We all know organic social media is a key way to drive brand awareness and maximise marketing budgets, but sometimes it’s easier said than done!

In this blog post we will introduce the three main social media platforms, and some best practices for using them to organically market your dive business. We’ve broken down each platform to include:

Basics – what you should be doing at a minimum. The goals at this level are to bring about brand awareness.

Good – how you can use the platform more effectively. Goals at this level will be about building engagement with your audience.

Ideal – the best practices, which will give the best returns. At this level, you may have a few different goals, not only will you be raising your brand awareness and engagement – but you might also have specific campaign based goals, such as conversion rates etc.

Please be aware – this is just a guide, and the amount of time that businesses can allocate to organic social media marketing will vary.

If you’re interested in improving your social media marketing, be sure to watch our Business Survival Webinar: Organic Social Media Best Practice below:

Facebook is the largest social platform with over 2.4 thousand million monthly active users. Each social platform has slightly different audience demographics and you can use this understanding to inform your content creation. Very basically (as these differ from region to region):

Facebook is 54% Female and 46% Male (currently data is only available for these genders), and the network where millennials and Gen X’ers are most likely to share content.

So, how can you use Facebook to support your marketing efforts?

Basic

• A fully created business page – this will help your potential clients understand exactly what your business offers and how to contact you.
• Posting once a week – there is no hard and fast rule to how many times you should post on your social media accounts, but you do need to have an active presence. Consistency and quality are the most important factors in social media marketing posts.
• Follow other pages – remember, social media is about conversation.

Good

• Update your page information – for example you could update your header image monthly (don’t forget you can also make use of video here) and ensure contact details are ALWAYS up to date
• Post more regularly – how regularly you post will be different for each business but you will be able to work out the optimum number for your page through understanding your social engagements and factoring in real time commitments.
• Post different types of content – use a variety of pictures, videos, promotional posts, and even Facebook Live. This makes your posts more interesting, and, through experimenting, can help you to understand what types of content your followers engage with.
• Engage with comments – in some cases this can lead directly to sales but in a less aggressive marketing strategy, it’s nice – and reinforces your brand as helpful and willing to converse with the consumer.
• Respond to messages – remember social media marketing is about conversation!
• Utilise Facebook Business Manager – this separates your business page from your personal account and you can make use of marketing specific tools that will help to ensure your page is an effective in marketing your business.

Ideal

• Everything we’ve already covered
• Analyse posts and adapt posting timings, content etc. to reflect your findings.
• Schedule posts – this is always a good idea and means you won’t forget to post! It’s also useful if your analytics suggest that you post at 9am but you’re due to be on a dive then for example.
• Make use of Facebook updates and experiment! – remember to analyse how experiments have gone and which to continue, and which to stop.
• Create a Facebook Group to instigate engagement and conversation – Facebook algorithms mean that your whole audience won’t see everything you post, so groups are a good way to get around this.
• Use messenger proactively – marketers are getting very excited about how messenger apps can be used in marketing so it’s definitely worth looking into.
• Ask customers to leave reviews on your page, good reviews can increase trust in your brand, and ultimately lead to higher sales.

Instagram marketing best practice

Instagram has 1 thousand million monthly active users. It’s a visual platform with a younger audience, 64% of the users here are 18-34. They also have a useful hub of marketing tips online here.

So, how can you use Instagram to support your marketing efforts?

Basic

• A fully created business account – includes updating your account to a ‘business’ account, having a bio – generally this would be your ‘mission statement’ and including a link in bio
• Post own content on the ‘grid’ once a week
• Use hashtags – these are important as they are a way for non-followers to find your content, and ultimately your business. Make sure these are relevant to you, so the people who find your content will already be interested in what you have to say.
• Follow other accounts and hashtags – remember social media is a two way conversation – consumers want to know you are interested in what they have to say as well, especially on platforms like Instagram.

Good

• Post more than once a week on the ‘grid’ – making use of all the posting types – boomerang, multiple uploads, video etc.
• Post Instagram Stories – and tag relevant accounts / locations / hashtags as again, this is a way for new followers to find you. Also remember you can save stories as highlights on your page so they last longer than 24 hours.
• The link in bio can be a really useful tool to drive traffic to your website – currently you can’t link to websites directly from captions, but there are some really cool workarounds you can use. For example PADI uses ‘linkin.bio’ where you can assign different links to images in your feed.
• Respond to comments – again, ensuring that your social marketing is part of a two way conversation. People may also ask questions, in answering these you will gain a level of trust.
• Engage with other pages and accounts

Ideal

• All of the above
• Think about running contests – Instagram is a great platform for running these, but you must have a clear focus on WHY you’re running them; always ask yourself how this will help your overall marketing strategy.
• Post content from other users (User Generated Content, UGC) – remember to ensure you have their permission though! UGC is a great tool as it encourages trust, promotes authenticity and ultimately generates revenue.
• Stay on top of updates – social channels are constantly evolving and it’s a good idea to keep on top of trends to stay relevant in the minds of your consumer.
• Make use of longer-form video content – like IG TV, and Instagram Lives. This is great if you have the resources, for example if you have a keen UW videographer on your team, or someone who’s comfortable in front of a camera!

Twitter marketing best practice

Twitter has an estimated 340 million monthly active users. Twitter is also known as a ‘micro-blogging’ platform, text is short and succinct, but images and videos do have their place here. It’s also a great place for small to medium businesses, with 79% of users re-tweeting small to medium businesses tweets.

So, how can you use Twitter to support your marketing efforts?

Basic

• A fully created account
• Tweets from linked Facebook account – to be honest this in not a best practice and should be avoided, but if you really don’t have time to tweet then it can fill your feed with interesting content. If this is all the time you have for with Twitter it might be best to ask yourself if your business really needs to be on Twitter, after all, it’s better to have no presence than a poor one.
• Follow other accounts, you can get as much from following others as you can from having lots of followers yourself.

Good

• Post content you’ve written for Twitter – this doesn’t have to be completely new content. You could still share the same image you’ve posted to Instagram and Facebook but with an edited caption. For example on Instagram you can’t link to websites in captions – you can on Twitter. On Facebook hashtags aren’t all that useful but they are on Twitter. So you can edit your content to include a website link and hashtags on Twitter, which you wouldn’t do for other platforms. Twitter also has the strictest limitations on characters.
• Post more frequently.
• Retweet content that is interesting and you think would be interesting for your followers.
• Use Hashtags, to help your potential customers find your content.
• Use images and video on tweets – tweets with images and videos get a lot more engagement than those without.
• Engage with other users – Twitter is a great platform for discussion and to show yourselves as an authority. It’s also a great idea to join local twitter ‘chats’.

Ideal

• All of the above.
• Start and curate twitter chats.
• Become known as an expert in your field – by hosting twitter chats and being a big voice in the local Twittersphere you will be first of mind when people have questions and gain their trust. Ultimately people buy mostly from recommendation and trusted friends. If people trust you on social media they’re more likely to buy from you.

Overall

Below are some general points for social media marketing best practice.

Basic

Goal – Brand Awareness

• Two or three channels with business accounts that are properly set up
• Post at least once a week
• Make sure your content is interesting and useful, and written for the platform it is posted on
• Link to your accounts on your website, and in your emails

Good

Goal – Increase Engagement

• Post content across all your channels regularly
• Post different types of content, make use of the different posting types available across the platforms
• Link to your different channels, this could be through posting on Twitter to alert you audience you will be doing a Facebook Live, or including a swipe up link in Instagram stories to your Facebook page
• Remember that each channel has a slightly different audience and tailor your content and posting accordingly

Ideal

Goal – Brand awareness, engagement and strategy support. At the beginning of the blog we talked about how at this level you may have a few different goals – not only will you be raising your brand awareness and engagement – but you might also have specific campaign based goals, such as conversion rates etc.

• All the above
• All handles to be the same, for instance, if you someone finds your Instagram account they should be able to search for your username on twitter and find your Twitter account. Although sometimes this is impossible, for example someone already owned the @padi username on Instagram so we’re @paditv. There’s nothing you can do about this unfortunately.
• Have a holistic plan for your social content
• Constantly engage with your audience
• Keep evolving and trying new things

Visit our PADI Pros Site to see our Marketing Toolkits which offer you a range of marketing tools that you can use for your social media campaigns. If you have any questions, please contact your regional marketing team at:

AP: marketing@padi.com.au

EMEA: marketing.emea@padi.com

PAP: marketing@padi.com 

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