesthetically pleasing. I have found this to be the best, easiest way for me to take a quick glance to find the best times to post each day.
We’re always told that practice makes perfect. It is engrained in us from when we are little kids. Being told this growing up, you always think it just relates to the youth sports. In reality, it goes far past that. It can relate to everything you do. Learning best practice is important for every social media manager to learn and implement to be seen by their audience in the most impactful way.
