Page 16 - Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing Handbook 14
to post an earlier photo, you will need to scroll down to where a reel of all of your photos will be displayed. Select the one you would like to post and press ‘next’.
This will then take you to an editing screen. For example, if you would like to turn the photo into a black and white image or trim it, you can do so here. Once you’re happy with your photo, press ‘next’ and this will bring you to the final screen where you can write text to accompany the image. This does not need to be a long paragraph or even a whole sentence! We would encourage the use of hashtags again on Instagram to make your post discoverable to more than just the people who follow your account.
Build a following
You can be posting the most amazing information, but it won’t have any impact unless you have people following your posts. Followers will see your posts in either their News Feeds (Facebook) or timelines (Twitter and Instagram).
Facebook is perhaps the trickiest of the three to build up a good following through – you can gain a few hundred Twitter followers in months if you work hard, as it is very conversational, but you might only have a handful of Facebook ‘likes’. This is because experience says social media users often prefer to use Twitter for these types of daily updates, rather than Facebook.
The great thing about building a fanbase on Twitter or Instagram is that often someone you start following may follow you back (there are obvious exceptions to this rule – Stephen King may not follow you back, despite how flattering you are to his books!) Both your Twitter and Instagram profiles will have a counter of how many followers you have and how many people you are following. If you click this followers list, it will bring up an entire list of people who are following you. Next to each of their names is a ‘follow’ button so that you can follow the same people back quickly if you want to.
When trying to build up your following, consider the type of people who you should be following and who you want to follow you. You can then tailor your tweets and posts to these users to build up a following. For example, on Twitter:
I’m doing a signing tomorrow from 4pm @WaterstonesLHX – come and say hi! #booksigning #localauthor