About a month ago, I was asked by a small startup for some advice on how to improve their social media presence. This startup could be categorized as a “Pet Tech” company, which operates as part of a growing trend of organizations working to market technology-related products or services to pet owners.

While I’ve managed social media accounts for various organizations for about five years, this was my first time providing consulting services on social media strategy. Conducting this analysis and providing feedback was such a fun, interesting experience! Many social media coordinators get stuck in the daily routine of posting for the sake of posting instead of focusing on the importance of strategic online marketing towards organizational goal achievement. I was able to assess this organization’s social media presence from an outside perspective and then provide feedback that account managers, already overworked in juggling other startup management tasks, may have been unable to recognize themselves. 

I assessed this organization’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, taking care to provide industry relevant examples from companies that I felt were performing well in these areas. Below are some of the highlights from my offered consulting, with some edits made for the sake of protecting the identity of the organization.

Facebook

The Cover Photo

I really like the image you have in the cover photo. It’s eye-catching, on brand, and high quality, but I also feel that this space could be utilized a little better.

Let’s say someone accesses your Facebook page for the first time and is unfamiliar with the product… First of all, awesome! Right? This is a rare, special opportunity to potentially gain a new app user. However, It’s important to keep in mind that this opportunity could easily slip away if the user is bored or confused in their first few moments on the page. We should view this page entrance as a golden moment to capture them and let them know what your organization is all about quickly and easily without making them work too hard. Here are some ways to approach this:

1. Make your cover photo into an ad.
   

• I like how this example tells what the app is in a few lines, tells the user what you want them to do (Download our app today!), and tells them where they can find the app. So much important info in a small, eye catching frame!

2. Make your cover photo into a cover video.

• I think this is more work intensive because it requires spending time and/or money producing a nice video, but, at a minimum, if carried out effectively, this technique may keep a user on the page longer than a picture would. It also may make your organization more interesting and memorable to the user.
• Barkbox has one of these types of cover photos on their facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barkbox/

3. Make the cover photo into a little branding art space.

• Baroo did this with their cover photo (see image at right). This image is cute, fun, and eye-catching. It’s also specific to the Baroo organization (as opposed to a stock photo which could be purchased and used by multiple companies).
• This type of cover photo doesn’t really tell you anything about the product or service, but for some accounts, this is a good thing. Many companies don’t want to make their pages feel too “business-like” because users generally don’t like being “sold to” on their social media accounts. It really depends upon what your goals are for the page.

The Content

Honestly, excellent work with the content. I love this approach in which you’re sharing stories and making the page less about advertising the app and more about creating a community around common goals and values within the dog walking community. It’s also clearly working too, which is evidenced by your incredible interaction ratio. While you only have 52 total likes on the page, you have been getting 40+ likes and multiple shares on some of your posts. That kind of ratio is nearly unheard of, so I think you should continue with this strategy for facebook posting in the future!

Once the product is fully launched, I’d say the strategy could shift to being a little more promotional, but for now, I think this is working great.

Instagram

Strategic Additions to Consider

1. Use Story Highlights to turn your Instagram page into a mini website.

• I’m really excited about this new feature because it gives you a method of sharing important info that stays static at the top of the page. If you’re able to put some time into making branded cover photos for each highlight, I think it can be a really cool way of jazzing up your page too!

Boosting your follower count

1. Follow a lot more people, especially those that use hashtags in their posts that are related to your organization

• I know it feels “uncool” to follow more people than follow you, but when it comes to Instagram’s algorithms for putting you in other user’s radar, following is the best way to gain exposure. The more people you follow, the more people will follow you (assuming you’re making effort to create decent content). Also, Instagram doesn’t notify people when you unfollow them, so, while it’s a little sneaky, you can literally follow a bunch of people until they follow you back, then unfollow them down the road.

2. Use more hashtags.

• Great job with using the periods to push the hashtags down the caption. Since the hashtags are out of the main view though, I’d recommend being shameless about using all 30 hashtags. There are a lot of hashtags that garner views and interaction. The hashtags don’t even need to be 100% relevant to your post. See a screenshot of one of my dog Ollie’s recent posts at the right for an example.

3. Consider shifting strategy to tap into people’s desire to boost their own follower count.

• Another option for boosting your account stats is to shift your strategy to being an account that reposts images from those that tag your account or use your hashtag.
  • There are so many people on instagram that are desperately trying to go viral, and for those individuals with this hope, being offered the opportunity to have their content and instagram handle shared on a larger platform is basically a dream come true. You can use this to your advantage to spread the word far and wide about your product.
  • This is an especially great idea if you’re worried about coming up with relevant, interesting content to post. You can literally let the great content come to you, you can be as choosey as you want to be, and it’s free advertising within the most relevant online communities for your app!
  • One dog-based app account that I found which does this pretty effectively is Barkler App. On every image they repost, they write “Download our free mobile app! Use the tag  #barklerapp for your chance to be featured!” This seems to work well for them. As you can see from the screenshot at the right, thousands follow this account and see this promotional message on every post.
  • Another bonus: Often the accounts that utilize this “repost other user’s content” approach send a message beforehand stating something along the lines of, “I’ll repost your photo to my followers on the condition that you mention our account in your instagram story today.” More free advertising!

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