Whether you're a brand or an individual creator, social media platforms likely play a critical role in your social media marketing.
In 2024, socials wear many hats, from sales touchpoints to employer branding and customer support channels.
Let’s break down 17 essential social media best practices for 2024 to power up your social media strategy, backed by tips from top marketing influencers!
Top 24 social media best practices for 2024
Social media marketing best practices
Social media content best practices
Social media customer support best practices
Social media best practices for businesses
Social media marketing best practices
1.Have a social media strategy
If we’re talking about social media best practices to follow, having a solid social media strategy just has to be among the top ones.
A well-crafted social media strategy helps you stay focused but agile. It aligns your social media efforts with overall business objectives, ensuring that every post, reply, or campaign contributes to the big picture.
Social media content in 2024 requires more strategy. This involves looking at your social media analytics and crafting future content based on current results, not relying on last year's successes - said Amanda Robinson - Founder & CEO The Digital Gal Inc.
To-Do list:
#1. Set clear objectives: What do you want to achieve through your social media presence? Increase brand awareness, generate leads, or provide customer service? Define clear social media goals.
#2. Regularly gather analytics: Use social media analytics tools like Socialinsider to track social media performance and gather insights. Adjust your strategy based on this data to optimize future campaigns.
#3. Improve iteratively: The best strategies are flexible and responsive to changes. Keep refining your strategy based on new insights and shifts in social media trends.
Track KPIs and present your plan like a pro to clients or managers.
2. Find out who is your buyer persona
After you set your social media goals, you need to find out who your buyer persona is. This is one of the most important best practices for social media marketing.
However, learning about your target audience doesn’t only mean paying attention to social media demographics or knowing your buyer persona.
This also refers to finding out about your audience’s pain points, inspirations, needs, motivations, and how your products can come in handy.
Depending on the social media platforms you use, your buyer persona may change from one channel to another. Make sure you perform a thorough research to know how to address your customers on every social media network.
Know your audience, your platforms and set your objectives. Implement your plan, allowing for flexibility.
Nothing is constant and neither should your plan be.
Adopt a test and learn mindset. Evaluate what worked, what didn't and why. Repeat these steps constantly, ensuring you're optimising your social media marketing - said Dominic Edmundson - Marketing Manager at Bans & Bans.
To-Do list:
#1. Develop detailed social media buyer personas: Gather demographic data about your potential customers, including age, location, job title, interests, and lifestyle. Conduct surveys, interviews, and use social media analytics to deepen your understanding of what drives your audience.
#2. Analyze platform-specific audience characteristics: Examine how your buyer persona varies across different social media platforms.
#3. Implement tailored content strategies: Create content that addresses the specific pain points. Regularly review and adjust your content strategy based on feedback and engagement metrics to continually refine your approach and improve engagement with your target audience.
3. Analyze your social media performance
Tracking your performance is on top of the social media best practices to evolve your content for optimal engagement.
Only through social media analytics can you truly understand what’s working, tweak your strategy, and make informed decisions.
Use the data in your analytics to discover which social networks drive the best quality visitors.
Create reports to see:
- Which social network sends users that trigger the most Key events?
- Which social network drives the most revenue?
- Which social network drives the most engaged website visitors?
- Which social network drives the most website visitors that fit your target market?
Those social media reports will give you the data you need to make decisions and tweak your social media strategies to get a higher ROI on your marketing - according to Amanda Webb - Digital Marketing Trainer and Consultant.
To-Do List:
#1. Choose a trusted analytics tool: Socialinsider deep-dives into engagement metrics, providing the data you need to improve your social media performance on major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter.
#2. Analyze and report: Regularly create social media reports to assess which social networks contribute the most value to your objectives.
#3. Refine the strategy: Use these insights to adjust and optimize your social media strategies, enhancing ROI and ensuring you target the most effective channels.
While native social media platforms offer built-in analytics, with Socialinsider's analytics tools you can get cross-channel analysis, compare past performance, compare your metrics against your competitors, run content audits, tag and group social media posts by keywords or hashtags, and much more.
Get strategic insights with Socialinsider
Social media audits. Competitor analysis. Historical posts data. Track and measure social media performance.
4. Reverse-engineer your competitor's strategies
Understanding your competitors’ best practices in social media marketing arms you with valuable insights and helps you craft a more effective social media strategy. It’s about staying ahead, not just keeping up.
Benchmark your performance against other brands and analyze their social media techniques to achieve the results you want to exceed.
Analyze your competitors to gain insights into:
- Audience insights
- Content pillars they use
- Engagement metrics
- Paid ads efficiency
- Keywords
- Hashtag insights.
Conduct a thorough analysis, gaining insights into competitors' strategies and their effectiveness.
Identify their content pillars, engagement levels for each pillar, their hashtag campaigns, and compare your metrics against your competitors. - suggested Adina Jipa - Co-Founder & CMO at Socialinsider.
To-Do list:
#1. Add your competitors' profiles: Use competitor analysis tools like Socialinsider to examine the content, frequency, and engagement of your competitors’ social media activities. Identify their most successful posts and campaigns.
#2. Review their social media strategy: Understand what's working and what's not.
#3. Compare your metrics against your competitors.
#2. Apply learnings: Adapt the successful elements of these strategies to fit your brand's unique voice and goals. Experiment with similar content types, posting schedules, and engagement tactics to see what works best for your audience.
5. Conduct a social media audit
Once every quarter, or even on a monthly basis, a social media audit is required to find out everything about your brand’s performance.
This practice for social media is useful after you have already let a marketing campaign unfold and want to see what impact it had on your audience, but also on the industry overall.
To perform an audit, you need a specialised social media audit tools to measure your metrics on every social platform that will help you alter your strategy and set new goals.
The results you have obtained up to a point can mould your future campaign into a better one, offering users exactly what they expect you to put on the table.
To-Do list:
#1. Define objectives for each platform: Focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) like engagement rates, follower growth, reach, and conversion rates.
#2. Analyze performance and impact: Compare the current data with previous periods to assess trends, improvements, or declines in performance. Identify which types of content, campaigns, or interactions have yielded the best results.
#3. Analyze your social media results and adjust accordingly: Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Additional frameworks to use when running an audit:
6. Leverage social media SEO
As social media platforms evolve, they increasingly resemble search engines.
For instance, Adobe found that 64% of Gen-Z users rely on TikTok to look for information on new products, tips, and tutorials.
A perfect brand discovery opportunity.
Platforms like TikTok offer search features that prioritize content based on user engagement and relevance, similar to traditional search engines. In addition, algorithms heavily rely on SEO to categorize content and serve it to the right audience.
This shift puts social media SEO on a list of social media must-haves in 2024.
To-Do List:
#1. Research relevant keywords: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to find keywords your audience is searching for.
#2. Optimize hashtags: Mix niche and trending hashtags to reach different audience segments. Use the Socialinsider hashtag tracking tool to identify the best tags for Instagram.
#3. Make your content SEO-friendly: Insert keywords and hashtags in your content, including on-screen text, captions, bio, descriptions, and alt texts.
7. Harness user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) is a cornerstone of best practices for social media marketing.
UGC involves content created and shared by consumers about brands or products. It’s highly effective on social media platforms because it feels natural and relatable.
People talking about a brand instead of a brand talking about itself. What can be a more powerful social proof than that?
In 2024, one of the most impactful best practices for social media revolves around harnessing the power of user-generated content (UGC).
By showcasing real people enjoying products or services, UGC serves as authentic social proof, significantly shaping purchasing decisions.
- stated Irina Makhnach - Social Media Marketing at Henkel.
To-Do List:
#1. Encourage sharing: Create campaigns or contests that inspire your audience to share their experiences with your brand. Use specific hashtags to make it easier to track and collect these posts.
#2. Feature user content: Regularly feature user-generated content on your social media channels and credit the source.
8. Research your influencers before working with them
Analyzing your influencers performance before signing the contracts can be an essential social media marketing practice in order to achieve your campaign goals.
When selecting an influencer, the first thing to consider is whether their values align with your brand's values. If they don't, you won't reach an audience with shared interests.
Additionally, you should analyze metrics such as engagement rate, posting frequency, and the overall evolution of the account. These factors should be top of mind when researching and analyzing various influencers' accounts.
To-Do list:
#1. Review the content and values expressed by the influencers to ensure they match your brand’s values.
#2. Conduct a comprehensive analysis: Dive deeper into the influencer's historical data and content performance.
9. Be selective with AI tools
AI tools have revolutionized social media marketing, from content creation to analytics. However, the best practices for 2024 call for selective use.
The key is to choose a handful of trusted AI marketing tools that truly streamline your processes.
Don’t succumb to the allure of every new AI tool.
Instead, identify three to five that genuinely enhance and amplify your creative endeavors. - said Mary Fain Brandt - Business Consultant.
I am very fond of AI tools, but let’s be honest — without a professional behind the wheel, AI generates somewhat mediocre content. ChatGPT can give you solid tips for social media posts, but write said posts well enough? Arguably.
AI tools can be immensely helpful, but only if used with professionalism, awareness, and solid marketing foundations. - continued Veronica Gentili - Social Media Marketing Expert.
To-Do List:
- Revise your workflows: AI tools help in various fields, from visual design to content creation, analytics, and task management. Look at your workflows to see where AI can speed things up and complement your process.
- Ensure human oversight: Integrate AI tools into your workflow but maintain human oversight to personalize and refine outputs. Let the AI build the base and then polish it with human creativity.
10. Proactively communicate with your community through comments
Proactively putting your brand in front of your audience is more than just running ads or sharing content.
In 2024, it’s about active commenting across the industry.
Yes, even if you’re not invited through a tag.
The breadcrumb commenting strategy helps you insert your brand into the conversation about your industry, similar products, or services. This proactive practice increases your engagement on social and positions your brand as an integral part of the industry dialogue.
In 2024, the party happens in the comments.
The brands who want to win on social this year will think about more than just the content they're posting. - described Corrie Jones - Head of Social Media at StrategiQ.
To-Do List:
#1. Set up social listening tools: Use these tools to track industry-related keywords and identify where you can contribute to conversations naturally.
#2. Follow relevant accounts: Engage with influencers and industry leaders by commenting on their posts and sharing your expertise.
#3. Develop commenting guidelines: Prepare a set of guidelines for your team on how to engage in comments. Include scenarios on handling both positive and negative interactions.
11. Master social listening for proactive engagement
Social listening is crucial for brands who want to actively engage with their audience. Listening to what your audience has to say about your brand and products gives you a whole pack of actionable insights.
What are your audience’s pain points?
Did they like the new update?
What do they want to have as the new feature?
People talk about those things online, and with social listening tools, you can insert yourself into these conversations.
Social listening is equally helpful in identifying opportunities and putting out potential fires.
To-Do List:
- Set up relevant keywords: Choose what you need to track. It can be your brand’s mentions, competitors, relevant keywords you’d like to react to, or whole key phrases.
- Engage proactively: Respond to mentions, questions, and comments promptly to build a relationship with your audience. Show that you value their input and are attentive to their needs.
Get in-depth insights into your branded hashtags or hashtag campaigns.
AI Instagram listening insights. Sentiment analysis. Explore posts and topics around hashtag campaigns.
12. Put together a top-notch social media team
The way you plan your social media calendar and coordinate your team says a lot about your brand’s growth potential and success.
You are the conductor and your social media team is an orchestra. Make sure everyone knows their instrument in and out and they collaborate to help each other whenever needed, to deliver their work in time.
To-Do list:
#1. Identify key roles and skill sets: Look for a diverse range of skills that complement each other, including creative abilities, analytical expertise, writing proficiency, and technical know-how related to various social media platforms and tools.
#2. Recruit and train for excellence: Invest in regular training and development to keep skills sharp and up-to-date.
13. Posting manully feels better than scheduling
When scheduling their social media posts, many social media managers complain about the result. Either the tags were not correctly set, the hashtags didn’t work and the picture got cropped after posting.
Some may even say that scheduled posts do not gain as much traction as the instantly-published ones.
If you find a pattern there, then scheduling posts may not bring you any advantages. And it won’t save up on time if you constantly need to get back to the post and edit it.
This marketing practice works best for brand social media managers and in-house social media teams.
To-Do list:
#1. Develop a real-time posting strategy: Plan a content calendar that outlines what types of content to post and the general timeframes for posting.
#2. Organize your social media team's schedules: Ensure that someone is always available to manage and post content during key hours when your audience is most active
Social media content best practices
14. Prioritize authenticity across all platforms
Authenticity is not just preferred — it's expected. Consumers are increasingly savvy and can easily distinguish between genuine engagement and forced marketing.
56% of consumers say that brands need to be more relatable on social media. That’s many people who will see through your self-promotion and polished content.
Whether we’re talking best practices for Instagram or Facebook, authenticity is vital in 2024.
Gone are the days of heavily produced, branded content - social is about genuine, meaningful, honest content that creates connection and speaks directly to your audience’s needs. - said Emily Kinnersley - Freelance Social Media Director.
To-Do List:
- Work on tone of voice: Develop a tone of voice that is authentic and consistent with your brand. This tone should resonate with your target audience and stay true to your brand's core values and attire.
- Engage naturally: Shift your content strategy to include more behind-the-scenes posts, real-time engagement with followers, and content that addresses current social media trends.
15. Invest in short-form video
Short-form videos emerged as a cornerstone of social media marketing strategies across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
The engaging and binging nature of shot clips makes them a powerful tool for capturing audience attention and pedaling brand awareness.
However, it’s tough for many brands to jump head-first into regularly creating short-form video content. Some are unsure whether it fits the tone of voice, and others simply consider it a little too Gen-Z.
In 2024, investing in short-form video is a no-brainer for smart marketers with marketing strategies.
One easy way to get started is to utilize snippets from long-form content. - recommended Dorien van Dam Morin - Social Media Strategist.
Besides showing unprecedented engagement rates, short-form videos are simply more genuine and authentic — a crucial aspect of social media success in 2024. Videos are a sure way to stay human online, making them one of the best practices for social media.
You can create video content easily on your phone but I suggest investing in a lapel mic to connect with your phone, and once you get into it, maybe a tripod on your desk to set yourself up properly.
If you don't have ring lights, then record yourself with natural light coming in through the window if you can. - continued Louise Brogan - LinkedIn Consultant & Trainer.
To-Do List:
#1. Repurpose long-form content: Identify key segments of longer videos or articles that can be repurposed into engaging short-form videos. AI tools like Opus Clip can help you automate it.
#2. Experiment with formats: Explore different styles of short-form videos, from behind-the-scenes clips to educational tutorials, to see what resonates best with your audience.
#3. Incorporate storytelling: Use short videos to tell compelling stories about your brand mission, products, or team members, creating emotional connections with viewers.
16. Keep your content versatile
Yes, all top social media tips recommend memes and short videos. Yes, PDF carousels are among the best practices for LinkedIn.
But does it mean you have to use only carousels, memes, and videos?
No.
Social media best practices change fast. Social media marketers who don’t diversify their content, betting only on the generally recommended formats, might find themselves with all their eggs in one basket.
Plus, what works for one brand doesn’t always work for you the same way. It all comes down to what your particular audience wants to see — and it might not be cat memes.
Rely on your up-to-date analytics to see what really works for you, and don’t dismiss a good format just because it’s less trendy.
Always tailor each piece of content for a specific platform, reformatting and rewriting copy and hashtags where necessary! - recommended Dorien van Dam Morin - Social Media Strategist.
To-Do List:
#1. Conduct regular content audits: Review your existing content performance across various formats and platforms.
#2. Analyze audience preferences: Use analytics tools to understand what types of content resonate most with your audience.
#3. Experiment with diverse formats and monitor performance: Mix and match your content based on your current analytics findings to ensure you’re ready for any turn of the tide.
17. Humanize content
The best social media strategies 2024 revolve around being real and relatable.
Success comes to brands that explore and demonstrate their human side, building deeper emotional connections with the audience.
Audiences want to see content that they can resonate with through storytelling that strikes a chord or content that offers them something of genuine value. - said Jo Edge - Social Media Marketer.
Mari Smith - Social Media Thought Leader continued:
In a world where everyone is now wading through a sea of synthetic, AI-generated content in their social media feeds, how can you stand out and maintain a competitive edge?
The answer lies in your ability to create even more humanized, personalized interactions. Real people engaging with real people. Lean into community building. Go the extra mile. Surprise and delight - Mari Smith - Social Media Thought Leader.
Louise Brogan added to this social media practice:
With ever more use of AI and automation, the need for AUTHENTICITY is increasingly obvious.
A video of a 'talking head', where your team member or CEO is speaking directly into the camera lens, is more powerful than any written word. - Louise Brogan - LinkedIn Consultant & Trainer.
To-Do List:
#1. Incorporate real stories: Use real-life stories from your team and customers, not bare sales pitches and product benefits. Show your customers you understand and share their pain points.
#2. Show behind-the-scenes: Give your audience a peek behind the curtain to see the people and processes behind your products or services. Put a face to a process.
#3. Engage actively and sincerely: Respond genuinely to comments, messages, and posts from your audience. Speak human, not corporate.
18. Incorporate relatable business-friendly content
The selling content is performing less and less robustly, while relatable entertaining content is getting all the engagement.
As audience preferences shift, brands are now prioritizing content that focuses on the human aspects of their businesses rather than directly promoting products.
Brands like Monzo Bank, Hubspot, and Semrush use these social media practices by doing a really good job of being business-real on LinkedIn.
Take a look at this post from Monzo:
It has nothing to do with their product or banking itself.
Yet, it’s relatable, understandable, and engaging, making other people who work in corporate go “Yes, they really get it.” And this feeling is exactly what brands are after now.
Relatable and entertaining content is for the win in 2024.
It's all about making genuine connections with your audience and making them feel valued and understood, rather than selling something.
You're building something bigger than a brand page, you're building a community. - said Miruna Vocheci, Social Media Manager at Socialinsider.
To-Do List:
#1. Be authentic, not cringe: Crafting a simple, one-line post that resonates can be tricky. It's essential to keep the tone natural and avoid forcing humor or casualness that doesn't fit your brand’s voice.
#2. Balance your content: Integrate this lighter, more relatable content style with your promotional messages. This strategy can help strike the right chord with your audience while aligning the content with your business objectives, much like Semrush does.
Social media customer support best practices
19. Use social media as a customer support point
Social media is among the top customer touchpoints for brand communication. According to Zendesk research, 67% of customers say social media is the most convenient and quick way to contact customer support.
Using social media as a customer support channel allows brands to meet customers where they are. Social media customer service best practices include rapid response time (ideally, within an hour) and personalized interactions.
Ready-made message templates speed up the process but add a human touch to them.
How can you truly make your customers’ day?
All your public-facing staff that interface regularly with your audience online need to be skillfully trained in the ability to make people feel special, heard, and important. - confirmed Mari Smith - Social Media Thought Leader.
To-Do List:
#1. Implement responsive systems: Set up social listening tools and response protocols to ensure timely reactions to customer inquiries.
#2. Train customer service teams: Your social media manager is not a customer service specialist. If you’re going all the way in with the social media customer support service, ensure you have the proper setup for it.
#3. Prepare guides and FAQs: These docs will help your customer support team and customers solve their issues faster.
20. Automate your interactions (but stay mindful)
Automation tools for managing direct messages on platforms like Instagram have become best practices for social media manager productivity.
Such tools help streamline customer interactions by providing instant responses to common inquiries. This way, you can be sure no customer query goes unnoticed, allowing for an effective use of social media as a customer support channel.
If you're going to use social media in 2024 you want to get used to using DM automation tools because saying link in bio no longer works - said Keenya Kelly - Marketing Strategist.
However, remember to balance automation with a personal touch. Authentic engagements are vital for building real connections with your audience.
To-Do List:
#1. Outline the automation tools’ responsibilities: Start by integrating DM automation tools to handle frequently asked questions and immediate customer responses.
#2. Monitor and adjust: Regularly review the automated conversations to ensure they meet the quality and tone expected by your audience.
#3. Train your team for escalation: Prepare your team to take over when automation fails and handle complex queries with personalized interaction.
Social media best practices for business
21. Prioritize LinkedIn as a B2B channel
Social media best practices for business definitely include having an active LinkedIn page for your brand.
LinkedIn has transformed from a corporate hiring platform to a leading B2B social media channel rich for lead generation. In fact, 82% of B2B marketers report their greatest success from LinkedIn, highlighting its effectiveness.
The platform offers various content formats, from posts to live streams and job postings, but LinkedIn newsletters are particularly valuable.
One of the best social media practice for B2B marketers is the LinkedIn newsletter.
There are huge benefits:
- All of your connections and followers will be invited to subscribe
- They can subscribe with a single tap or click
This alone explains why list growth for LI newsletters is so much faster than traditional email newsletters - said Andy Crestodina - Co-founder & CMO at Orbit Media.
To-Do List:
#1. Optimize your company profile: Keep your profile updated with the latest information and visuals aligned with your brand.
#2. Set up LinkedIn Life tab: Use this feature to give insights into your team, products, and leadership, enhancing your brand’s transparency and appeal.
#3. Post regular industry-related updates: Consistently share content that establishes your expertise, reducing overt selling and focusing on providing value.
22. Embrace personal branding and employee advocacy
Personal branding and employee advocacy are becoming pivotal in social media marketing best practices, regardless of whether a brand is action on B2B or B2C marketing. By telling your brand story through other people, you gain the authenticity and diversity of voices.
Two best social media best practices for 2024 that all marketers and businesses should be taking note of are personal branding and employee advocacy. - completed Xandrina Allday - Social Media Manager at Labx Media Group.
To-Do List:
#1. Develop branding guidelines: Though more authentic, employee advocacy still requires some navigation. Create soft guidelines to balance the employees’ authentic personal brand with your business values.
#2. Get your C-Levels to post on socials: no easy task, I know. However, your executives’ visibility and participation humanize your business greatly. Provide them with tailored content that resonates with both industry peers and customers.
This process allows us to validate our ideas and extend the reach of the content. You can follow our CMO on LinkedIn - Adina Jipa.
23. Ask customers for feedback
This social media tip is one of the best practices for 2024 to implement right away.
You can use interactive social media content (such as polls, stickers, and Instagram stories, as well as polls through captions on Instagram) to gather industry tips and learn about audience needs or pains.
To-Do list:
#1. Use interactive elements into your content: Craft questions that are directly related to gathering insights about your audience's preferences, challenges, or needs.
#2. Analyze the feedback: Pay attention to common themes or frequently expressed concerns and preferences.
24. Place your star products under spotlight
Launching a new campaign may seem all kinds of…new. Well, besides needing to follow a promo plan, you need to make sure your new campaign also reflects your brand’s voice and values.
It is important to promote your new services and products as much as possible, since they are as fresh as buns that got out of the oven.
To-Do list:
#1. Pin some of the posts to the top of the page: users can see them first when they visit your social media page.
#2. Repurpose the content that highlights your start products.
Final thoughts
Social media best practices can change rapidly. When in doubt, rely on evergreen tips for marketing on social media, such as tracking your performance, engaging with your audience consistently, and adapting your strategy based on data insights.
Ready to see the best practices for social media in action? 😉
