Social Media: The New Front Door for Businesses

“In a time where social media is fast becoming the new front door for your business.”

Hootsuite Academy Chapter 2, Lesson 1.1 Best Practices for Optimizing Social Media Profiles.

Hootsuite Academy has a great introduction to the different social media platforms in Chapter 1. Hootsuite offers the ability to schedule, monitor, engage, and track analytics on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Being able to reach customers through a variety of social networks in one organizable and designated area is valuable for businesses whether they’re cooperation or small business.

Hootsuite makes it simple to help and respond to the customer quickly whether the comment was direct or not, showing them that the company is aware and genuinely cares. I was impressed by the Hootsuite Academy and their Social Marketing Training approach. I enjoyed learning fun facts and increasing my knowledge about some sites that I don’t use as often like Pinterest.

It was interesting to learn that Pinterest is a social network that’s more geared toward discovery than other platforms. Using Pinterest’s “Pin It” widget on a website’s content is a valuable feature. Users can pin other business’s imagery without having to leave the website! They are therefore creating a simple and efficient way to direct traffic back to the website and being able to be discovered by users at any time due to their search function that allows the images to stay relevant longer.

YouTube has grown tremendously since it began in 2005. (Its golden birthday is coming up; YouTube will be 14 on February 14!) Within those 14 years, YouTube became the world’s biggest video sharing network, the second largest search engine, and one of the top three websites. YouTube has also become a career path for some users. The term “YouTuber” is a saught-after job position just as “Influencer.” These micro-celebrities are not only able to create a direct relationship with their audience in a way that is more personal and appealing than regular TV, but they also can create opportunities for themselves to work with brands and collaborate with other prominent YouTubers. They’ve even worked their way up to become more influential to younger audiences. YouTube has further expanded with YouTube Music and YouTube Kids to name a few examples.

“According to multiple studies, YouTubers have become an important source of information and entertainment for the millennial-generation. Influential YouTubers are frequently described as microcelebrities.”

“YouTuber.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Feb. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTuber#cite_note-:1-2. // Jerslev, Anne (2016-10-14). “In the Time of the Microcelebrity: Celebrification and the YouTuber Zoella”. International Journal of Communication. 10 (2016): 5233–5251. ISSN 1932-8036.

“In a 2014 survey conducted by the University of Southern California among 13-18 year-olds in the United States on whether 10 YouTube celebrities or 10 traditional celebrities were more influential, YouTube personalities took the first five spots of the ranking.”

“YouTuber.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Feb. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTuber#cite_note-:1-2. // Dredge, Stuart (2016-02-03). “Why are YouTube stars so popular?”. The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-05-03.

When Hootsuite is explaining the benefits for marketing your business on social media, it stuck out when they said “employees can increase the exposure of vital company content. This is so accurate and valid especially with our customers at work. As social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are becoming a “portfolio” for stylists, it’s vital for a distributor and their salon consultants to be active and engaged on their channels.

 I know it, you know it, we all know it: hairstylists’ livelihoods depend on their Instagram feed. In the social media era, the number of stylists utilizing the ‘gram is growing at lightening speed. To stand out and snatch more followers, clients, and press, a hairstylist or colorist’s best strategy should include a strong Instagram bio.

Aghadjanian, Nina. “How to Write a Good Hairstylist Instagram Bio.” Mane Addicts, 1 May 2018, maneaddicts.com/2018/05/01/how-to-write-a-good-hairstylist-instagram-bio/.

As a hair stylist, your Instagram page has become the new portfolio. Now you’re not just showing prospective employers you’re cutting and dying skills, you’re also showing prospective clients what you can do.

Elizabeth. “Creating an Engaging Instagram for Your Salon.” Creating an Engaging Instagram for Your Salon, 16 Apr. 2018, blog.demandforce.com/2018/04/16/creating-an-engaging-instagram-for-your-salon/.

It’s necessary to share valuable content that is essential to both the distributor’s customers and their employees who are out in the field visiting salons and selling the products or brands. The salon consultants can reshare promotions, digital campaigns, and more to customers who may be more likely to see it from their page.

Hashtags have created a way to search for specific terms which is why having a branded hashtag is incredibly important! Having a branded hashtags allows other people who are searching it to discover more about the company or brand efficiently; therefore, potential customers or interested companies can see all of the related content and other users who contributed to it. It’s very popular to create a unique hashtag for more significant digital campaigns, initiatives, giveaways, or contests to better separate the content, and it’s not lost into a more popular hashtag that has new content each second.

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• Davines has two Instagram accounts. One is dedicated to hair color and encourages using #DavinesColor.
• Davines North America encourages the use of #DavinesLife, #DoneWithDavines, and #SustainableBeauty.

Twitter’s Lists are beneficial for a business. I love the recommendation of the private list feature and using them to keep up with competitors without having to follow them publically.

Facebook continues to offer a variety of ways for businesses to interact with their customers past liking and commenting. Business pages can add third-party apps to optimize their Facebook page. From Instagram, Pinterest, to Twitter, a business can show its content created on different platforms right on the page. Businesses can also increase their email subscriber list by downloading an app like MailChimp that features email marketing, landing pages, sign up forums, and allows users to subscribe without having to leave Facebook on their computer or phones.

Facebook also lets business pages curate a custom feed. Our social team uses this to follow, like, and interact with salons and stylists that shop with the distributor.

I love the Hootsuite’s Instagram bio tip, the workaround for adding line breaks to the bio field was a secret and “Influencer” trick for a few years, and it’s nice to see that it’s become mainstream now.

Emojis have worked their way into our daily language and symbol usage. Using emojis in Instagram bios help to use fewer characters in the bio while still communicating the message. And of course, be sure always to add your branded hashtag so new followers can see and search it instantly.

It’s a no brainer that Instagram the website field is the only spot on IG to include a clickable link. However, some companies have created a feature to link all of your posts like Later’s Link in Bio, Shopify, or Snapppt so you can link to more products or websites.

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In chapter two of Social Marketing Training, Hootsuite overviews best practices and how to optimize your business’s social media platforms.

I learned more about optimizing profile settings on YouTube and creating a better viewing experience for the company and consumer. I was unaware of all of the actions it provides to businesses.

Hootsuite provided an excellent way to gauge the effectiveness of the title and thumbnail. By analyzing the engagement within the first 10-15 seconds of the video, businesses can see where their audience started dropping off and can modify their content as necessary.

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I also learned more about video cards and how they can entice viewers to view more content, increase more engagement and new subscribers while encouraging a specific call to action.

Overall, Hootsuite is a powerful tool for managing and tracking your social media marketing activities. It’s an excellent way to save time, organize your channels, track the performance, and is key when creating a social media strategy to achieving the business’s social media goals.