Ok, so we’ve all promised to make an extra effort with our social media pages during lockdown, and 10 weeks in, we’ve increased our followers and got some great content going out. But…if your business page is looking a little dated, now may be the time to ‘zhuzh’ it up, so your fantastic content has an amazing canvas.

In this blog, we’re going to share with you some of the things you can do to refresh your social media pages and we promise it won’t take more than a couple of hours! We’ve even broken it down into the different platforms, to help you further!

Before we start, here are some general tips that relate to all social media platforms that you can use:

• Make sure you’re consistent by using the same profile picture on all your social media accounts. This should be your company logo (if you have one), so your pages can be instantly recognised by your customers. Check it’s also the correct size and fits in the space nicely.
• Pictures should be hi-res and significant. If you are using an image of yourself (because you are the brand) make sure it is on brand – that means the picture should be recent and of you. Not you sitting with your cat or a cocktail (unless, of course, your business deals with cats or cocktails!)
• Ensure all your social media accounts are business accounts with the same username, where possible.
• Branding should be consistent across your social media, website and offline materials.

Facebook

• Is your cover photo still relevant? If it’s showing a ‘NEW’ product that’s now 5 years old or old business premises that you’ve moved away from, it may be time to add a new one!
• Check your About section and make sure it’s up to date. Are the business hours correct and do any website links work? Is the address still where you’re based? These should be checked and amended where necessary.
• Do you belong to any Facebook Groups and if so, are you active in them and are they still relevant? Decide which groups matter the most and consider leaving those that no longer appeal to you. The same can be done with business pages– are you still following right people?
• Clean out your inbox. It’s likely, if you haven’t kept up to date with your cleaning out, that your inbox will be full of old messages. Make sure they are all responded to and consider archiving them or deleting them. Going forward, try to keep only unanswered or outstanding messages in your inbox.
• Check any ‘pinned’ posts are still current and consider pinning your most recent piece of company news to the top. This is extremely useful during the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Instagram

• Take some time to go through your grid and delete any photos that no longer fit your brand image. There may be some ‘dodgy’ ones you uploaded when you were first starting out, that no longer appeal.
• Read your bio and make sure it explains what your business is and what it does. Consider adding a hashtag to your bio. This is particularly useful if you want to use a unique branded hashtag and want to direct visitors to your content or want to highlight a particular skill. It is important to note, that your hashtag doesn’t make your profile searchable via hashtags.
• Make sure any links in your bio are still active and relevant and update if necessary.
• Go through your Stories archive and consider adding them to relevant highlights. You can also add covers to your highlights to clean up your page.
• Look through your ‘following’ accounts and check everyone is still relevant and active. There’s no point following a business if you know it shut down 3 years ago!
• Check any posts that you’ve been tagged in and like or comment on the post, if appropriate.

Twitter

• Unfollow inactive accounts.
• Check any ‘trending’ hashtags to see if you can create any future content around these going forward.
• Create Twitter lists to optimise your experience and organise your followers. If you’re not sure what Twitter Lists are, look out for our blog on this coming soon. Until then, you may want to park this tip until later on in the year!
• Check your messages – have they all been responded to? Can any of them be deleted?
• Update your bio.

These are just some of the many things you can do to keep your profile looking tidy and on brand. We recommend scheduling an hour a month, to keep on top of any tidying up you do. It may just be a cover photo on Facebook you need to change or a Story on Instagram you need to add to a highlight. By doing it this way, you’ll always have a fresh and up to date business page that you can be proud of.

If you’d like some help with refreshing your business pages, why not let us help? Contact us at hello@socialsoda.co.uk for more details.