100 Social Media Marketing Hacks You Need to Try

Social Media marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your brand, get traffic to your page, generate leads and make sales.

In fact over 93 percent of marketers use social media for business and over 70 percent of marketers have used at least one social media platform to successfully gain new customers.

For most brands, social media is a driving force and lifeline to their products, services, content and brand.

There are many strategies out there on how to grow your social following and increase engagement, clicks and sales, but we are going to highlight 100 of the best hacks we have found that you can refer to time and time again, no matter what your strategy is and no matter what business model you are following.

Here are 100 Social Media Hacks that you absolutely need to try:

Invite Your Facebook Likes: click on the people who have “liked” or “reacted” to your Facebook and invite them to follow your page. This will help you to increase your Facebook followers rapidly.
Share Images: Visual content performs far better than text across most social platforms, but especially Facebook and Twitter. Share a variety of images from photos to quotes and cartoons.
Share GIF’s: Twitter recently started accepting GIF image files. GIF’s usually yield a high engagement rate and help your social media to receive more engagement.
Share Videos: Sharing videos on networks like Facebook and Instagram is a great way to boost engagement and get more followers and likes. Inspirational, funny and cat videos are some of the most popular.
Cross Promote: Share the same content across all your platforms, just not at the same time. When you cross promote it allows you to get the most out of your content. You can also experiment with making small tweaks for each different platform.
Comment on Pinterest: not many people comment on Pinterest, which means that if you do, you are more likely to earn followers and stand out from the crowd.
Include Share Buttons on Your Site: having share buttons on your site make it easier for users to share your content with their social media following.
Include Follow Buttons on Your Site: make it easy for your audience to find you and upload “Follow” buttons to your website.
Automate Where Possible: have your social media marketing scheduled in advance in order to save you time. Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite can help with this.
Post Timeless Content Again: don’t let your good content be forgotten. If you have timeless content, continue to share it on your social platforms, this way new people can see your older content.
Use @mentions: mention others in your Tweets or other social posts in order to increase engagement and potentially gain more followers.
Keep a Social Media Calendar: this can help you stay prepared for any upcoming events, holidays or days that are relevant to your brand such as launching your Christmas sale and so on.
Use Templates: Use templates to share images, infographics and so much more. Canva is an excellent tool that can help you to create social friendly templates.
Share Infographics: visual content yields high engagement rates, be sure to experiment with sharing infographics and other visual content sources on platforms like Facebook and Google+.
Use Hashtags: Source popular hashtags and use them when promoting your posts. This is particularly beneficial on Twitter and Instagram.
Use Slideshare: uploading Slideshare content to platforms like LinkedIn can help you to repurpose your content and increase engagement.
Create Contests: Contests are a great way to get your users engaged and to get more followers. You can also use tools like Woobox to set up your competition quickly and effortlessly.
Pay Attention to Trends: Look at trending topics on your social media feeds and try to integrate them into your own content. This will help increase your engagement rates and earn you new followers.
Update Your Profile: Make sure your social profiles are always up to date and feature relevant images, a biography and contact information.
Use Awesome Cover Images: Facebook and Twitter allow you to upload a cover image. Make use of this space by promoting your brand, what they stand for and what your customers can expect. Just make sure it is also visually appealing.
Retweet Regularly: Everyone likes to be retweeted, so find your loyal followers and thought leaders and retweet their content regularly.
Reduce Facebook Posts: If your Facebook content is not engaging, Facebook will minimise the number of posts your followers see, therefore it is important to select what you post on Facebook carefully.
Instagram Daily: Posting once per day on Instagram seems to be the happy medium, however this may depend on your individual brand.
Reply to Comments: Be sure you are always replying to users comments, especially if they are asking questions about your products and services. The more responsive you are on social media, the more your followers are likely to trust you.
Imbed Tweets on your Blog: Imbed tweets in your blog to encourage people to tweet your content, quote your content and follow you.
Experiment with Posting Times: There are optimal times to post for every platform, but experiment with what works for your business. Sometimes non-peak times can yield more effective results.
Use Emoticons: Using emoticons on social media tend to generate higher engagement rates, especially if the emoticons used are positive or funny.
Instagram Link Reminders: Remind users that they can access your webpage through your Instagram link located in the bio. Something as simple as “link in bio” in your description box works perfectly.
Add Your Social to Your Email Signature: remind users where they can follow you at the bottom of your email social signature. This can help to increase your followers and helps people to stay connected with you or your brand.
Boost Facebook Posts: Boosts help you to increase engagement rates and helps your post to be seen by your followers. For most brands, boosting is usually necessary to gain traction.
Tweet 3-5 times per day: this seems to be the optimal amount when it comes to Twitter, but this is something you will need to test for your brand.
Use Ideal Image Sizes: each social platform has their own ideal image sizes for optimal viewing. Facebook is 1200 x 628, Twitter is 1024 x 512, LinkedIn is 800 x 800, Pinterest is 735 x 1102 and Instagram is 640 x 640.
Make Photo Collages: Photo collages tend to increase engagement rates, which will earn you more followers and more likes.
Have More Followers than Followings: To make your profile look more professional, be sure that you have more followers than those you are following.
Repost Your Top Posts: Facebook and Twitter both allow you to pin your most popular posts to the top of your feed, this helps you to boost engagement rates and can be used to communicate a message to your followers.
Run a Like Page Campaign: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have features that help you to run paid campaigns to get more followers. Even just $5 a day can help you to score extra followers.
Focus on 1-2 Social Platforms: don’t become a jack of all trades. Choose 1-2 social platforms that your customers resonate with and then focus on optimising those.
Host a Hangout: Organise a live hangout using Google+ Hangouts, Facebook or Twitter. You can use the event to attract more followers, nurture leads and educate customers on your upcoming products or services.
Use LinkedIn Publisher: take advantage of the free content publishing feature on LinkedIn to increase your exposure and build creditability.
Use URL Shorteners: Most social media management tools will allow you to create shorter URL’s so you can more accurately track where your visitors are coming from.
Share Your Content on Groups: both LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to join groups or communities where you can share your content, answer questions and share your ideas. This helps to build your reputation and can increase traffic to your site.
Limit Tweets to 100 Characters: even though Twitter gives you 140, try to use less so people have room to share your tweets with comments or @tags.
Use Your Email List: remind those on your email list which social accounts they can follow you on by always including links. You can also use your email list to promote your social media content.
Encourage Employee Engagement: if you have employees, encourage them to interact on your social networks and become endorsers of the brand.
Take Risks: experiment with posting unusual or thought-provoking content in order to stir up discussions and get people engaged.
Include a CTA on Facebook: Facebook allows you to add one call to action to the top of your page. Make sure this is set up and use it to direct fans to a specific landing page or product.
Create an Ad Instead of a Boost: Facebook won’t let you “Boost” images with more than 20 percent text. A way around this is to create an ad campaign using their ad tools program instead. Creating an ad can also help you monitor your goals more effectively than a Boost can.
Narrow Your Targeting: when running campaigns on any social platform, it allows you to set your targeting features. The more specific and true to your target audience you can get, the better the results. Avoid using “lookalike” audiences unless you know for sure they are an accurate portrayal of your audience.
Capture Moments with SnapChat: involve your followers in “behind the scenes” or authentic moments using Snapchat.
Influencer Takeover: get an influencer to take over one of your social media channels for the day in order to boost engagement and followers.
Create Your Own Hashtags: create your own hashtags to start a viral trend. You can also use them to promote your products, services and competitions.
Include Price Tags on Pinterest: Pinterest is a popular place to purchase products, make it easier for customers by including price tags on your pins.
Tell a Story: Telling a story using your social channels is far more effective than simply advertising. Platforms that this converts well on usually includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
Encourage User Generated Content: encourage your fans to share images of your products or services using specific hashtags that are created exclusively for your business.
Add Your Content to Stumble Upon: it’s quick and easy and can help increase traffic to your webpages. Just be sure you add individual post pages and not just the home page.
Use Quora to Become a Thought Leader: answering community questions on Quora can help you to increase your reputation and may even win you some new clients or customers.
Don’t Just Post Links: many businesses make the mistake of only posting links back to their website. This can come across as “spammy”. Be sure your are sharing different content types from a variety of webpages, not just your own.
Network with Others: liking, commenting and retweeting people who work in a similar industry as you can help you to increase followers and build a network. Find businesses that are similar but not the same as yours, and work on establishing a relationship with them.
Use “You” not “I”: studies have found that businesses who focus on the customer and their followers, rather than talking about themselves all the time have better engagement and more followers.
Make it Shareable: make your content something worth sharing by including a catchy title or an opinion piece that your followers can stand for. Most people share when they identify with the opinion provided.
Follow Back: if you want to get more followers, start following others. You may also want to follow people who follow you as a “thanks”.
Upload your Email List to Facebook: you can upload your email list to Facebook directly which makes it easier for your audience to find and follow you. You can do this from the “Create New Audience” section.
Share Testimonials: Sharing client testimonials across your social networks is a great way to build brand credibility and helps to build trust.
Ask Questions: a great way to engage your audience is to ask them questions. This encourages their feedback and can help increase mentions, likes, shares and comments.
Share Memes: Memes tend to yield high engagement rates across all social platforms. Experiment with sharing memes on platforms like Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.
Monitor Conversations: monitor the conversations happening on your competitors social accounts to see if you can improve on something or share similar content that is performing well.
Be Helpful: the more genuine and relevant advice you can give you to your social followers, the more likely they are to trust and purchase from your brand.
Be Contactable: make sure your contact details are added to all your social networks. If you have a brick and mortar business, make sure your address is also featured.
Sell Directly from Social: platforms like Facebook allow you to directly sell products and services, and make bookings straight from your page. Set this feature up to make it easier for your followers to reach you.
Add Visuals to your LinkedIn Profile: adding visual content to your LinkedIn profile can help you stand out from the crowd. This can include images of clients you have worked with, graphs, spreadsheets, recent articles, latest slide decks etc.
Create Several Boards on Pinterest: instead of just having one Pinterest board, consider creating several more specific boards as this can help boost your visibility.
Ask for a Follow or Share: sometimes asking your audience to “share” or “follow” you is a great and simple way to get them to do just that. Experiment with different tactics but don’t get pushy.
Experiment with Instagram Filters: Instagram offers filters that can help give your images a unique style and theme. Research has found that certain filters can help to promote clicks to your site. Work out which filter works best for your business by experimenting and analysing.
Geotag Your Posts: adding your location to your posts on Instagram and Facebook can help to increase engagement rates and typically earns more “likes”.
Identify your Voice: your social platforms give you the opportunity to convey your personal voice and tone with your customers. Ensure your social platforms reflect your voice by keeping your updates, images and statuses consistent and inline with your brand message.
Use Social Automation Software: there are services out there like TweetFavy and Instagress that can help you build your following automatically through liking, and following others on your behalf. If abused, they can lead to your accounts being banned, but when used conservatively they can help you rapidly increase your following.
Time Zone Posting: consider reaching different time zones by scheduling your tweets and other social posts during optimal times around the world.
Get Content Ideas: ask your followers or study their comments to determine what information they are looking for and possible content ideas for your blog.
Make it Personal: use your social platforms to give your audience a look into the more personal side of your business. This could include sharing information or pictures of employees, staff parties etc.
Add Facebook Comments to Your Blog Posts: add Facebook comments to the end of your blog posts so users can comment directly to your page.
Track Mentions: pay attention to when your brand is retweeted, used in a hashtag or mentioned on social media and reply or respond accordingly.
Offer Special Deals: make your audience feel special by offering exclusive discounts to your social followers only. This will also help convince your audience to follow you.
Study Your Analytics: platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow you to study your audience and how they are responding to your posts. Analyse these analytics regularly to improve your strategies.
Use the Same Profile Picture: use the same profile picture across all of your social networks so your audience can instantly recognise you. Using your brand logo for your profile picture is also recommended.
Export Your LinkedIn Contacts: Export your LinkedIn connections in order to increase your database and get access to their email addresses.
Use Data Driven Headlines: headlines that contain statistics and data often yield more engagement than those that don’t.
Use Polls: Use Polls and Surveys on platforms like Twitter to ask your customers questions about an upcoming product decision or what type of content they would like to see next. This is a great way to boost engagement rates.
Cross Platform Engagement: connect your Twitter and LinkedIn and your Instagram and Facebook accounts to score more followers across the different platforms.
Keep Your Headlines Short: Short and sweet headlines tend to perform best on Facebook and Google+. However, you may also want to experiment to see what your audience responds to.
Pin at Least 5 Times Per Day: research has found that the best number of Pins per day is around five. This should include a combination of your own content and others.
Write Specific Metadata: social networks like Facebook have tools that allow you to ensure that the metadata is displaying correctly for the content that you share. You can also use tools like YoastSEO to help with this as well.
Don’t Start a Tweet with @: When you start your tweet with @mention, only the person you are mentioning will be able to see the tweet. For more exposure, use the @mention at the end or elsewhere in your tweet.
Keep an Eye on Updates: Social media best practices are changing all the time. Stay ahead of the curve and up to date with new features so you can be sure your social media marketing is optimised to succeed.
Make it Positive: when it comes to social media, positive posts tend to receive more engagement and rank higher in news feed algorithms.
Tag When Replying: tagging people in comments when replying on Facebook is a great way to keep your audience engaged and reminded of your brand.
Deal With Trolls: if someone is posting negative content on your social media profiles don’t be afraid to delete it. If it’s not constructive and it doesn’t help your business or customers, remove the comments and ban or block the troll. Remember, don’t take it personally or fight back as this could be bad for your reputation.
Be Inspirational: people love reading inspiring or motivating content. Make your social posts inspiring by sharing quote images, inspiring stories or videos.
Reply Fast: research has found that when customers ask questions on social media they usually expect a response within 24 hours, especially if they have an issue with your products or services. If you can’t respond that fast, be sure you have something on your page that will notify your customers when they can expect a reply.
Use Facebook Carousel Ads: Facebook’s Carousel ads are often more effective and currently have a lower cost per conversion than single image ads.
Have Fun: Social media is truly about being engaging and connecting with your audience in a more personal way. No matter what strategies or hacks you employ, be sure that you are always considering your customers and thinking long-term when it comes to building your strategy.