 It's almost time to say goodbye to 2020 and I know that as a marketing director you're already thinking about 2021 and how you're going to approach social media. And that's why in this video I'm going to share with you my top 12 best practices for social media 2021. You know in 2020 you were challenged to think differently and I know that you've learned so much. Whether it was changing a plan, pivoting or optimizing your approach. The thing is you've made it to this point and we've been with you all along the way. There's so much that we can take out of 2020 going into 2021 especially when it comes to social media. And that's why in this video I'm going to share with you my top 12 social media best practices for 2021. But first if you're excited about this video hit that like button. Be sure to subscribe and if you haven't already hit that bell so that you're notified each time we release new video content. And you know if this is a video that you think somebody could benefit from. Somebody that you know whether it's a friend or a colleague do me a favor and share it with them. All right so here it is my top 12 social media best practices for 2021. And the first is I really want you to get this pattern interrupting. As a social media brand, as a business on social media, you have to understand how to interrupt the pattern. What is the pattern? Well first of all this is a term that comes from NLP or neuro linguistic programming and when you think about you know the way that people consume media at this point it's a scrolling game, right? And whether you're on your phone or on your computer you're scrolling and you're scrolling those feeds. And if you're on a Facebook or an Instagram or a LinkedIn really you're kind of just scrolling and you're just there and you're in this pattern of scrolling and so you need to become a pattern interrupter. You need to be able to break through and capture attention, garner attention right then and there. And so in order to do that you have to start thinking out of the box. Becoming a pattern interrupter you have to think outside of the box and think about how can I get somebody's attention in the feed right now. Whether that's doing video or doing live and we're gonna talk about these in a few. But you gotta think how can I break out of the box and interrupt that pattern. Number two I want you to start thinking about how you can work with the algorithms as opposed to working around the algorithms. And the first step in working with an algorithm is to figure out what does that algorithm want. And for the most part what they want is the same thing that you want. And that is to make some money. How do you make money on social media? Well if you're a social media network you make money by keep capturing and keeping people's attention. We are in an attention economy. This means that the value of attention is increasing and will continue to increase it's becoming more scarce. Because of that you need to create content that not only captures people's attention but keeps it. And if you can do that because if you're capturing and keeping people's attention i.e. you're keeping them on the networks then at that point the networks are gonna reward you by showing your content to more people. All right number three is P2P. This is a big one. I want you to remember this. It's P2P. You know there's a lot of acronyms that we use in business. B2C, B2B but this is when it comes to social media. I don't want you to think about business to consumer or business to business. When it comes to social media I want you to think about person to person. P2P. Everything that you do on social media is directed personally towards another human being. This is how you create true authenticity. You're not a brand talking down to the masses. You never think that you're going to create content for the masses. Understand your buyer personas and then know them so well that you can speak to them human to human person to person. Personally I know as a brand or as a business you're like well I'm a business but here's the thing. The biggest brands in the world hire spokespeople to represent their brand. Why do they do that? Because they understand P2P. So this is what I want you to understand. Humans over logos. No more are you just this faceless logo communicating in social media. Figure out how to personalize the experience. Personalize your business so that you can connect with people P2P. The side benefit to connecting as human beings is this familiarity bias. What is this? Well it's a cognitive bias which says that the more people see you the more they like and trust you even though they've never met you. This is the beauty of social media in 2021. The familiarity bias the more people see you the more they like and trust you. Utilize this. Use it in your marketing. Use it among your sales team. Get your people out there. Get them on social media. Get their faces out there sharing good content becoming thought leaders because this is how we're going to do business in 2021. Number four the negative snowball. Just like a snowball when it rolls down hill gaining momentum getting bigger and bigger and bigger in social media beware the negative snowball. The negative snowball is this idea that the more content that you put out there that people aren't engaging with the more difficult it's going to be for you to bounce back and get back into a place where your content will be shown to everyone. And it's because of this attention economy. If people aren't paying attention to your content if it's not keeping them engaged on the network then the network is going to slowly over time show your content to fewer and fewer people and that's what we call the negative snowball. As a matter of fact a page like price line go look them up on Facebook price lines Facebook page they have millions of likes but only need like a hundred or so interactions on any given post and that's because they have fallen victim to the negative snowball. Are you ready to smash that negative snowball? If so write smash in the comments and be sure to hit that like button if you haven't already subscribe hit the bell that way you're notified each and every time we release new video content and if this content so far has been valuable for you and you think it might be valuable for a colleague or a friend do me a favor and please share this video with them. Number five I want you to master just one network figure out what network is going to be most beneficial for you as a business to get your content out there and to actually drive revenue to actually have a positive ROI I mean at the end of the day this is what social media is for. If you're not making money off of your social media content if you're not bringing in new customers driving and generating leads then what's the point? Master one network figure out what network your customers are on and are engaged on and then determine that in 2021 you're going to master that network you know there's this idea of the sunk cost fallacy what is the sunk cost fallacy that's when you've put so much time and effort and money into something that you think that you just want to see it through that eventually the tide will turn but here's the thing that's a fallacy okay just because you've invested a lot of time money and energy into something doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to turn around and be a good thing for you so look at those networks figure out where you've spent a lot of time money and energy and if it's not working and your customers are on that network then maybe you need to address some of some of these best practices but if your customers aren't on that network then maybe that's a network to cut you know I get asked all the time you know what about what about reels what about snapchat what about tiktok well here's the thing if you haven't mastered if you're a small business linked if you're a service business linkedin if you haven't mastered linkedin you don't need to be on tiktok if you haven't mastered facebook you don't need to be on tiktok if your customers aren't on tiktok or if you don't have a product that would go well on tiktok then here's the thing stay away from tiktok just because it's hot doesn't mean it's right for you don't chase shiny objects master one network okay number six prospecting versus nurturing and I want you to understand the difference between the two because if you're spending money in social media whether it's facebook or linkedin or you know any of the networks if you're spending money doing advertising then you're going to have different objectives depending on on the goal if the goal is prospecting if you're going out there and you're trying to create interest and create demand for your products or services then you know you don't want to use you know like a reach objective on facebook specifically you would never want to use a reach objective because what facebook's going to do is they're going to go out and spend a lot of money really fast to get that offer in front of a lot of people you're much better off focusing on getting conversions and paying for conversions however if you're nurturing people that have landed on your site maybe just having completed the offer i.e. retargeting remarketing nurturing then at that point a reach objective is very beneficial it's beneficial because facebook is going to get that content your advertisement in front of us many of people that are on that list that nurturing the retargeting list as possible and so that's a good way to use reach all right number seven treat each network differently I know this is challenging I know that there's only so much time in the day and if you're creating a lot of content like we are a lot of times it's just easier to kind of just like create one or two pieces and just put them on all the networks but here's the thing it doesn't work you're not going to get the results that you want to get if you're putting the same piece of content just everywhere okay you have to in 2021 treat each network differently I know I've been saying this for a few years but we haven't really been doing it in 2021 it's time to actually do it it's time to actually treat the networks differently create content specifically for each network because the users on the networks are different the way you interact on the networks are different so think about what can I do on each network that's different but here's the thing if you're creating evergreen content similar to what I'm doing right now where there's this nice big chunk of valuable information you can break that up you can remix it in a way that makes sense you can use the same types of content but deliver it in different ways treat each network differently don't repost don't just blast the same content these things aren't going to work and they're definitely not going to work in 2021 all right number eight open versus closed networks I want you to understand the differences between an open and a closed network this is a huge best practice it's a huge best practice because if you don't know the difference between the two then guess what your content's not going to get out there in a way that builds a positive snowball an open network is by definition open what does this mean it means that you can go to the website and you can see the content without needing to create an account or to log in which networks come to mind Pinterest YouTube these are open networks okay closed networks are closed you can't see the content on those networks unless you're logged into an account on the network so which ones come to mind well the two big ones are Facebook and LinkedIn what does this mean it means that if you post content on Facebook and you put a link in your post Facebook isn't going to show that to anyone because if you remember this attention economy your goal their goal their goal is to make money by capturing more attention and there's no way in the world that they want to send people off of their site to your site and don't tell me well that's that's you know that's not a third party link that's my link it's my Facebook page it's their Facebook page you're just creating content for their audience okay and the minute you try to send them away they're going to stop showing that content to more users all right number nine the 90 10 rule formally I talked about this as the 80 20 rule but things have changed in 2021 you want 90 percent of the content that you put out there to be engaging in non promotional you know the biggest reason that people tune out or turn off social media is because of promotional content and so I want no more than 10 percent of the content that you put out to be promotional why is this well it comes back to the attention economy working with the algorithms only 10 percent and then you make that 10 percent like like a Facebook header or something like that then what happens is when they are engaging with that 90 percent that 90 percent of just like authentic super captivating engaging content and they they they're like well who is far these people and they go look and there it is the header says who you are and what you do because that 90 percent by the way is building brand awareness it's building market awareness helping people to understand more about who you are and what you do don't discount that brand awareness is key okay number 10 stories we have story capability on youtube instagram facebook linkedin here's the thing if everyone has created a way for you to tell stories formally you know like originally it was just snapchat and you know I wasn't a big fan of snapchat because it was a different network where most of the people watching this video your customers weren't there okay same reason why I'm not a huge fan of tiktok at least not right now for your business but here's the thing linkedin facebook instagram youtube all of these networks have the capability for you to do stories so if you have a hard time thinking about you know what types of content work well in that story format just think you know quick memorable easily digestible and I'm sure there are things that you do on a regular basis that could allow people just to lean in to to peek in to your business and to kind of see you know that day to day people love seeing the day to day if you're mastering the one network and it's a network with stories on it then you need to begin to master the story content as well all right number 11 I want you to go live with offers what does this mean it means that right now I mean still to this day when you go live the networks promote it and people pay attention to it so what do you need to do you need to go live and you need to be aggressive and specifically go live with offers okay use this live as a 10 as that 10% in the 90-10 rule use it as a chance to promote your business promote your monthly promotion whatever it may be go live with it if you are a restaurant go live and say the next five reservations you know you're going to get this you're going to get a free cheesecake whatever the case may be if you are you know a plumber then go live and say you know the next 15 people that sign up get a free you know winter checkup or whatever the case may be go live with whatever those offers are make them timely so that the people are tuning in if they need that product or service and they're going to jump on it and be aggressive with this and that's because live is it's in the moment okay it's in the moment and the people that are online are going to get notified if they're not online they're not going to get notified but if they're scrolling through that feed and they get notified live is an instant pattern interrupter and so you got to do it you got to do it in the morning you got to do it in the afternoon you got to do it in the evening if you continue going live then what's going to happen you're going to reach more people with your offer all right number 12 ask for what you want if you don't ask you will receive for instance if you enjoyed this video if you got something of value out of this video let me know let me know your biggest takeaway in the comments right now if you haven't already hit that like button subscribe hit the bell so you'll be notified for future video content and if you think that a colleague or a friend would benefit from this video do me a favor and share it with them thank you for tuning in i'll see you next time thanks for watching if you like what you saw subscribe and hit that bell you'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live after that you can watch more videos from slam agency we picked something we think you'll love