Social Media Tricks

Social Media Tips & Tricks

What time(s) should I post?

This is a place to experiment, since every market is different. It helps to think about it backwards – what times of day do I, as a user, look at social media? In the AM over coffee? At lunch? On my commute home from work? All of the above (and more) 😏 ?
As an example, posting times that have proved successful for our @waze social media channels are:
- Facebook and Twitter: 10 AM, 1 PM, and 4 PM (local time)

What types of social content perform best?

Before posting something on social media, some questions we should ask ourselves are: will your audience/Community care about this? Why would they share this? (realistically), and what do we want them (and others) to say about it?
Here’s a go-to recipe for success:
1. Have something to say, at the right time
2. Add compelling, engaging, eye-catching creative assets to go along with your copy (i.e. high-quality image, photo or video asset, when possible)
3. Add call-to-action (is there a link or help page you want your audience to click? Or instructions for how to use a Waze feature or Map Editing tool?) and any relevant hashtags.
Hashtags: see below for Community-specific campaign hashtags. Another tip is to tag locations, events, channels, and accounts relevant to your post. For example, if you’re posting about a major traffic event, find the hashtag people are using (i.e. #I85Atlanta or #HurricaneMatthew) so that people following those events can see your post, too.
Video
1. Insight: video content (:30 seconds or less) performs strongly on social and is engaging to followers. Sadly, video resources are hard to come by, but we encourage capturing and creating your own footage if you feel inspired!
2. Pro Tip: When we share video files directly, in-stream on Facebook and Twitter (uploading the drive file itself instead of just linking out to youtube), we’re able to yield more video views because the videos will automatically play as they appear in users' feeds.

Do you have any ideas for content “series” or types?

New feature/product updates perform well (thanks to how relevant these are to our followers).
- We’ll share these with you when we can, along with any accompanying assets or product screenshots that we’re able to share.
- On the Waze global channels, for example, we have a #TipTuesday series where we focus on new and existing features to help spread awareness and helpfulness of our features.
Engage your Community by posing questions and (when relevant) polls to create a 2-way conversation.
- I.e. “If you could choose any feature to be added to the Waze Map Editor (to make your life easier), what would it be?”
- Twitter polls offer simple, streamlined ways to ask multiple choice questions, like "What's the *most annoying* thing people do in traffic jams?"
- Jumping in on local trends and conversations:
  - Is there a major event happening in your market that you think your followers should know about? Does it affect the Community? Has the Waze Map Editor community been able to help in any way? (i.e. marking event-related road closures)
Some hashtags we use for Community-related social media posts are: #WazeCommunity, #WazeWin, #FixTheMap, and #WazeMapEditor.

What are the best numbers to look at when measuring how well my channel is doing?

Engagements (most important):
- AKA how your followers are reacting/”engaging” with your posts. Think likes, comments, shares, favorites, re-tweets, and video views.
  - Engagement rate (engagements/impressions) is also a helpful gauge to know how much of your audience is participating in the community conversation. As your social communities grow, engagement rate can be a good personal benchmark.
Impressions/Reach:
- This is the estimated # of people that your social content is reaching.
% Follower growth:
- This is the number of new followers/total followers. A great way to gauge not just the growth of your channel overall, but how it is trending over time.

How do I gain more followers? Should I buy them?

No. Buying followers will just lead to spammy, robot-esque accounts following you that eventually will be washed away once Facebook/Twitter does an account audit, so it’s not worth it.
The best way to gain followers is through posting engaging content (see above) and engaging in trending conversations. These conversations can be generally popular social content, like holidays (and their traffic), or major events like a hurricane. As noted above, remember to use trending hashtags.

What is the right length for social media posts & images?

Images

Social Media Image Sizes

Social Posts

Happy posting✨ ,

Magali