What Is Social Media Automation? Top Tools and Tips

Table of Contents

If you’re like us, you prefer fun jobs over tedious tasks. (Actually, if you were into tedium, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog in the first place.) That’s why you’re going to love social media automation tools.

Social media automation tools allow you to automate boring, time-consuming tasks so you can get back to the fun stuff, like creating stunning content.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to automate tasks on social media with tools that help you improve response time, reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, and give you the insights you need to create more engaging content.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

What is social media automation?

Social media automation is the process of using tools or software to manage repetitive tasks on social media platforms, like posting content or producing reports, without manual labor.

Tools that automate post-scheduling, basic customer service, and analytics reports can save social media managers valuable time for higher-priority tasks.

What can you automate in social media marketing?

You can automate many (but not all!) tedious social media marketing tasks. And don’t worry—we’ll get to the software tools that can take care of these tasks for you at the bottom of this post.

Some aspects of content creation

Let’s face it: we can’t always be the Vincent Van Gogh-esque creative geniuses we often are. Sometimes, we’re more like Vincent Van No. But, if you need a hand brainstorming content ideas, you can always turn to a generative AI tool to help you out.

Look, you can (and should) automate text-based content, visuals, and videos using generative AI. But you absolutely need to review and edit AI-generated results. AI isn’t perfect (none of us are), but it’ll give you that get-up-and-Gogh boost you need.

ChatGPT prompt brainstorm a social media campaign for December

Source: ChatGPT

Social scheduling and publishing

Switching between different social accounts to publish multiple times per day can take up a lot of time. Especially because the best time to post and content best practices vary by platform.

Automatic social media posting saves time and increases efficiency without reducing content quality. Once your content is locked and loaded, you can use automated social media posting to schedule the appropriate pieces and post times on each network. Then sit back, relax, and let the robots take your posts over the finish line.

Basic customer service

The Hootsuite 2023 social trends report saw a massive dip in online customer satisfaction rates. But why are people so unhappy? Once the world officially reopened (bye-bye COVID), business owners stopped paying attention to online customer service.

So, what does this mean for your business? There’s a gaping hole in the ecommerce market, one you can fill with better customer service. And one way to do that is to use customer interaction automation.

You don’t need a human team member to answer common questions like “What are your hours?” and “Do you have any coupons available?” Likewise, you can automate service requests related to package tracking, refund status, and other issues tied to your CRM.

Conversational AI tools can handle more basic work without drastically affecting your business’s bottom line.

WestJet virtual assistant answers to upcoming flight and travel related questions

Data collecting

Automated data collection makes analytical reporting and decision-making a lot easier. Luckily, social media marketing automation was practically built to take care of the tedious number crunching you truly hate.

Automated data collection can include things like:

  • Platform-specific social data, like the best time to post on Instagram vs. TikTok
  • Post engagement stats, like likes, comments, shares, and more
  • Keyword or hashtag tracking, which allows you to see exactly what people are saying about your brand, themes related to your industry, and your competitors

If you find the right tool, you can even automate your reporting, generating client-ready dashboards and reports with just a few clicks.

Hootsuite Facebook pages Best times and days to publish graph

Source: Hootsuite

Start a free Hootsuite trial today

Common mistakes when automating social media marketing

DON’T put all of your faith in your tools

A poor builder blames his hammer when the house falls down. When you publish a “Don’t worry, be happy” post the same day as a global tragedy, the same goes for you.

tl;dr? Don’t set it and forget it unless you want your house to topple. Automating social media marketing doesn’t mean you flip a switch and walk away.

It’s important to monitor any automated outputs, including your publishing schedule. That way, you can make any adjustments required in real time.

World-changing crises happen all the time on social media. A poorly timed post can make your brand look out of touch or tactless.

DON’T use spammy bots

Just because some tools exist doesn’t mean you should use them. Remember: use bots for good, not evil. Embrace bots that help improve customers’ lives and your own.

AI tools that speed up customer service response times? Great. An inbox to manage DMs, comments, and tags from multiple networks in one place? Excellent.

But bots that automatically comment on or like social posts? Not such a good idea. They can cause lasting damage to your relationships with your audience. They can also land you in hot water with the social networks themselves.

DON’T cross-post without customizing

Cross-posting the same content to multiple social media accounts might seem like the easiest option. But it’s certainly not the most effective.

Some tools (including social media platforms) allow you to automatically cross-post to other platforms. Don’t be tempted.

Social platforms have different image display ratios, character count limits, and social features. Audiences on those platforms have different expectations, demographics, and word preferences. It’s highly unlikely that your link-heavy Facebook post, for example, will perform as well on linkless Instagram.

Instead, take the time to adjust your message for each platform’s audience. At the bare minimum, you’ll want to review:

  • User handles, which can vary between platforms
  • Image specs, like file type, size, cropping, etc.
  • Text, including platform character count and platform-specific language
  • Hashtags, including number and usage

Instead of cross-posting, use automated social media publishing at set times to use your time most efficiently.

4 top social media automation tools

1. Hootsuite

Number one on our list is Hootsuite (what, are you surprised?). Hootsuite provides a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of automation features. We’ve got so many features, in fact, that we broke them out one by one below.

Hootsuite streamlines your social media marketing efforts, making it easier for you to manage all of your social accounts from one place. In our humble opinion, it’s the best social media automation tool.

Price: Free trial, followed by a tiered paid subscription starting at $99/month.

This tool is best for: Medium-to-large teams, social media marketers, and content creators.

Here’s a breakdown of Hootsuite’s key automation tools and why you should care about them.

OwlyWriter AI

OwlyWriter AI is Hootsuite’s AI-driven, social-media-specific content-generating tool. Use it to save major time generating and testing social media captions.

OwlyWriter AI Instagram caption generator

Key features:

  • Rapid content generation. Create engaging and relevant social media posts in seconds, saving you time and creative energy.
  • Instant insights. Automatically identify and repurpose your top-performing posts—without manually reviewing your past content.

Best Time to Publish

Timing is crucial; you want to post when your audience is happily browsing. Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature analyzes, optimizes, and automates your posting schedule.

Best Time to Publish feature on Hootsuite

Key features:

  • Data analysis. Analyzes your audience’s online behavior to determine the ideal times for posting.
  • Improved visibility. Automatically schedule content for maximum reach and engagement. Increases the chances of your content being seen by your target audience.

Analytics

Most social platforms offer native analytics tools. But it can be a huge drain on your time to analyze each platform separately and compile manual reports.

Hootsuite Analytics makes this process a lot simpler. Create custom boards that show you an at-a-glance view of the metrics you want to track. Then, use automated reporting to export and send data to clients, managers, or yourself without lifting a finger.

Once you’ve set up your reports, you can measure your content performance as often as you like. You’ll get real-time updates and high-level overviews for quarterly or annual reviews.

Hootsuite Analytics brand awareness page impressions and reach

Key features:

Social Advertising

Hootsuite Social Advertising allows you to test hundreds of Facebook and Instagram ads and automatically reallocate your budget to the best-performing ones. It ensures you’re targeting the right audiences with the right metrics for maximum ROI.

You can automatically boost your budget or even start a new campaign based on pre-set triggers. This tool will even provide daily automatic ad performance recommendations.

Hootsuite Social Advertising also syncs your CRM or email list to your Facebook ad account, so you always have up-to-date custom audiences.

Hootsuite Social Advertising amount spent and post organic impressionsKey features:

  • Campaign management. Create, launch, and manage social ad campaigns from one platform.
  • Targeting options. Reach your ideal audience through advanced targeting capabilities.
  • Budget control. Set and monitor ad budgets to optimize your ROI.

Inbox

Hootsuite Inbox allows you to manage conversations and mentions across all of your social platforms from one dashboard. You can also use the Saved Replies feature to address common interactions automatically.

Key features:

  • Unified inbox. View and respond to messages from multiple social media platforms in one place.
  • Workflow management. Assign tasks to team members and streamline your response process.
  • Real-time engagement. Enhance customer service by quickly addressing queries and feedback.
  • Customer feedback. Automatically trigger customer satisfaction surveys.

Hootsuite Inbox insert reply

2. Meta Business Suite

If you primarily use Meta platforms, Meta Business Suite provides some great tools to help you automate your social media posts, Stories, ads, and analytics.

Just a note: You can create and schedule posts in the Business Suite, but only for your Meta accounts. If you’re a content creator or marketer on LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, or Twitter, you may want to use third-party social media automation software.

Meta Business Suite is a good tool for smaller teams who are only on Instagram and Facebook. If you’re a larger team with needs like content approval workflows, then you should consider Hootsuite.

Meta Business Suite Manage Facebook page and Instagram for Wairco brand

Source: Meta Business Suite

Key features

  • Scheduling. Scheduling capabilities for Facebook and Instagram
  • Reporting. Analytics for Facebook and Instagram
  • Media. Free music library

Price: Free

This tool is best for: Smaller teams only on Facebook or Instagram

3. Brandwatch

This tool helps automate social listening by analyzing social conversations in real-time. It provides alerts of spikes in social conversation or sentiment. This automatically informs you of potential crises or viral hits before they happen.

As far as automation tools for social media go, Brandwatch is like your resident watchdog. You set up a few different listening streams, then watch it work for you.

Oh, and best of all, this tool can integrate with Hootsuite.

Brandwatch Insights total mentions and mention volume over time

Source: Brandwatch for Hootsuite

Key features:

  • Instant analysis. Real-time analysis of social conversations offers up-to-the-minute insights into what’s happening in your industry or among your audience.
  • Alerts. Receive alerts for spikes in social conversation or shifts in sentiment, allowing you to proactively address potential crises or capitalize on viral trends.
  • Integration with Hootsuite. Seamlessly integrate Brandwatch with Hootsuite, bettering your social media management capabilities.

Price: Brandwatch offers various pricing tiers to suit the needs of different businesses, from small startups to large enterprises.

This tool is best for: Brandwatch is ideal for businesses looking to automate social listening, monitor their online reputation, and stay ahead of trends and potential issues in real time.

4. ChatGPT

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can help with social automation in more ways than you think. Yes, this powerful tool will write captions for you, but it can also help you brainstorm content calendars, rewrite old content or strategies with a new lens, and kickstart your content ideation.

One small disclaimer: ChatGPT is a tool that needs to be trained. You’ll likely have to spend some time figuring out which prompts will work for your brand. It also doesn’t do much for big social pain points like automatic posting, changing formats, and understanding the algorithm. So, you’ll have to keep a keen eye on the outputs.

ChatGPT write a social media calendar for Hootsuite for the month of November

Source: ChatGPT

Key features:

  • Personalization. You can use it to tailor your content to your brand’s voice and style, ensuring consistency, but it does take some experimenting with different prompts.
  • Brainstorming. Receive fresh perspectives, new angles, and ideas for your social needs.
  • Instant output. Immediate results can save you time and effort.

Price: Free! Paid accounts start at $20/month.

This tool is best for: Content creators, social media marketers, and teams of all sizes.

Save time managing your social media and get your content seen using Hootsuite. Schedule and publish content, engage your audience, and measure the performance of all your accounts, across multiple networks—all from a single dashboard. Try it free today.

Get Started

With files from Christina Newberry.

Do it better with Hootsuite, the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.

Free 30-Day Trial

Social Media Marketing for Beginners: 10 Tips

Table of Contents

Your mind is ready. Your body is ready. It’s time to take your first steps into social media marketing. And we’re here to say that we couldn’t be more proud of you.

More than 4.95 billion people are social media users. Worldwide, social users spend almost two and a half hours on social platforms each day. No matter your industry—accounting, consulting, dog-food manufacturing, wig-weaving—this is a captive, active audience that your brand can’t afford to ignore. (Find more eye-popping stats about social media here!)

But whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned pro stepping into the digital landscape for the first time, we know that starting a social media marketing strategy from scratch can feel intimidating. The good news? We’re here to help. Think of us as your digital marketing doulas, here to demystify the world of social media marketing and help kickstart your journey.

So read on for everything you need to get started with your brand-new social media game plan, and a list of our favorite resources to help you grow from social rookie to all-star.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

Social media marketing for beginners: 10 tips

Understand your audience

Whatever kind of business you operate, you need to know your target audience inside and out to succeed. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, how can you ever say the right thing? So before you even sign up for that Instagram account, you’ve got to do some homework. Identify your target demographic in as much detail as you can, including their interests, behaviors, and preferences. You might even want to make an audience persona: a prototype of a typical follower.

Once you know that your marketing is intended for little old ladies in Michigan or tech bros in New Dehli, you’ll understand just what type of tone and topics will resonate best… setting you off on the right path to earning engagement and brand loyalty.

Learn how to identify your unique audience and niche here.

Define your social media goals

Not everyone is on social media for the same reason. Some brands use social to offer customer service; others are there to build brand awareness. Figuring out your own brand’s objectives will help guide your game plan.

Are you interested in driving traffic to your ecommerce site, building engagement, or fostering community? Knowing the why behind your social media presence will help keep your actions focused, and allow you to clearly measure success or struggles.

For instance, while we don’t know for sure what Lululemon is thinking behind the scenes, content like this 10K training tweet indicates that one of its goals is to be a source of fitness education and support for its audience.

Need a little guidance? Check out our guide to setting and exceeding social media goals here.

Choose the right platforms

Here’s a little-known fact about social media marketing: your brand doesn’t have to be on every platform. Each social media platform has its own unique personality, and not all are necessarily going to be a fit for your brand. (And if you’re considering just signing up for everything and cross-posting across all the platforms, we’ll just tell you right now: please don’t.)

A magazine targeting senior citizens, on the other hand, would be wasting its time posting on youth-oriented TikTok… while cool-girl makeup brand Glossier is right at home on the platform.

@glossier

Less is more except when ✨more is more✨ #glossier #insandouts #2024insandouts

♬ What Love Is – Zimmer90

Where does your target audience hang out online? What feels appropriate for your editorial voice? Be selective about the platforms you want to have a presence on and then give your all—it’s about quality, not quantity.

Create quality content

Okay, we know that’s easier said than done. But the truth is that content has to be interesting or visually compelling, or there’s no point. The whole goal of social media marketing is to capture your audience’s attention, so take the time to craft content that actually offers value.

But! “Quality” doesn’t mean that it needs to be shot with a professional camera, or cost thousands of dollars. In fact, in some cases, a more improvised feel can actually add it the appeal of a post. It’s about being thoughtful and authentic… like this playful Bailey Nelson video that riffs on the glasses-shopping experience. Low-budget, and lots of fun.

@baileynelsoneyewear

POV: the Rich Aussie mum takes you glasses shopping at #BaileyNelson 🤓 @finns.vlogs

♬ original sound – bailey nelson

Basically, no one wants to be constantly sold to. But sharing a how-to tutorial on using your best-selling products? Helpful! Giving followers a glimpse behind the scenes at your office? Humanizing. Think about what you would want to see, and let that guide your content strategy.

Aim to educate, entertain, or inspire, and keep the promotional posts to a minimum. Here’s a cheat sheet with 17 creative content ideas to get you started.

Plan ahead

There’s no easy answer for how often to post on social media—every platform has its own best practices. But one throughline, from X to Pinterest, is that consistency is key. Posting regularly ensures you’re appearing in followers’ timelines regularly. It gives your fans something to count on. It appeases the algorithms. It makes your brand seem fresh and timely. Win win win win.

It can seem daunting to keep up with that sort of pace, but if you plan ahead, it’s more than manageable. Pick a few “content pillars” and spend a day (every week, every month, whatever!) when you’re feeling creative doing a big brainstorm of posts that could fit into those key categories. Then plug those posts into your social media scheduling tool to make sure you’re getting them out into the world at a good pace.

Hootsuite Planner with calendar social content overview

Bookmark the best resources

Tragically, not every brand has the budget for a whole team of social media content creators, and content creation is often the work of one brave marketer or solopreneur. But with the right tools in your toolbelt, it doesn’t have to be a slog.

We’ve compiled resources for the best graphic design tools, the best free stock photo sites, the best stock video sites, the best video editing tools, and even the best new AI tools. Bookmark these lists and supercharge your content craftwork.

Study up on hashtags and SEO

If you’re making amazing content, but no one’s seeing it, it’s going to be hard to hit your social media goals (whatever they may be). To really achieve organic reach with your content, mastering the fine art of hashtagging is key. Research relevant hashtags, understand best practices (stick with 3-5 per caption!) and mix broad tags with niche ones for maximum reach. Here’s our post on how to use hashtags for every network if you want to learn more.

Similarly, it’s important to consider what keywords you’re including in your captions, titles, and alt tags. Social search is becoming more powerful every day. Read this post on social SEO to learn just how to level up your discoverability.

Practice social listening

Social listening may sound like an advanced practice, but social media marketers at any level can do it. At its core, social listening is the practice of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand or relevant keywords—a practice that offers valuable insights into how customers feel about your products or services, what their pain points are, and what they’d like to see from you in the future. There are plenty of social listening tools out there, but we (obviously) recommend Hootsuite. The listening streams are really easy to set up. Read about social listening here, or watch this video (dealer’s choice!).

Put yourself out there

Successful social media marketing involves more than just broadcasting messages: participation and interaction are key to building connection and community. So don’t just schedule time for posting into your day; schedule time for actively engaging with your audience in the comment section or elsewhere on the site. Encourage conversations, ask questions, and participate in the community. Run polls, answer DMs, host Q&As, and do whatever else you can to give as much as you take.

Hair accessory brand Supercrush created this post to ask its audience to vote on product colors and everyone wanted to chime in.

Dig into the analytics

Just as businesses analyze their performance metrics, social media marketers should be reviewing their data regularly, too. After all, how can you refine your strategies if you don’t know how things are actually going?

Remember the social media goals you set out way back at the beginning of your social media journey? Your social media analytics will reveal if your actions have paid off. Regularly check in on the metrics that are meaningful to you (reach, engagement, click-through rates, and so on)—looking back is what will help you move forward with confidence.

As you probably guessed, this is just scratching the surface of what’s possible with social media. We haven’t even touched on understanding the social media algorithm, creating social media guidelines, or advertising on social media. (Ooh, or employee advocacy!) (Or influencer collaborations!) (Or how to go live on social media!) (Someone please take our keyboard away.)

But here’s the thing: there’s always something more to learn about social. It’s a digital landscape that’s constantly evolving, so you’re never going to “finish” learning everything you need to know… which means you kind of just need to jump into the deep end and figure it out as you go.

Top resources to learn social media marketing

Embrace the idea of learning on the job and experimenting. There are lots of resources for advanced learning out there (see below), but real social media education starts with getting hands-on (mouse on?).

Hootsuite Blog

Not to toot our own horn, but the Hootsuite Blog is a valuable source for articles, guides, and insights related to social media marketing. We cover a wide range of topics, including social media trends, best practices, platform updates, and case studies… and even do fun experiments. (Hot tip: do not buy TikTok followers.) Stay tuned to deepen your understanding of effective strategy and gain practical skills to help you improve your social media game.

Hootsuite Academy

Want to take your social media learning even further? Hootsuite Academy is here to help you really nerd out. This is a self-guided, structured online learning program that features courses and certifications on various aspects of social media marketing. We cover topics like social media strategy, content marketing, social advertising, and platform-specific skills. Whether you’re a beginner or more experienced marketer, there’s something for everyone.

Hootsuite Labs

Go ahead and subscribe to Hootsuite Labs on YouTube right now (we’ll wait). It’s a channel brought to you by our own social media team. Each week, we’ll deliver a new video featuring experiments, hacks, strategies, or explainers to help you understand just how social media works… and, more importantly, how to be successful.

Google’s Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

Though it’s not focused solely on social media, Google’s Digital Garage offers a free course called “Fundamentals of Digital Marketing” that has lots of interesting info about online marketing and social. There are lots of practical exercises and real-world examples, so it’s a nice foundational resource.

Social Media Today

Social Media Today aggregates content from various contributors in the social media industry into one platform, so you’ll have all the hot news from the frontlines of social media marketing in one place. Think: articles, insights, trends related to social media marketing, platform updates and strategic advice.

Link in Bio Newsletter

Former social media manager for Bon Appetit, Rachel Karten, writes a weekly newsletter that is one of Hootsuite’s social media team’s top resources when it comes to news, trends, and brands to pay attention to. By her own description, Karten’s newsletter is “about working in social media, creating clever content, and making sure your boss never asks you to “go viral”. And we highly recommend it!

ICYMI

Here’s another newsletter we love. Lia Haberman has been referred to as the world’s foremost creator economy expert, but her weekly newsletter is about digital marketing more generally (with a strong focus on social media marketing). We read it to stay up-to-date with industry trends (and also for her pithy and wise insights). 

Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. Publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversations, engage your audience, measure results, and more — all from one simple dashboard. Try it free today.

Do it better with Hootsuite, the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.

Free 30-Day Trial

20 Ways To Get More Views on Instagram Reels (These Work!)

20 ways to get more views on Instagram Reels

Want to know how to get more views on Instagram Reels? Stick with us, kid. We’re giving out free social media advice that doesn’t involve black-hat techniques (we look better in white, tbh), get-rich-quick schemes (tried, failed), or snake oil (not good for the snakes).

We’re breaking down the best practices social media managers, creators, and Instagram pros use to get those reel view gains! Do what the experts do, and you’ll pump up your watch numbers au naturale.

This inclusive guide tells you exactly how to get more views on Instagram Reels using twenty tried-and-true methods.

Bonus: Download the free 10-Day Reels Challenge, a daily workbook of creative prompts that will help you get started with Instagram Reels, track your growth, and see results across your entire Instagram profile.

What counts as a view on Instagram Reels?

Before we dive into how to get more views on reels, you first need to know what counts as a view. Instagram has a couple of rules, which we’ve outlined below.

There are also a few black-hat baddies out there that will promote paid hacks on how to get your reels seen, but buyer, beware. It may not be worth it in the end.

The three-second rule

Despite many sources claiming Instagram reel view counts happen instantaneously (like TikTok), Instagram only counts views after three seconds. Your viewer can’t click away before the three-second mark, or else it didn’t happen. The takeaway from this is to make your first four seconds engaging. Give your viewer a reason to stick around.

Replays: What are they worth?

Instagram only counts the first few views per user. So, you can’t use your friend’s account to watch your reel a hundred times over to bump up your views.

Watching your own reels

You might be thinking of ways to hack the system, like racking up your own views by replaying your reels. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t make it that easy. Viewing your own reels won’t register as a view.

Is buying views worth it?

Paying your way to social media stardom doesn’t often net the results you want. Believe us, we’ve tested it by buying Instagram followers.

So, while buying views may seem worth it, there’s usually a catch. Often, these views are provided by bots that can’t engage with your content otherwise. These black hat techniques can put your account at risk of being banned. They also skew your data, so you can’t use it for any actual insights into your content.

If you’re trying to build an audience or monetize your content, buying them isn’t the answer to how to get views on reels.

20 ways to get more views on Instagram Reels

1. Make your first few seconds count

As we mentioned above, you need a minimum of three seconds of attention for the view to count.

There are a few tricks you can take to make sure people stick around for that magical four-second mark. Start in media res by jumping right into the meat of the video; people don’t want a long lead-up to the good stuff.

You can also promise your viewers a surprise or a treat of some kind at the end of the video to keep them interested. On a totally unrelated note: if you read to the end of this blog, you’ll get a recommendation for a hashtag AI tool that can predict the tags your audience will respond to!

2. Don’t hide your content in your Reels tab

Once you share your video, it will automatically be stored in a separate Reels tab on your profile.

If you want it to appear on your main profile grid (and trust us, you do), you also have to share it to your Feed. This is one of the easier answers to how to get more views on reels—just toggle a button.

Doing this increases the visibility on your reel. You can choose a custom thumbnail for your video so it doesn’t mess up your grid aesthetic. The reel will show up like a normal post, with a reel icon in the top right corner. Hootsuite Instagram Reels shared on feed

3. Do keyword research

Keyword research isn’t just for websites and blogs anymore. Your social media algorithms use a similar set of rules to Google’s search algorithms, as every digital platform has the same goal: To keep the user using the platform.

It stands to reason that you can use SEO to better your reach on social, and that starts with keyword research on your social platform. Keyword research can also help to inform your content. If you’re stuck on what kind of reel to make, take a look at what your audience is searching for and the search terms Instagram suggests.

Take a look at the experiment we did on how traditional SEO tactics impact social media success. You can straight-up copy the TikTok methodology we used, which is step 2 in the how-to guide, and use it on Instagram.

4. Be specific with your captions

Pay attention to keyword placement by top-loading your sentence with your target keywords. Also, don’t stuff your captions with keywords. Social caption writing should follow the same rules as long-form SEO and be written for a human audience, not a machine’s algorithm.

You can find a few other easy ways to tackle social SEO here.

5. Use keywords in your script

By the way, social media algorithms aren’t just crawling written text. It’s likely Instagram takes into account your audio, too, when pulling keywords. YouTube certainly does.

Make sure you’re frontloading your script with your target keywords, then peppering them throughout your reel for maximum results.

Of course, all of this SEO-algorithm-talk helps if you understand the Instagram reels algorithm.

6. Use keywords in your on-screen text, too

Much like crawling your audio for keywords, Instagram’s algorithm is going to look at the text written on your reels, too.

We do need an algorithm disclaimer, too. While we can’t be 100% certain about how the Instagram algorithm works, we know it doesn’t hurt to optimize your reels.

7. If you use text, make sure it’s easily read

It can be tempting to throw up some wildly flashy words on your video to grab attention. But if it isn’t easy to read your text, your viewer is going to click away. You never want to make someone work through a confusing visual or complex narrative.

You want to make it as easy as possible for people to get what you’re doing. So, follow accessibility standards for text on the screen, make it left-aligned or center-aligned, and keep it short.

8. Use subtitles

You can increase your reel’s reach by making it accessible to all users, including those hard of hearing, Deaf, or watching your video with the sound off. Instagram has made it simple to add subtitles to any video with a sticker.

9. Write alt text

Speaking of accessibility, adding alt text to your reel will make it enjoyable for users who are visually impaired. And alt text has the added bonus of giving you another area to integrate your keywords.

10. Use trending audio

Trending audio is a surefire way to get your videos on more people’s screens. Using popular tracks signifies to Instagram’s algorithm that other people who also like that audio will like your video, too. Then, the platform serves your video to those people.

Bonus points if you can make funny, seemingly unrelated audio make sense with your brand. Looking at you, Trish!

11. Create content with your audience in mind

Yes, creating for your audience is one of the universal best practices for increasing social engagement, but it has to be said over, and over, and over again because it’s that important.

Don’t mix narratives on your branded channels. If you create content that exclusively features horses being clowns, don’t switch to content about what you’re making for dinner. Give the people what they want: Ridiculous horse content!

The reason for this is that people like predictability. When they followed you, there was a silent agreement. The audience agrees to follow you so long as you keep creating the content they initially signed up for.

The moment you change tracks, you’ll start losing views. Unless it’s an incredibly compelling or entertaining video. There are exceptions to every rule, of course.

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to create the same video repeatedly. You can also do brand-adjacent content, like horse ASMR (to jump on trends) or content closely related to what your audience is already liking, like other funny farm animals.

12. Engage with like-content

Engage with other brands within your niche by leaving thoughtful or funny comments on their content. You could attract their audience to your channel. And, if Instagram sees your account as active and interactive, it may show you off more in your target audience’s feed.

13. Embed reels on your website or blog

Your website, including your blog, is another potential touch point for reel views. By embedding your content in your site, you’ll present your reels to a potentially new audience.

Plus, embedding your content looks very polished, you social media pro, you. Check it out:

14. Experiment with length

While longer videos give you more room for storytelling, shorter videos may hold your audience’s attention spans. It’s best to experiment with video length to see what your audience enjoys.

Analyze your data with a solid amount of both long and short videos to see what duration is the most popular. Be sure to keep testing over time.

15. Post when your followers are online

Obviously, you want to post reels when your audience is already online so they interact with your post right away. You don’t have to depend solely on Instagram analytics to see when the best time is. Hootsuite’s best-time-to-post feature pulls your data for you and suggests an optimal posting schedule.

Hootsuite Best times and days to publish

Source: Hootsuite

16. Experiment with boosting

Organic posts can truly only take you so far. You’re going to want to boost your popular reels for maximum exposure. And FYI, boosting reels that are already doing well is a better use of your budget than trying to force poor-performing reels onto your audience.

17. Share reels to your Story

You want to have your reel plastered on as many surfaces as possible. When you publish a reel, share it on your Story, too. This way, your reach will be as far and wide as possible.

18. Run a contest or giveaway

Contests or giveaways are a tried-and-tested method of gaining video views. Offering people some sort of prize for a low-barrier entrance fee, like following your account and tagging a buddy, can net you high reel views.

19. Use your data to inform your content

Taking a deep dive into your Instagram Reels analytics can help inform your reel content strategy. And it will give you valuable insight into your overall social media performance.

Take a look at your most-viewed reels. What did you do for those that you can repeat? Do all of your top-viewed videos follow a pattern? Or maybe they’re all on the same trend or subject? Try to emulate the content Instagram Insights says is working.

On the flip side, take a look at the content that flopped. What happened here? What do people definitely not want more of? Failed reels have value, too. And if you’re really embarrassed about the poor performance, here’s how to hide views on reels on Instagram.

20. Don’t forget about hashtags

Hashtags are one common best practice for how to get more views on Instagram Reels. But simply throwing a bunch of #randomwords out there won’t do you any good. Instead, you can use SEO tactics and your keyword research to strategically inform your hashtags. Or, you can Hootsuite’s automatic hashtag generator to do the work for you.

Hootsuite automatic hashtag generator on new post

AI generated hashtag suggestions #recordshopping #supportlocal #newarrivals

Source: Hootsuite

Start building your Instagram presence using Hootsuite. Schedule and publish posts directly to Instagram, engage your audience, measure performance, and run all your other social media profiles — all from one simple dashboard. Try it free today.

Get Started

Save time and stress less with easy Reels scheduling and performance monitoring from Hootsuite. Trust us, it’s reely easy.

Free 30-Day Trial

What Is an Everything App? Complete Guide to Super Apps

Table of Contents

An everything app is the everything bagel of the app world. It’s got a little bit of everything you need to run you day-to-day life, all wrapped up in a single (delicious?) package. These apps include tons of popular features and are essential in the daily lives of millions of users worldwide.

While they may not have taken off in North America yet, apps like WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk have millions (or even billions) of users across Asia who rely on them for everything from groceries to stock portfolio management.

So what is an everything app exactly, and how can your business use these apps to your advantage? Let’s get into it.

Bonus: Read the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.

What is an everything app?

An everything app (also sometimes known as a “super app“) is a mobile app that handles a broad range of digital needs, including messaging, social networking, ecommerce, delivery services, and even financial services like online banking. It’s essentially a one-stop shop in app form.

Everything apps are very popular across Asia. WeChat, a platform popular in China, had 1.3 billion monthly active users as of June 2023. People use this super app for text and voice messaging, video calls, gaming, mobile payments, and more.

In 2022, Line reported 89 million monthly active users, approximately 70% of Japan’s population. Line sees slightly more female users than WeChat (55% compared to WeChat’s 47.7%).

LINE User Demographics gender and age distribution

Source: Line Business Guide 2022

WeChat overview global active users distribution

Source: Hootsuite 2022 Digital Trends Report

How does an everything or super app work?

Imagine logging in to a single app to make dinner plans with a friend, check the weather forecast, book a cab ride to and from the restaurant, and send your friend money for your share of the dinner bill after the fact.

An everything app gathers multiple services in one place so users can access everything they need to manage their life in a single app.

After a user logs into a super app, the app’s dashboard will present several options. In WeChat, for example, these include:

  • Instant messaging in multiple formats (text, voice, video calls)
  • Moments, a social feed where users can post images, text, and short videos
  • News, a curated newsfeed that allows users to subscribe to different outlets
  • Travel Service, a ride-sharing mini-program within the app
  • Pay, which more than 250 million WeChat users rely on to pay for everything from groceries to utility bills

WeChat can be used in different modes, such as Easy (designed for easier readability, with larger fonts and bigger buttons) or Guardian (intended to protect users under 14 years old by removing some features).

What are everything apps used for?

Messaging

Super apps such as WeChat, KakaoTalk, and Line all started as messaging apps. While they’ve all grown to include various other features, messaging is at the heart of these super apps.

WeChat, which is used by over one billion users in China, allows users to send and receive messages and other media, make voice calls, and video chat. 78% of 16 to 64-year-olds in the country rely on WeChat to stay connected with their friends and family.

WeChat home screen popular messaging app in China

Source: Hootsuite

In South Korea, KakaoTalk is the leading messaging app, with 47.8 million monthly active users at the end of 2022. 97.5% of South Koreans rely on KakaoTalk for messaging, with Instagram a distant second at 29.5%.

KakaoTalk South Korea lead messaging app

Source: KakaoTalk

The Line Messaging app launched in Japan in 2011 after a devastating earthquake and tsunami. The goal was to create a reliable means of communication during emergencies. Fast-forward a few years, and Line has grown into a super app with over 86 million monthly active users in Japan.

Line messaging app conversation example food meet up

Source: Line

Payments and banking

Another major function of super apps is banking and online payments. These apps use a digital wallet system to make day-to-day transactions easy.

Line Pay “blur[s] the line between online and offline” with their mobile wallet system, which can be used for in-app and in-person payments. Users sign up with a credit card, so these accounts don’t require banking details.

WeChat Pay can either be used with a credit card or linked to a user’s bank account. There’s even a Red Packets feature that allows users to send digital cash gifts for special occasions or holidays, such as Lunar New Year.

WeChat Pay Lucky Money Happy New Year digital cash gift

Source: WeChat

KakaoTalk’s payment app, Kakao Pay, allows users to send money transfers and pay bills. South Korean residents can also sign up for Kakao Bank to manage investments, request loans, and purchase insurance.

Social media and microblogging

What would an everything app be without a social media component? WeChat Moments, Line Timeline, and KakaoTalk all include various timeline features that allow users to post photos, videos, text updates, and more.

Depending on the app, this feature might be reminiscent of popular social media apps like Facebook or TikTok.

WeChat Moments post eating delicious Thai food at Bangkok Thai restaurant

Source: WeChat Blog

Line Timeline user profile with services and customized stickers

Source: Hootsuite

News

Super app users turn to WeChat, KakaoTalk, Line, and others to stay in the know. These platforms have a high degree of control over what users see, especially in countries where other news outlets are unavailable due to existing Internet censorship policies.

Shopping

Everything apps integrate their shopping and payments services to make it easy for users to make purchases directly in the app. This way, users can buy anything from groceries to luxury bags.KakaoTalk shopping feature groceries and luxury items

Source: KakaoTalk

Travel

Most super apps include car or taxi booking services, like Line Taxi or Kakao T.

Grab, a popular everything app in Singapore, started out as a ride-hailing app and has since grown to include food delivery, e-commerce, and more.

Grab map feature places and navigation

Source: Grab

How to use an everything app for business

Connect with customers

Everything apps offer a direct line of communication with your customers. You can use these apps for sales and customer support. According to Line, people are highly likely to interact with the business accounts that they follow.

popular actions taken after friending business account include reading message sent by business

Source: Line Business Guide

Don’t speak the language? No problem! Apps like WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk can be used in other languages, such as English.

If you’re a Hootsuite enterprise customer, you can manage WeChat messages through Sparkcentral and Line messages through Streamchat.

Offer a membership or loyalty program

Incentivize users to follow your everything app account by offering coupons, promotions, or a loyalty program where users can accumulate points and access rewards.

Take advantage of ads

Super apps have access to an incredible amount of data about their users. Advertisers can target audiences by interest, age range, gender, region, and even operating system (OS).

Ready to start using everything apps for your business? Check out the Hootsuite blog for our guides to using WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk for business.

FAQs about everything apps

What are super apps used for?

Super apps are used for a range of digital needs, including messaging, social networking, ecommerce, delivery services, and even online banking.

Are there any super apps in the USA?

There are no super apps or everything apps in the USA at the moment. Big players like Meta and X have expressed interest in creating a WeChat-like super app but have yet to launch a super app product in North America.

Why are there no super apps in the west?

There are no super apps in the west right now. There are a few reasons for this: concerns about slow app-loading times, indications that American customers are not interested in a mobile wallet app ecosystem, and challenges with antitrust and anticompetition laws, especially in the US.

Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. Publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversations, engage your audience, measure results, and more — all from one simple dashboard. Try it free today.

Get Started

Do it better with Hootsuite, the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.

Free 30-Day Trial

Social Media Rules for Real Estate: A 2023 Guide

Table of Contents

There’s no doubt that social media is an amazing marketing tool for real estate professionals. But it’s important to remember that various real estate codes of ethics — and many local and national laws — apply to what you post. So before you publish your next Reel, Snap, TikTok, or Tweet (Xeet?), make sure you know the social media rules for real estate agents.

Peruse this guide if you’re a bit fuzzy on what constitutes a good or bad social media post. We’ve laid out laws and guidelines to keep your content ethical. We’ve also included several best practices and examples so you leave with a plan to make every post perfect.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template designed specifically for real estate agents, brokers, and marketers. Use it to easily plan your own strategy, track results, and keep your team in the loop.

8 social media rules for real estate agents and brokers

There are several cooks in the real estate social media rule kitchen. The National Association of Realtors (NAR), state and federal governments, and some social platforms have guidelines governing how agents and brokers present themselves online.

It may sound super complex, but for the most part, those rulebooks overlap. And if you boil it down, there are a few basic tenets to remember:

Now, let’s look at eight specific social media rules you should follow as a real estate professional.


#1 Social Media Tool for Real Estate

Grow. Create. Engage. Schedule. Publish. Measure. Win.

Free 30-Day Trial

Rule 1: Identify yourself

For agent identification, you should treat a promotional social media post like you would any advertisement. That means certain identifying information needs to be present.

In general, a promotional real estate post should include:

  • The agent’s full name (e.g., “Rodney Jones,” not “Rod”)
  • Point of contact information for the agent or brokerage (e.g., phone number, email address, or physical address)
  • The brokerage company’s licensed name or DBA (e.g., “Jane Smith Realty LLC” or “Smith Realty”)

The rules stating which information is required and how it’s presented may vary by state. For example, in Florida you just need the name of the agent and broker. So make sure to review the laws where you work.

Here’s how real estate agent Jay Gonzalez presents herself on social posts.

Source: Jay Gonzolaz with HRA Realty Facebook page

Notice how she includes the brokerage in her Facebook account name. That’s a smart way to make sure it’s always visible. She also added a link to her brokerage’s Facebook page, making it easy to see the association between the two.

Rule 2: Always credit the listing agent when sharing their listings

There is some contention about whether you can promote a listing online without the listing agent’s (LA) consent.

The NAR’s code of ethics says it’s a no-go. Some states, like Georgia, also say you can’t promote a listing unless you’ve “secured the written permission of the owner, the owner’s authorized agent, or the owner of a leasehold estate.”

Vintage California Home 1924 Hollywood Hills

Source: Vintage California Home Instagram

What’s not in contention is that you don’t want to represent yourself as the listing agent if you are not. That means citing the listing agent in any post about a listing that’s not yours. Do so by giving the agent’s name, brokerage, and a link to their social media account or website.

One situation that trips up some agents is an open house. Say you visit an open house, snap some pics, and post them on Instagram. Your followers may get the impression that you represent the owner. So it’s best to make it clear who does.

But what about an internet data exchange (IDX) agreement that gives blanket permission to share listings? Social media platforms are not IDX compliant, meaning those agreements don’t cover social media posts.

Rule 3: Take ownership of your social media posts

According to the NAR code of ethics, you are responsible for any posts that end up on your social media account. Whether you, an intern, or an agency that posted it, if the message is shared through your account, you’re at fault for any rules it breaks.

That’s why you need to have a system in place so that only people with knowledge of industry regulations can review, approve, and publish content.

This rule is fundamental if you have third-party professionals on your social media team. They may be experts in creating and posting super-engaging content. But unless they have real estate experience, the chances are high that they’ll unknowingly publish a questionable post at some point.

The good news is that it’s easy to set up a strict and customized approval workflow with Hootsuite.

Manage approvals for social accounts on Hootsuite

Hootsuite’s customizable approval workflow makes it easy to keep all your posts compliant.

In Hootsuite, you can designate which content requires approval and which users can approve. You can even set up a multi-approver process for sensitive posts or those that would benefit from an extra set of eyes.


#1 Social Media Tool

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

Free 30-Day Trial

Rule 4: Present listings truthfully

Social media is often the best place to make a first impression of the property you’re charged with selling. But there’s a thin line between presenting a home in its best light and misleading buyers with too many embellishments.

The NAR’s article 12 and many state rules prohibit the false misrepresentation of real estate in marketing, which includes social media posts. That can mean outright lying about total square footage or available parking. Or it can be adjusting a photo to hide a flaw.

example of a poorly edited real estate photo on Instagram

Source: r3alestate Instagram

Here are a few actions to steer clear of:

  • Editing any MLS data
  • Using vague descriptions (“close to the beach” vs. “0.2 miles from the beach”)
  • Over-editing a photo to make spaces look significantly larger
  • Editing out significant features from a photo

The same rules apply if an agent knows a property owner has given misleading or unverified information.

Rule 5: Don’t post negatively about other agents

There are all sorts of people working in real estate. Not everyone will see eye to eye. But airing frustrations publicly on social media isn’t just a bad look — it could land you on the wrong side of an ethics violation.

That’s especially true if the other agent challenges what you’ve said. Article 15 of the NAR’s code of ethics requires real estate professionals to “refrain from making false or misleading statements about other real estate professionals, their businesses, and their business practices.”

It’s also a good idea to never suggest that a disgruntled client take negative action against their agent. So don’t reply to a post from a frustrated homeowner saying they should fire their agent because you can do better.

Rule 6: List only correct and updated qualifications

Social media biographies are like the digital wall of your office where you hang diplomas and certifications. Clients peek at your profile and get the warm and fuzzies knowing they’ve hired a qualified professional.Elevate Real Estate Brokers Florida Facebook bio with sales statistics

Source: Elevate Real Estate Brokers Facebook

But it’s important to remember that the information you place in a bio needs to be correct, current, and certified.

For example, resist the urge to put “#1 real estate agent in San Antonio” in your bio just because your mom said so. But if a local real estate magazine names you as such, add it with pride (and cite the source).

It’s also important to regularly update your bio as your certifications and associations change. If you let a certification lapse, leaving it on your bio is misleading.

Make it a practice to review your online bios regularly. It’s easy to forget to make a change. So setting a calendar reminder to check them every quarter is a great failsafe.

Rule 7: Protect people’s privacy

This is one of the longest-standing rules for any real estate professional. It’s also one of the trickiest to follow when so much of your marketing relies on posting quickly to social media.

Of course, you’d never share confidential client information like their income. But what if you post a pic to show how busy your open house is and someone’s license plate is visible in the photo? They may not appreciate the exposure.

Another potential danger zone is at closing. It’s fun to share your buyer’s excitement while they sign the paperwork on their first home.

Closing day in new home Instagram Reel

Source: Zack.dallasrealtor Instagram

But there’s a lot of personal information on the closing table. One bad angle or unnoticed mirror can give internet sleuths a clear image of a social security number or bank account.

A few actions you should take before publishing any post:

  • Scrutinize any photo you’re about to post
  • Ask permission before publishing a post with people in it
  • Ask yourself, “if this was my information, would I want it shared?”
  • Never share specific details about commissions or profits

Those few precautions will help you avoid a lot of ethical hot water later on.

Rule 8: Adhere to the Fair Housing Act

Most real estate agents wouldn’t knowingly discriminate in their social media posts. But a post can go against The Fair Housing Act (FHA) in some subtle ways.

One example is how you target social media ads. If you exclude a specific zip code to keep a group of people from seeing the ad, you violate the FHA.

Some social media platforms like Facebook have recently built in new targeting permissions for real estate ads to make it easier to follow the rules. But not all have.

Here are a few other ways you could run afoul of the Fair Housing Act:

  • Prioritizing a specific religion: For example, mentioning the proximity of a specific church.
  • Discriminating based on family status: Targeting an ad so it excludes people who show interest in parenting blogs.
  • Discrimination by photography: Choosing images that don’t reflect the area’s population.

The NAR also suggests focusing on the property, not the “ideal” buyer or renter, in your ads or social media posts. And don’t forget to include “Equal Housing Opportunity” in your posts to show you’re committed to those ideals.

5 best practices for real estate marketing on social media

With so many rules from several governing bodies, it’s easy to feel intimidated. But there’s no reason to close your accounts and miss out on the benefits of using social media for real estate marketing.

Use these best practices to get the most out of your social media marketing strategy while staying within the rules for real estate professionals.

Create a social media policy

Every brokerage should have a codified set of rules for using social media.

This policy can cover everything from the approval process to the types of content people should post. It should define how an agent or broker is identified in posts and comments and include proper brand voice guidelines.

In addition, consider these topics for your social media policy:

  • Rules against plagiarism and the use of copyrighted images
  • Rules about sharing other agents’ listings
  • A confidentiality and privacy statement
  • Rules about disclosing alterations to images
  • A blanket statement about following all local and federal laws

Once you have the policy put together, make sure everyone verifies receipt of a copy.

Don’t forget to share with new agents and third parties that may post on your behalf.

Bonus: Get a free social media policy template to get started.

Set up a social media listening process

It’s good practice to regularly monitor your social media accounts for activity beyond what you post. That includes occasionally looking at what your agents post and reading the comments on your posts.

Savvy + Co Real Estate house Instagram comments

Source: Savvy + Co. Real Estate Instagram

Not only will this help you stay compliant, but you’ll also have more opportunities to engage with clients who reply to your posts.

Protect your account

You spend a lot of time building trust and a following on your social media accounts. A hacker can steal your credibility—and even lock you out of your account—in an instant.

Be aware of common social media hacks and scams. Protect your accounts with two-factor identification and solid passwords. And don’t share your passwords or place them somewhere they can be stolen.

Archive your social media activity

You never know when you’ll need to reference an old post. Maybe you delete a post that’s no longer relevant, and someone misquotes you. Or you want to find a post from two years ago. A searchable social media archive makes calling up that old activity easy.

Facebook and other social media platforms have instructions for archiving your activity. Hootsuite also lets you create a taggable archive for your records.

Batch and schedule posts

If you’re posting multiple times per week (or per day!), it’s hard to make sure all your posts follow the social media rules for real estate. Batching and scheduling your posts eases the pressure in two ways.

First, creating a week’s worth of content for all your channels in one session saves time and keeps you focused. You don’t have to worry about the time loss of context switching between the other 100 tasks on your list. Block an hour or two each week, knock out your posts, and get back to helping clients.

Try Hootsuite for free

Scheduling content ahead of time gives you space to come back and review what you’ve created before it goes live. That can be you taking a few minutes to double-check your work. Or it can be someone you trust giving your posts a once over. Either way, you’ll catch a lot more potential problems.

Social media rules for real estate: FAQs

Hopefully, the rules of social media for real estate agents will feel manageable now. Here are answers to frequently asked questions to help clarify them further.

Can you post another agent’s listings on social media?

Yes, but you should always reference the listing agent and provide a link to their website or social media account. Depending on your location and affiliations, you may also need to get their written permission.

Can I use the word “REALTOR®” on social media?

You can use the word REALTOR® in your title and on social media posts as long as you’re a registered National Association of Realtors member. If you are, you can also use the REALTOR® logo.

What social media compliance standards do real estate agents need to adhere to online?

Real estate companies need to consider several social media compliance standards when posting content online. These include state or local laws, the NAR code of ethics, your brokerage policies, and the rules of each social media platform.

Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.

Get Started

Get new clients and close more deals with Hootsuite, the #1 social media management tool for real estate agents.

Free 30-Day Trial

3 Tools to Use Instead of LinkedIn Elevate (Now That It’s Gone)

Table of Contents

LinkedIn Elevate shut down as a standalone tool back in December 2020. Ever since, some of its features have been integrated into LinkedIn Company Pages. Some — but not all.

Three years later, employee advocacy is as important as ever – both within LinkedIn and across other social platforms. LinkedIn’s advocacy options built into Company Pages are a great place to start, but they offer limited functionality compared to dedicated employee advocacy tools.

Here’s everything you need to know if your organization is looking for an alternative to LinkedIn Elevate to manage employee advocacy and extend the social reach of your brand.

Bonus: Download a free employee advocacy toolkit that shows you how to plan, launch, and grow a successful employee advocacy program for your organization.

What was LinkedIn Elevate?

LinkedIn Elevate was an employee advocacy product provided by LinkedIn. It was a paid product with robust content curation and analytics features. Page admins could use it to hand-pick content for employees to reshare and easily track the success of their employee advocacy programs with detailed analytics.

And it was working well for the companies that used it. LinkedIn reported that LinkedIn Elevate users shared 5x more content than previously. This allowed them to influence 3x more Company Page views, 2x more Page followers, and 4x more job views.

However, LinkedIn Elevate was sunsetted as a standalone product in 2020. Many of the features were migrated over to Company Pages, where they became free to use. That means many LinkedIn Company Pages now have some basic employee advocacy functionality available at no cost. But the truth is that this embedded free version is not a complete employee advocacy solution.


#1 Social Media Tool

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

Free 30-Day Trial

What is employee advocacy?

Before we go any further, let’s define employee advocacy. In the social marketing context, employee advocacy means that employees share your social content with their own networks to extend the reach of your messaging.

It intuitively makes sense that you would want your employees to be brand evangelists. You want them to love the company they work for and share those positive feelings with their social contacts.

Why do you need employee advocacy?

There are hard numbers to back up the importance of employee advocacy.

First up is trust. Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer consistently finds that people are more likely to trust regular people than CEOs. In the 2023 edition, Edelman found that 63% of people trust their neighbors. And 61% trust people in their local community.

Compare that to the 48% who trust CEOs and the 47% who trust journalists. It’s clear that your message is much more likely to be taken at face value when it comes from a familiar face (or someone in your existing social network).

Institutional Leaders Dashboard Percentage Trust

Source: Edelman

Here’s an interesting twist on those stats. While only 48% of people trust CEOs in general, 64% trust “my CEO.” That is, people are much more likely to trust the CEO of the company where they work. A CEO message crafted for employees and then shared on to the broader public gets an extra layer of trust built in.

But the most important way that employee advocacy contributes to brand marketing is the sheer reach of your employees’ networks and the power of their social actions.

For example, Hootsuite’s benchmarking data shows that in December 2023, the average retail brand had:

  • 8K followers on Twitter
  • 17K followers on Instagram
  • 23K fans on Facebook, and
  • 3.3K followers on LinkedIn

Of course, there’s some overlap, since most people follow brands on multiple platforms. But you also know that organic content no longer reaches all of your followers. The number of people who actually see your content might be much larger than your number of followers. Then again, it might also be much lower. (It all depends on the algorithms.)

When your employees share your content with their personal networks, it increases the potential audience pool in two ways.

First, some of your employees’ followers will see their posts about your brand. This is the most obvious reach extender.

But second, the social action of sharing itself shows the algorithm a connection between your brand and your employee. Over time, this makes algorithms more likely to suggest your content to your employees’ extended networks. This can extend the reach of all your posts, even those your employees don’t share directly.

Think about the potential reach if each of your employees has only a couple hundred followers per platform.

The even better news? You can create content for employees to share on platforms where you don’t have much of a brand presence. Or even platforms where you have no brand account at all.

Lacking the time or budget to maintain a presence on multiple social platforms emerged as the top concern in Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Trends Report. Employee advocacy can get the message out without your social team having to be everywhere.

All of this leads to more brand awareness, more web visits, and more inbound leads. And, guess what? It also helps your employees advance in their careers. How? By helping to establish their own credibility and expertise.

Phew: That was a lot.

The TL;DR version is this. When employees share brand-approved content on their social networks, they exponentially extend the reach of your social content. For more on setting up an employee advocacy program, check out our six-step strategy guide.

Why do you need an employee advocacy platform?

If your employees love their jobs, they’ll likely talk about your company. That’s true whether or not you have an employee advocacy program in place.

But using the right tools has a couple of key advantages:

  1. First, you can create brand-approved social content for your employees to share. You ensure it aligns with your campaign messaging. Once you post it in your advocacy tool, it’s ready for employees to customize and share with just a couple of clicks.

    Consistent brand messaging is important for all brands. But this is particularly crucial for organizations working in regulated industries. An employee advocacy tool that integrates with your compliance process is a must!

  2. You can customize content for different employee groups. For example, your salespeople probably want to share different content than your developers — even if they’re talking about the same products.
  3. You can access analytics related to your employee advocacy program. That means you can test, track, plan, and understand what works. You can also create contests or leaderboards. These interactive tools encourage your employees to share more.

3 LinkedIn Elevate alternatives

Whether you’re a previous LinkedIn Elevate customer or you’re new to employee advocacy, here are the best tools for 2024.

1. Hootsuite Amplify

Hootsuite Amplify makes it extremely easy for employees to share pre-approved content. They can become simple brand advocates, or personalize content for thought leadership pieces. Amplify caters to all digital skill levels. It’s easy to onboard employees across the organization.

Hootsuite Amplify weekly share goals

Book a free demo

Hootsuite Amplify is available for both mobile and web users. It helps employees share your message on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Based on the settings you choose, they can even share to other platforms, like WhatsApp and SMS.

The easy-to-use admin tools allow you to customize permissions and tags. Employees can stay connected to the stories and news they care about most, resonating across different departments, divisions and regions.

Publish to Amplify Regular Post and select shareable social networks

Within Amplify, you can also create an internal communications feed. This can be used to:

  • reinforce your culture
  • highlight thought leadership
  • reward your most passionate employee advocates
  • share company announcements

You can also integrate Amplify with the internal communications tools you already use, like Microsoft Teams and Slack.

For organizations in regulated industries, Amplify removes barriers to social sharing by integrating with ProofPoint, a leading social compliance tool. When risk is mediated, employees feel empowered to share their work (and work life) on social.

Since it’s integrated into Hootsuite, Amplify also gives admins and employees access to Hootsuite’s built-in AI tools for generating content ideas and adapting captions. And, of course, Amplify includes expensive analytics, so you can monitor the top stories and content shared by your organization and track the ROI of your advocacy program.

Link Settings Owl.y shortener and Google Analytics tracking

2. LinkedIn’s My Company tab

Golden Phase My Company Tab and recommendations

Source: LinkedIn

The components of LinkedIn Elevate that were folded into Company Pages now live on your organization’s My Company tab. It’s an internal communications space for employees only.

Within the My Company tab, admins can post organic and curated content for employees to share with their own networks. This is two-way amplification: Employees can share recommended company content, and company admins can recommend employees’ content for others to share.

There’s also a section for trending coworker content, where employees can interact with content from all their coworkers, whether or not they are directly connected on LinkedIn.

However, there are no built-in advocacy tools here for Facebook or Instagram, so content can only be shared within LinkedIn or to X (formerly Twitter). This is a significant limitation, especially for B2C brands.

Note The My Company tab is only available for Pages with 200 employees or more, as listed under company size.

3. GaggleAMP

GaggleAMP Share on LinkedIn Employee Advocacy Tool

Source: GaggleAMP

GaggleAMP is a standalone employee advocacy tool. Your employees connect their social channels directly to GoogleAMP, rather than to your existing social media management platform.

When your company admin posts new content, employees can get a push notification on the mobile app, or they can get an email digest of new content. It has built-in leaderboards and content functionality to encourage sharing. Employees can also be rewarded for liking or otherwise engaging with brand content.

Tap into the power of employee advocacy with Hootsuite Amplify. Increase reach, keep employees engaged, and measure results—safely and securely. Learn how Amplify can help grow your organization today.

Free demo

Hootsuite Amplify makes it easy for your employees to safely share your content with their followers—boosting your reach on social media. Book a personalized, no-pressure demo to see it in action.

Book your demo now

How to Build a Social Media Growth Strategy That Works [2024]

Table of Contents

Social media growth reached a new high in 2023, with 4.88 billion total active social media user identities, representing 60.6% of the world’s population.

How do brands grow their own social presence to reach that ever-increasing audience base? We’ve got 10 strategic tips (and 3 tools) for optimum social growth in 2024.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

What is social media growth?

Social media growth is an umbrella term that includes many different types of social success. How you define social media growth depends on the most important goals and metrics for your particular organization. Some of the most common ways to measure social media growth include:

  • Social media follower growth: How many new followers you gain in a set period of time.
  • Engagement rate: How many people engage with your content vs. how many people see it.
  • Web traffic from social accounts: How many visits to your website are referred from social posts or your social profiles.
  • Conversions referred from social accounts: How many people who come to your website from a social link follow through to make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter, or any other conversion you want to measure.
  • Social commerce sales: How much revenue you bring in from social commerce activities across your social accounts.


#1 Social Media Tool

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

Free 30-Day Trial

10 effective social media growth strategies

1. Be active on your target audience’s favorite platforms

You can create as many (or as few) social accounts as you like. But your audience will only connect with you on the social networks they’re already actively using. You need to put your brand where they can find you easily, rather than expecting them to seek you out.

There are two components to this strategy:

  1. Your target audience
  2. The most popular social media platforms within that user base

For effective organic social media growth, you need to understand both.

If you don’t already know exactly who your target audience is, this is where you need to start. Fortunately, we’ve got a whole blog post on finding your target market that can point you in the right direction.

Once you understand your target audience, you can get even more detailed by creating audience personas.

Now that you understand who you want to connect with on social, you can figure out where to find them. Our blog post on the demographics of the major social platforms is a good place to start your research. You should also do some testing to confirm any assumptions.

Keep in mind that different segments of your audience may be active on different social media sites. Or, people might follow you on multiple platforms but expect a different relationship on each. That means you need to optimize your content for each platform.

For example, look at how differently the Washington Post approached this news story on Twitter and TikTok:

2. Create a consistent posting schedule

Humans are creatures of habit. When you post social content on a consistent schedule, your audience knows what to expect. They understand how often to expect new content, and when to anticipate your posts in their social feeds.

This consistency makes it feel less burdensome for new people who find your content through a search or suggestion to click the follow button. Conversely, it encourages fans to seek out your new content on your profile if the algorithm doesn’t serve it up in their feed.

Just like deciding where to post based on your audience’s preferences, you need to let their social activity guide your plan for when to post too.

Posting when your audience is most likely to be on the platform increases your chances for early engagement, which is a key value signal to virtually all social algorithms.

Hootsuite can show you exactly when your audience is online with customized heatmaps for each platform. You can also find recommended times to post in Hootsuite Analytics based on your specific growth goals.

Hootsuite best times and days to publish heatmap

Try Hootsuite for free

3. Post short video

Short social video – think Reels and TikToks – has become a crucial component of social growth. Creating this type of content is the easiest way to achieve social media follower growth. Why? Because it’s the content that’s most likely to reach people who don’t already follow you.

Instagram specifically says that for Reels, “the majority of what you see is from accounts you don’t follow.” Likewise, Facebook describes Reels as, “content you may be interested in from creators you may not follow.” And TikTok is designed to surface content a user will find interesting, not just content from accounts they follow.

Your short video content needs to align with your overall social strategy and your brand voice. But, it’s a completely different kind of content than you’re creating for feed posts or even Stories.

To get started, check out our guide to making effective short-form videos.

For platform-specific strategies, take a look at :

4. Embrace social SEO

We’ve mentioned algorithms a few times already. But when you’re focused on social media follower growth, social search engine optimization may be even more important.

Social SEO is all about optimizing your content using SEO tactics like keyword research, captions, and effective alt text to help the search features built into each social platform understand what your content is about.

That means people who are actively searching for content like yours are more likely to find you

And there’s a bonus: TikTok search results are indexed by search engines, so you can drive new eyeballs to your social content from people who are starting their search outside of social social.

5. Engage with your audience

Remember that social media is not a simple broadcast platform. Your audience wants to see your content, sure. But they also want to interact with you, the brand (or creator) behind the content.

If you want to grow your social media presence, you need to be diligent about responding to comments, tags, messages and mentions. This isn’t optional, folks! Neglected audiences don’t stick around, so leaving your comments and messages unanswered works directly against your efforts for social media growth.

The easiest way to stay on top of your social engagement is to manage all your incoming messages and comments from a centralized social inbox, like the one built into Hootsuite.Hootsuite Inbox reply social engagement


Reduce response time (and your workload)

Manage all your messages stress-free with easy routing, saved replies, and friendly chatbots. Try Hootsuite’s Inbox today.

Book a Demo

6. Get inspired by established accounts in your niche

We talked about audience engagement above, but it’s also important to conduct industry research. In this case, you’re looking for accounts that are already performing well in your space.

They might be competitors. But they might also be potential collaborators. Either way, studying their accounts can give you a good sense of what’s already working in your niche.

Beyond strategy insights, you can also work on social media growth by engaging with popular accounts that already reach your target audience. If they’re not in direct competition with you, try liking and commenting on their posts in a genuine and supportive way. Catching their attention might lead to a return like or follow.

Connections between accounts are a powerful signal for the social media algorithms, so connecting with relevant accounts can help your chances of appearing as a suggested post for non-followers.

Keyword and hashtag searches are a good way to start your research here. And here’s a major timesaver: Search streams in Hootsuite allow you to monitor all your relevant searches across platforms from a single dashboard.

Hootsuite Streams fashion hashtag search on Instagram

7. Work with content creators

This is another important strategy to expand your audience. In this case, you develop a collaboration with relevant content creators to piggyback on their established audience.

When your focus is social media growth, it’s important to choose your creator collaborators carefully. Their audience needs to be a really good match to the audience you are trying to build. After all, a new influx of followers is only helpful to your overall growth strategy if they actually want to stick around.

Again, hashtag and keyword searches are a good starting point. It’s also a good idea to take a look at what other accounts your existing audience follows to look for a good fit. We’ve put together a whole guide on how to work with content creators to take you from there.

8. Maximize your profile and bio

Sure, creating content is the more exciting part of social media. But developing a strong bio and profile are critical to social media growth. Make sure you have these nailed down before you start putting too much effort into other growth strategies.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First up, your profile and bio tell potential new followers who you are, what you’re all about, and why they should follow you.

Second, your profile and bio are full of opportunities to guide people to your account in the first place. Most fields in social media profiles are searchable and may be indexed in regular search engines as well as in social search results.

Google Search results for Christina Newberry

That means a profile optimized for your target keywords can lead people to your social account before they even open that particular social platform.

And, finally, your profile offers chances to direct people to your profile through the connective tissues of social platforms, like hashtags and geotags. Address information helps the algorithms connect your content with people in your local area.

9. Develop a strong brand identity

Have we said enough times already that consistency is key in growing your social media presence? Well, we’ll say it again here, because that applies to your brand identity as much as your posting schedule.

We just talked about how your profile can bring in people from outside of the social platforms. If they scroll down and see consistent content in your grid, it’s much easier for them to understand what you’re all about and why they should care.

It’s also important that your content is easily identifiable when it lands in people’s feeds. It’s easier for followers to spot your posts among all the sponsored and suggested content when you deliver a consistent look and feel that supports your brand identity.

10. Experiment with social ads

While the strategies for organic social media growth covered so far are critical to growing a strong social media presence over time, social ads can be a way to get your content in front of a new audience quickly — and boost your growth rate.

Most social platforms allow you to choose growth-oriented goals for your social ads. Look for ads goals like awareness, engagement, and consideration to drive growth with your social ad campaign.

Planning a social ads campaign may seem daunting, but it’s easy to get started. The simplest method is to put some budget behind organic posts that are already performing well for your desired growth goals.

Within Hootsuite, you can set automatic boost triggers to convert your highest-performing posts into social ads without any additional intervention.

Engagement triggers option to automatically boost posts that meet minimum requirements

Top 3 social media growth tools for 2024

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite dashboard page impressions and reach for different social platforms

Try Hootsuite for free

We’ve already mentioned Hootsuite several times in this post, and for good reason. It’s got plenty of built-in social media growth tools that should be in every social marketer’s toolbox.

First up, Hootsuite has built-in AI tools that generate social captions, come up with content ideas for your blog or podcast, and suggest the most relevant hashtags to get you noticed. OwlyWriter AI can also rework high-performing posts so you have a never-ending stream of growth-inducing content based off of strategies that have already been proven to work for your brand.

On the publishing side, Hootsuite serves your social media growth strategy by allowing you to build out an integrated multi-platform campaign that reaches followers on every platform at the ideal times for maximum engagement. You can create your content in batches so your themes and messaging are aligned and in tune with your brand voice.

Once your content goes live, Hootsuite helps you hack your social growth by revealing exactly what works and what doesn’t. You’ll also get insights into how your content stacks up against industry benchmarks and top competitors, so you can set realistic growth goals and look for opportunities to improve.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot edit new email with company logo

Source: HubSpot

HubSpot is a CRM platform that’s specifically designed to help your business grow by bringing in more customers. By integrating Hubspot with Hootsuite, you can use information from your CRM database to help grow your social presence while providing better social customer service.

3. SproutSocial

Sprout Social profile performance and graph of post engagement

Source: SproutSocial

SproutSocial is a social media management platform that can assist with social media growth. It includes automation tools and social analytics features that help you refine your social media growth strategy.

SproutSocial has an average per-user seat cost of $332 and offers 26 integrations. Take a look at how SproutSocial compares to Hootsuite.

Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. Publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversations, engage your audience, measure results, and more — all from one simple dashboard. Try it free today.

Get Started

Do it better with Hootsuite, the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.

Free 30-Day Trial

The 2024 Guide to Social Media Strategy for Executives

Table of Contents

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, your customers want to engage with humans on social media. 56% of customers want more relatable, personable content from brands on social, but 48% of brands are still posting self-promotional content multiple times a week.

How can you — a CEO, CFO, CMO, or other executive — tip the scale in your favor? Easy: be active on social media.

You don’t necessarily need to film Instagram Reels or write long-form articles for LinkedIn. You also don’t need to be active on every social media platform, or have the most original thought leadership content.

Just be yourself and devote about 5-10 minutes a day, and you’ll be growing your executive social media presence in no time. Here’s exactly how to do it.

Bonus: Download a free employee advocacy toolkit that shows you how to plan, launch, and grow a successful employee advocacy program for your organization.

Why should execs be on social media?

Build a (human) personal brand

Being on social media benefits your company and also has big perks for you. As mentioned above, your customers want more personal content from businesses.

That doesn’t mean they want to know about your recent doctor’s appointment or your everyday morning routine. It means they want stuff that’s human-first, real, funny, engaging, heartfelt… Content that conveys emotions.

Talk about a hard lesson you learned as a leader. Talk about a personal hardship you’ve learned from that people can relate to. Or, share your genuine excitement about a new product or feature your company is launching and geek out alongside your customers.

Sharing = caring. As in, enabling others to care about you and your company because they see you as a real person leading other real people instead of a faceless mega-corporation.

Jason Hawkins Reusables.com brand partnership LinkedIn post

Source: Jason Hawkins on LinkedIn

Advocate for your business

All your regular marketing still has its place, but committing to thought leadership content — meaning, you posting your insights on social media as an executive — can add quite a boost to your company’s strategy.

61% of your customers say thought leadership content is “a lot more” effective at showcasing your company’s value than traditional marketing. And 55% of decision makers say content from thought leaders is especially important to win them over during economically bleak times (e.g. right now).

55% of decision makers say that during an economic downturn it is essential for suppliers to product high quality thought leadership

Source: Edelman

Share your expertise

You know a thing or two about some things, right? Sharing your knowledge is a powerful way to develop your personal network while also demonstrating the experience that’s behind your company or product.

It can be as simple as showing what you’re working on. If you used to be a developer, share the new features your team is currently working on and what the roadmap is.

Have a long management journey of starting on the front lines and working yourself up to head of HR? Share your best tips for employees to get the great performance reviews they want or land their dream job.

Whatever your area of expertise is, share it.

Boost your sentiment

Your brand sentiment is basically a “temperature check” of what people are saying about you online and what they think of you — or your company.

By putting yourself out there and creating human-centered content around your expertise, you’ll provide a massive boost to that sentiment.

But how do you know if your content is enhancing what people think about your company? By measuring your brand sentiment automagically with Hootsuite Insights, for example.

Track mentions, identify opportunities, and encourage brand loyalty by responding to comments and getting involved in conversations. You’ll know where you and your company stand with your audience, 24/7/365.

Insights Brandwatch dashboard

Request a demo

Build relationships

Is it lonely at the top? Not for execs on social media.

Being active on social media can help build all sorts of relationships for you, from attracting top talent to hire, networking with industry peers, and even fostering deeper relationships with your employees and team.

People get to know more about you as both a person and a leader when they watch or read your content.

Promote your values

When your content focuses on the things mentioned above, like building a human brand and building relationships, it will naturally reflect your values.

It’s not about shouting your values from the rooftops like, “Hey! We care about people so much! Look, we offer five sick days per year!”

It’s about quietly communicating them through everything you share. Talk about your or your company’s charitable activities or share some relatable industry-specific humor. Your values can also shine through the stories you choose to share, like that story about how you overcame the anxiety of starting a new role or making a tough management decision.

Support recruiting

One of the most tangible benefits of posting on social media as an executive is how well it works to support recruiting efforts. Whether you have open roles to fill now or not, your public profile as a company leader helps job seekers understand your company’s culture and determine if it’s a good fit for them.

Besides boosting your brand sentiment and giving people a “behind the scenes” peek into your company culture, posting also gets your company more eyeballs. Content from employees gets twice as many clicks as official company content. And, people judge content posted by an employee as three times more authentic than if it would’ve been posted on the company’s social media profile.

This said, you can and should create a company-wide employee advocacy program that goes beyond just you and the other executives posting on social media. Research shows companies with formal employee advocacy programs are 58% more likely to attract top employees, and 20% more likely to retain them.

This is how Hootsuite Amplify makes setting up and managing an employee advocacy program easy:

Show transparency

It’s hard to build trust, both personally and professionally. But it’s the most important thing you can do to earn new business and loyal customers.

Edelman has been tracking trust statistics for 23 years, and 2023’s report reflects an ever-increasing distrust of society in general, government, and especially a lack of trust in social media.

Interestingly, 48% of respondents say CEOs, in general, are untrustworthy, but 64% say their CEO is trustworthy — more so than their neighbors!

Edelman graph percentage of institutional leaders distrusted by industry

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer Report

What’s with the cognitive dissonance there? My theory is the difference connection makes.

When we feel connected to someone — colleagues, even, or in a parasocial relationship facilitated by social media — we tend to have a more favorable opinion of them. Simply: we trust them more.

By using social media as an executive, you’re building trust through transparency with your team and encouraging leads, customers, and peers to trust you too.

How to build a social media strategy for executives

Set goals

You don’t need to list out a multi-page social media strategy document complete with quarterly KPIs, rigid topics, or a defined schedule of daily actions.

But you should at least have an outline of a strategy. What do you want to get out of posting on social media?

A few goal ideas are:

  • Grow your network with industry peers
  • Increase talent recruitment and fill open positions
  • Encourage your employees to share online and build their personal social media brands, too
  • Create a company culture of content development

Of course, there are many more possible goals. Yours may change as you start sharing online and discover new benefits to doing so, but have at least one or two goals to start.

Pick the right networks

Where will you post as an executive on social media? The obvious choice is LinkedIn — the world’s largest professional social network — and you should definitely be on there. For some executives, it may be the only social platform you need.

But don’t overlook other great options. Reddit could be a great place for you to host AMAs: “Ask Me Anything” threads popular on the platform.

Reddit Ask Me Anything CEO and CTO of Proton

Source: r/IAMA on Reddit

Depending on your desired audience and goals, you could even build a successful online presence on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. Really, any platform as long as you know who you’re trying to reach and then choose the platform(s) those people regularly use.

As for how to reach them, that’s the next step…

Define your content strategy

Once you know where you’ll be posting, you need to decide what to post about and who’s going to post it.

The “what” depends on the platforms you identified in the previous step. For example, if you picked TikTok or YouTube, obviously, that means creating video content.

For LinkedIn, it’s likely most of your content will be text posts or the new way to do LinkedIn carousels.

A well-rounded content strategy is about more than just what format you’ll use.

It includes things like:

  • SMART goals
  • What content your audience enjoys and wants more of
  • An audit of your current social performance and profiles
  • Your posting frequency
  • Topics you’ll focus on
  • How you’ll measure success

If you need help crafting yours, check out our step-by-step guide to social media content strategy.

Finally, you need a game plan for publishing content. Are you going to write/record/edit/create all your own content and post it yourself? Or, will you enlist your marketing team for help in either producing the content, scheduling it, and/or replying to comments? Be clear on who’s doing what before you start.

Plan and schedule your posts

This one’s easy: Use Hootsuite. Done, next…

Okay, for real, you’ve heard it everywhere, but it’s true: a big part of succeeding on social media is staying consistent. That means posting roughly the same amount of times per week and replying to DMs and comments at least every other day.

You can always change your posting frequency to be more or less, depending what your audience is responding (or not responding) to. But you need to stay consistent with your chosen schedule until you decide to strategically change it, for good, data-informed reasons.

The easiest way to build a consistent posting schedule with the least time commitment is to use a social media post scheduler like Hootsuite. Plan and draft your content in a visual calendar and schedule posts to go live at your personalized best time to publish based on your audience data.

It’s auto-magical.

Best Time to Publish - LinkedIn Heatmap

Start free 30-day trial

Answer comments and DMs

It’s no surprise that social media is all about engagement. One of the fastest ways to grow your follower count is by commenting on other people’s posts. But the way to build true community is by replying to comments and DMs that others leave on your posts.

Even if it’s only a quick “thank you,” taking a few seconds to acknowledge someone’s comment helps build that sense of community and form real connections on social media.

Set aside a few minutes a day to do these responses, or even every other day. You’ll boost your engagement rate which the algorithms love, and you could meet some amazing new people.

Hootsuite Inbox makes this super easy by organizing all your comments and DMs across all your social media accounts in one place where you can reply to everyone.

Hootsuite Inbox Replying to a Comment

Listen for mentions

Yes, you need to reply to comments and messages on your profiles, but you should also respond in the other places people are talking about you, like on their own pages or profiles.

But how do you find those mentions in the first place? Don’t worry, this is another thing technology can take off your plate. (Or ears.)

Social listening tools can track these mentions across the internet and alert you to mentions and conversations about topics you’re interested in so you can take part in them. This will save you so much time and allow you to use it in the most useful way: actually engaging with people.

Psst: Of course, Hootsuite’s got your back with built-in social listening features and deep integrations with third-party tools.

Track your success

You already know in business you need to track your results in order to see what’s working, what’s not, and when you may need to tweak your plans. The same applies to social media.

Set up a spreadsheet with each of your KPIs to measure the goals you outlined in your content strategy. Fill it out at least monthly in addition to running a quarterly social media audit.

Don’t want to spend hours each month gathering all your performance data, though? Understandable. Once again, Hootsuite is here to make your social media life easy with all-in-one analytics for all your platforms in one place.

6 inspiring CEOs on social media

Still need a bit more inspiration to get started? Peek in on what your peers are posting, or check out these executives making a splash on social media.

Irina Novoselsky

Irina Novoselsky CEO of Hootsuite LinkedIn social media manager post

Source: Irina Novoselsky on LinkedIn

Irina, CEO of Hootsuite, is understandably very active on social media and a huge champion of all Owls (Hootsuite employees), sharing their expertise online through the company’s employee advocacy program powered by Hootsuite Amplify.

Irina talks about leadership and the power of social media (obviously!), and shares personal insights about what makes Hootsuite great, both as a company and a product. She’s also known to advocate for social marketers, seeking to elevate their status among other CEOs and executives.

What you can learn from them:

  • Be genuine. Irina’s passion for teamwork and the power of social relationships shines through in every post she shares. Lesson for you? Share your authentic business beliefs.
  • Include a ‘footer’ in your posts. At the end of each post, Irina includes a section introducing herself. It tells potential new connections what to expect if they follow her, making it more likely that people who really vibe with that content will.
Irina Chief Owl at Hootsuite LinkedIn post footer with introduction

Source: Irina Novoselsky on LinkedIn

Christopher Young

Christopher Young Executive Vice President at Microsoft AI in Asia LinkedIn post

Source: Christopher Young on LinkedIn

Christopher is an Executive Vice President at Microsoft who speaks widely on topics surrounding how AI is impacting work today and how it will continue to change how we work in the future.

What you can learn from them:

  • Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. Nowadays, everyone has an opinion on AI, but Christopher believes AI is a positive tool for the good of the future and backs it up with his content. Whatever you believe about something, back up your opinion with case studies and data to add credibility to your words.

Alexis Ohanian Sr.

Alexis Ohanian Sr. The Grand World work life balance article

Source: Alexis Ohanian Sr. on LinkedIn

Best known as a former co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian now speaks publicly about work-life balance, making workplaces more family-friendly, and venture capital.

What you can learn from them:

  • Repurpose content intelligently. Just like Alexis does, you can cross-post content, like sharing a TikTok video on LinkedIn — but take the time to customize the caption with a personal note directed to the kind of people who follow you on LinkedIn.

Adam Mosseri

Adam Mosseri new photo editing filters on Instagram

Source: Adam Mosseri on Instagram

As the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri has an almost cult following among social media professionals. He’s like our creator of creators, the Meta meta-creator, if you will.

Adam talks about all the latest changes on Instagram, social media in general, and what’s new with Threads.

What you can learn from them:

  • Don’t be afraid to be the face of your brand. Every time Adam Mosseri posts a new video, social media managers everywhere buy an emotional support iced coffee. Okay, no, but he’s known as the source to go to for the latest Instagram algorithm updates.
  • Show up how you do best. Adam mostly communicates key info via Reels. If you’re comfortable speaking to a camera, use video. If you prefer writing, put your value into captions.

Aaron Levie

Aaron Levie X post The Box file system design and product architecture

Source: Aaron Levie on X

Aaron is the CEO of Box, the popular cloud storage company. He talks about Box, but also about startup culture, lessons learned, and leadership tips.

What you can learn from them:

  • Speak your mind if you can take the heat. Aaron often shares his opinions on everything from software development to AI. Whenever you share a potentially controversial topic, some people are bound to agree and others disagree. If you can handle not being universally liked, don’t shy away from taking a stand.

Oprah

Oprah's favorite things the color purple Instagram post

Source: Oprah on Instagram

Oprah needs no introduction. On social media, she shares snippets of her life, her latest book club picks, news about her latest productions and projects, and of course, her famous “Oprah’s Favorite Things” recommendations.

What you can learn from them:

  • Be yourself. Oprah has been famous forever at this point, but she’s always remained true to her personality and values — and that shines through in how she interacts with others and what she chooses to share.
  • Use your profile to lift up others. You may not have 22 million followers like Oprah, but when you can, use your profile to feature others you believe in. Oprah regularly features aspiring performers, authors, and advocates she admires.

Ready to uplevel your career, expand your network and opportunities, and automate your social media success? Hire Hootsuite as your executive social assistant to easily plan, schedule, analyze, and amplify your content across all your social profiles in one easy-to-use dashboard.

Get Started

Manage all your social media in one place, measure ROI, and save time with Hootsuite.

Book a Demo

How to Get on the FYP (For You Page) on TikTok: 15 Hacks

Table of Contents

In a way, this blog post is also a For You Page: it was carefully created just for you, and the more you scroll, the more you’ll find content that you’re likely to care about. Except it was written by a human with bones and blood, and not determined by a series of TikTok algorithms.

Getting on the TikTok FYP, or For You Page, is extremely important when it comes to success on the platform: the FYP is where a billion global active users find new content, new accounts to follow and new brands to care about.

Here’s everything you need to know about getting on the FYP, straight from the human’s mouth.

What is the FYP (For You page) on TikTok?

The Tiktok FYP (For You Page) is a feed of content created for a specific user based on an algorithm. The FYP shows a mix of videos from accounts that the user follows and other videos that the platform believes the user will enjoy—in other words, the FYP makes predictions about what content you’ll find most engaging.

According to TikTok, each individual’s For You Page stream of videos is decided according to three main rankings:

  • User interactions (this includes the TikToks you like, comment on, and share, including accounts you follow and content you make yourself).
  • Video information (details like sounds, hashtags and captions)
  • Device and account settings (for example, your language preference, location setting and type of device—but TikTok says this is the least important of the three)

How to get on the FYP: 15 tips

Use trending songs

Ever had a TikTok song stuck in your head? That’s because your FYP is often full of trending music—meaning that lots of creators are using the same songs in their videos. TikTok knows what music is trending and is more likely to put your video on the FYP if you hop on the trend.

Irish dance group Cairde often uses trending songs in their content—they’ve built an impressive follower base of 3.3 million, but their videos typically have engagement numbers that double, triple, or even 20x that number. That’s because their videos show up on FYP of users who don’t follow them, in part because they hop on (literally) music trends.

Many TikTok sounds also have their own built-in trends, which makes the content even easier to create. This chihuahua, for example, managed to edit this video in exactly the way that thousands of Gen Zers did. Old dog, new Tiks.

Use trending audio

Similar to the above — it’s not just songs that go viral on TikTok, it’s sounds. A sound byte from a TV show or movie or just the isolated audio from another TikTok can go viral, too. Put your own spin on trending audio clips to boost your wow factor and set you apart from other users with familar but unique content.

Then this dramatic audio began trending, and thousands of users found their own interpretations for the sound—time to work on your lip-synching skills.

Participate in trends

Sorry, one more reference to trends (hey, in the online world, trends are always tops): there’s an infinite opportunity for dance trends, prank trends, challenge trends and more on TikTok.

Not only will participating in trends make you more likely to get on the FYP… trends are also a no-brainer when it comes to content brainstorming. Rather than coming up with something that’s completely fresh, take a look at what others are doing (and do it better).

For example, when it felt like everyone (yes, chef, everyone) was binge-watching The Bear, many TikTok users decided to recreate the omelet featured on the show.

Potato chip brand Smith’s Chips posted their own how-to—appropriate, since the omelet in the television series has sour cream and onion chips sprinkled on top. This is an awesome example of using a trend to market your brand.

Be timely

The TikTok FYP is all about what is hot now… which often actually means predicting the future. When planning out your content calendar, think about holidays, occasions and seasons, and consider what you can do to make your TikToks matter at the time that they are posted.

Being timely might also mean that your TikTok is more useful (for example, no one wants pumpkin-carving tips on November 1).

Kelly Clarkson posted this TikTok at the perfect time—her cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” was relevant because the song is trending, plus the video went live right around Halloween. Freaky, festive and fabulous.

Post at the right time

Speaking of time: scheduling your TikToks to post at the optimal time will help more users take notice of your video, leading to more engagement, a higher ranking in the algorithm and making your video more likely to appear on TikTok For You Pages.

Hootsuite has experimented and drawn conclusions about the best time to post on TikTok in general (short answer? Thursday at 7:00 p.m.), but more accurate “best time” stats will change from user to user.

The good news is that Hootsuite also has built-in, personalized tech that will tell you when your best time to post on TikTok is. You can also use TikTok analytics to see when most of your followers are online, and pay attention to stats from videos you’ve already posted to find correlations between views and timing.

Encourage people to engage

Engagement is one of the biggest factors that leads to success on TikTok. There’s plenty of ways to boost your engagement rate on the platform (here are 5 ways to make yours higher), but there’s also a very simple engagement-boosting hack: just ask. Encourage viewers to comment, like, save and send your video to friends.

This speed reading challenge is an excellent example. The video challenges you from the very start, prompting you to pay attention and not scroll away. Viewers are encouraged to comment on the video if they can complete the reading challenge and to send it to a friend who might like a speed-reading test, too.

By asking folks to comment and share this video and by appealing to their sense of competition, the creator is getting more engagement — which leads to a higher ranking on the algorithm and a higher chance of ending up on a FYP.

Use the right hashtags

Trending hashtags are one element that helps TikTok figure out what your video is about — and we’re not talking about the ultra-basic #fyp. To figure out which TikTok hashtags to use, look to the experts: find your competitors (or, to use more positive language, other folks who are succeeding in your industry) and see which popular hashtags they are using.

It’s hard to go wrong creating #Swiftok content lately, and football social media managers have been working overtime on Taylor Swift-related videos. The delightful TikTok above tags #taylorswift, #erastour and #swifttok, so TikTok knows to share it on the For You Pages of her fans.

Tag your location

A user’s FYP will incorporate viral and not-so-viral videos from all over the world, but the TikTok algorithm also takes into account location when curating the For You Page. The platform assumes — usually correctly — that TikTok users will care about videos that were created in the same city, country or continent that they live in.

Take this invitation for a pop-up rave in Vancouver, for example. The creator tagged the location and used the hashtag #Vancouver in their description, indicating to the TikTok algorithm that users in Vancouver would likely care about the video.

The pop-up skytrain rave was apparently a success, likely in no small part due to the invite showing up on local user’s FYPs.

Collaborate with a creator

TikTok creators know all about how to get on the FYP. It’s how they gained their following: by creating engaging, entertaining content that users want more of. Collaborating with a successful creator on TikTok can expand your audience significantly, as you’ll automatically be more likely to be seen on the For You Pages of all the creator’s followers.

Hot tip: When collaborating with a creator, make sure that their niche aligns with yours in some way (in other words, the collaboration should “make sense,” for example, an athletic wear brand collaborating with an athlete or a kitchen retailer collaborating with a chef). The best partnership should be authentic and beneficial for both parties… actually, that’s good relationship advice, too.

Here’s a celeb example. Walmart collaborated with Mean Girls stars almost 20 years after the original release of the movie to create this viral advertisement (it has over two million views, hundreds of thousands of likes and tens of thousands of saves).

And on Lindsay Lohan’s account, the exact same video has over 20 million views, almost four million likes and 300,000 saves. Walmart significantly expanded its reach with this collaboration — get in losers, we’re posting TikTok collabs.

Collaborate with another brand

It’s not just creators that you can collaborate with: consider partnering with another brand to widen your reach and develop meaningful relationships with others in your industry. Just like a creator partnership, a brand partnership will expose you to the other brand’s followers (and their bank accounts) and vice versa.

And, also like a creator partnership, a brand partnership should be a genuine collaboration between two parties with similar values. Think a hot sauce brand partnering with a chicken wing restaurant, or a shoe company partnering with a sock company.

Post consistently

TikTok recommends posting 1 to 4 times per day… yes, per DAY. If that’s within reach for you as a social media manager, by all means, go absolutely buckwild with content. But for many, that’s not a realistic goal — and that’s totally okay.

At Hootsuite, we recommend posting 3 to 5 times per week. It’s a manageable goal to set, and also is consistent enough that you should be regularly appearing on your follower’s feeds. What’s most important is that you are repeatedly showing up on the app, and taking every opportunity you can get to get on the FYP.

(Plus, with Hootsuite, you can schedule your TikToks in advance — so 3-5 new videos a week might only mean a couple of hours of work one day a week.)

This TikTokker posts videos of dancing chickens— sometimes in costume — several times a day, and while all of them are eggcellent (sorry), they don’t all end up going viral.

Then again, there’a quite a few with millions of views. Sometimes, ending up on the FYP is a bit of a numbers game: you miss 100% of the Toks you don’t Tik.

Find your niche

This tip is true for every platform out there: when your content is geared towards a specific community, you’re more likely to find engaged followers who will stick with you. TikTok is unique in that niches can be almost unbelievably specific (I, for example, am consistently fed TikTok videos about ex-theatre kids working in corporate jobs) and that’s a great opportunity to narrow down your content and really focus on what matters.

The above video is just one of the hundreds of TikToks that performance artist Vita Kari has made. Their content almost always follows the same formula, and they’ve found a hyper-specific niche that is super engaging—their TikToks are like a guessing game, prompting viewers to comment and share.

Post before-and-after content

One of the metrics that the TikTok algorithm uses to rank videos is the time that viewers spend watching before they scroll away. And because TikTok is so rich with content, you’ll want to grab an audience’s attention in the first precious seconds: give them a reason to keep watching.

Sharing before-and-after content, behind-the-scenes or process videos is an excellent hack for grabbing attention—the instant gratification that a viewer gets from seeing results prompts them to pay attention. This photoshoot behind-the-scenes is an awesome example… once you see the first before-and-after, you’re tempted to watch the rest.

Stitch other videos

Stitching trending videos is another way to hop on a trend—often, videos asking a question or prompting a story will go viral because of their stitchability. Just like song trends and sound trends, stitch trends are favoured by TikTok’s algorithm.

This video proves that stitches lead to success: there are hundreds of stitches, some with millions of views.

Also: don’t forget to embrace serendipity. Okay, that advice sounds a little like something you’d read in a fortune cookie—but serendipitous coincidences and can’t-believe-it’s-true circumstances do super well on TikTok.

For example, when one TikTok user remarked “Y’all remember the days when going viral got you on Ellen?”, ex-child singer (and current adult singer) Greyson Chance took the opportunity to stitch it—after all, he went viral and got on Ellen in 2010.

Be yourself

In the end, trends and hacks can’t really top straight-up authenticity: it’s a quality that TikTok claims to champion, and often, the For You Page proves it.

The virality of this video proves it: who wouldn’t love seeing a daughter trying to save her family’s business on their feed? Being yourself and creating genuine, authentic content won’t just get you on the FYP, it will help convert some of those lucky views to real follows.

Grow your TikTok presence alongside your other social channels using Hootsuite. Schedule and publish posts for the best times, engage your audience, and measure performance — all from one easy-to-use dashboard. Try it free today.

Get Started

Want more TikTok views?

Schedule posts for the best times, view performance stats, and comment on videos in Hootsuite.

Try it free for 30 days

4 TikTok Analytics Tools That Do the Math for You

Table of Contents

Ah, TikTok. What started as the domain of teenagers doing their teenager thing has become an important marketing channel – and not just for those marketing to teens. The platform now has more than a billion monthly users, and nearly a third of them are over 35. That means TikTok has become serious business for brands and organizations of all shapes and sizes.

TikTok analytics provide the information you need to take your TikTok strategy seriously, with insights into what works and what doesn’t for your business.

Before we jump into the details, here’s a quick overview of everything you need to know:

https://youtu.be/JMyRpoAOcAQ?si=p8KktDQCZP565Cks

What is TikTok analytics?

TikTok analytics are tools that allow you to track your performance on TikTok. They provide insights into which videos are seeing the most activity. On a deeper level, they help guide your TikTok marketing strategy, as you come to understand what resonates best with your audience.

Regularly reviewing the most important metrics for your TikTok account will allow you to grow strategically, rather than simply hoping for the best.

27 key metrics to track on TikTok

TikTok account metrics

  1. Video views. The total number of times your account’s videos were viewed over a given period.
  2. Profile views. The number of times your profile was viewed over the selected period. This TikTok metric is a good indication of brand interest. It measures the number of people who liked your video enough to check out your profile, or people who search for your brand on the platform.
  3. Likes. The number of likes your videos received in the selected date range.
  4. Comments. The number of comments your videos received in the selected date range.
  5. Shares. The number of shares your videos received in the selected date range.
  6. Content frequency. The number of videos you shared in the selected date range.

TikTok content metrics (for individual videos)

  1. Post views. The number of times a TikTok video has been viewed.
  2. Post likes. How many likes a post has received.
  3. Post comments. How many comments a post has received.
  4. Post shares. The number of times the post has been shared.
  5. Post engagement rate: Calculated as [(Number of likes + Number of comments + Number of shares + Number of content clicks in videos) / Number of viewers] * 100. Tip: Don’t like math? Hootsuite Analytics calculates engagement rate for you.
  6. Post average watch time. The average amount of time people spent watching this video.
  7. Video completion percentage. The number of times the video has been watched in full, as a percentage of viewers (identified in TikTok analytics as “watched full video”)
  8. Video reach. The total number of individual users who watched this video.
  9. Traffic sources. How people fi=ound your video. Traffic sources include the For You feed, your profile, the Following feed, sounds, searches, and hashtags.
  10. Video views by region. This section displays the top locations of viewers for the post. If you created a post or marketing campaign for a specific location, this is how to tell if it reached them.


#1 Analytics Tool for Growth

Beautiful reports. Clear data. Actionable insights to help you grow faster.

Start free 30-day trial

TikTok follower metrics (and demographics)

  1. Follower count: How many followers you have, total, at this moment in time.
  2. Net new followers: Total increase or decrease in your follower count during the selected time period.
  3. Gender distribution. A breakdown of the stated gender identities of your followers. While this isn’t necessarily critical information, any insight into your audience can help you build better audience personas.
  4. Country distribution. Where your followers are from, ranked by country. (Identified in TikTok Analytics as “Top Territories.”) Keep these places in mind if you’re looking to localize content and promotions.
  5. Follower activity. The times and days that your followers are active and scrolling on TikTok. Hootsuite uses this data to recommend best times to post based on your preferred goal.
Hootsuite best times and days to publish based on number of followers online in last 30 days

Start free 30-day trial

TikTok Live metrics

  1. Total views. The total number of viewers present during your live videos in the selected date range.
  2. Total time. The total time you spent hosting live videos in the selected date range.
  3. New followers. The number of new followers gained while hosting a live video in the selected date range.
  4. Top viewer count. The peak number of users who viewed your live video at one time in the selected date range.
  5. Unique viewers. The number of users who viewed your live video at least once (in this stat, a viewer is only counted once, no matter how many times they replay the video).
  6. Diamonds. When you host a live video (and you’re 18+), viewers can send you virtual gifts, including “Diamonds.” You can exchange these diamonds for real money through TikTok—more info on that here. This stat shows how many diamonds you have earned in the selected date range.

4 TikTok analytics tools for 2024

First things first: Wondering how to turn on analytics on TikTok? To use a TikTok analytics tool, you’ll need to have a TikTok Business account. It’s free to switch. Just follow these steps:

  1. From your TikTok profile page, open the Settings and privacy tab (the three lines in the top right corner).
  2. Tap Manage account.
  3. Under Account control, choose Switch to Business Account.

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite TikTok analytics reporting dashboard

Start free 30-day trial

Hootsuite offers robust TikTok analytics reporting, with customizable reports and graphs that allow you to understand your current performance at a glance. If you want to dive into the details, you can do that too. Perhaps most importantly, Hootsuite allows you to analyze TikTok data for any timeframe you choose, whereas TikTok’s native tools are capped at 60 days.

The handy thing about Hootsuite’s highly customizable TikTok reports is that you can get as much or as little detail as you want. And you can create multiple reports for different shareholders with just a few clicks – so you can prove the success of your TikTok content strategy to senior stakeholders without having to walk them through every single stat.

You can also directly compare two time periods, so you can more easily identify trends.

Since most social marketers use TikTok as part of a multi-platform social strategy, it’s important to consider your TikTok insights in the context of your overall social performance. Hoostuite makes it easier to compare TikToks and Instagram Reels side-by-side, for example, so you can understand which is getting more traction.

Knowing where each platform fits into your social plan allows you to allocate resources more effectively and improve your entire social strategy, not just your TikTok results.

2. TikTok’s built-in tools

TikTok analytics mobile overview video views and followers

Source: TikTok

You can check your TikTok analytics for free using their native tools on your computer as well as within the mobile app. However, you can only download your data from the desktop dashboard. Here’s how to check TikTok analytics both ways:

  • On mobile: From your account page, tap the three dots icon and select Creator tools. Tap Analytics and you’re good to go!
  • On desktop: Navigate to tiktok.com and log in. Click your profile picture and choose Business Suite from the dropdown menu. This takes you directly to the Analytics page.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social video views graph report

Source: Sprout Social

Sprout Social offers a TikTok Analytics tool that provides access to many of the metrics above. It has graphical reports that make it easy to understand your TikTok activity. Like Hootsuite, it offers data beyond TikTok’s 60-day limit, but there are fewer customization options. It also offers recommendations on the best time to post, but they are not customizable by goal.

See how Sprout Social compares to Hootsuite.

4. Countik

Countik graph of average engagement rate for last 10 posts

Source: Countik

Countik is a free TikTok analytics tracker that lets you see insights for the most recent posts of any TikTok account. Just enter the Tik Tok handle in the search bar and click the magnifying glass.

You’ll get a lot of useful information, including average engagement rates, likes views, comments, and shares. You’ll also see the account’s most-used hashtags and mentions.

This is definitely a useful tool to research competitors and collaborators, but it does have significant limitations. The charts only include information on the last 10 posts, and the per-post analytics only include the most recent 20 posts.

How to use TikTok analytics tools for best results

Check in on a regular basis

While things move fast in general online, they move at light speed on TikTok. This is not a platform where you can afford to tune out of reporting for a few weeks.

Checking in regularly allows you to understand how TikTok user behavior is changing in near real time so you can adapt your strategy on the fly.

Hootsuite can keep you on track with your TikTok analytics tracking by automatically sending you (and other stakeholders) reports on a pre-set schedule, so the data comes right to your inbox.

Keep an eye on competitors – and potential collaborators

Within TikTok’s native analytics tool, there’s one stat in particular that can help you keep an eye on your competitors.

It’s called Videos your followers watched. It shows content your followers watched on TikTok when they were not watching your videos.

Videos your followers watched on TikTok last 7 days

Source: TikTok analytics

The creators of this content may very well be your competition. What are they up to?

Of course, these creators could also be potential collaborators. Is there anyone you might want to partner with to grow both of your audiences?

Look for patterns

Knowing whether each individual video flies or flops is a valuable exercise in itself. But if you really want to take your TikTok game to the next level, you need to look for the patterns and connections behind the data.

For example, if you notice your follower growth rate is significantly higher or lower than usual, narrow the date range of your new followers reporting to look for specific spikes or dips. What happened on that day? Make some notes about what you think might have led to the change.

You won’t necessarily be able to diagnose the situation in the first instance, but the next time you see a similar spike or dip, you might start to spot a pattern. In the meantime, you can test your theories to see if you can recreate success or correct a follower loss.

Over time, you’ll be able to tell what your audience wants to see from you. Give them more of that! Whether it’s how-to videos, product reviews, or stitches, you’ll soon get a sense of what kinds of videos get the most engagement and watch time.

Tip: If people watch a video more than once, they really, really like it (and so will the algorithm). To understand which videos get multiple views, subtract your reached audience from your view count. This gives you an estimate of how many times your video got multiple views.

Evaluate your hashtag and sounds strategies

Use the traffic sources analytics to get a sense of how many people are finding your videos through hashtags or sounds.

Sounds trends change lightning fast, but you can always see which sounds your audience has been listening to in the Followers tab of the native TikTok analytics tool. If you’re not seeing great results from your current sounds strategy, try one of these – but only if you can turn your video around almost right away.

Sounds your followers listened to on TikTok Daydream Acoustic and Blue Night

Source: TikTok

For hashtags, pay attention when you see a spike in traffic from hashtags and see if you can narrow it down to a particular hashtag that works well to bring in new viewers. Again, this might take a couple of tries, but over time you should be able to find some consistent winners.

Compare your results to industry benchmarks

The more context you have, the easier it is to understand your results. It’s incredibly helpful to know how the rest of your industry is doing on TikTok, especially during periods of change in activity on your account.

How to see TikTok analytics in the context of your industry as a whole? Hootsuite Analytics has a built-in industry benchmarking report that provides an analysis of how well you’re performing compared to others like you. You can choose the metrics that matter most to you, and select whether to display your data as a chart of a table for ease of use.

Hootsuite Analytics industry benchmarking profile impressions

Source: Hootsuite Analytics

Don’t forget to have fun

Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.”

https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster/status/1729155477777559694

It’s an important reminder for brands that social media – and TikTok in particular – is a place for connection. TikTok is not a billboard, and it’s not even really like other social platforms. It’s a place where authenticity trumps all.

So, use the information from TikTok analytics to hone your strategy, spark content ideas, and understand your audience. But don’t let the numbers be the only thing that guides you. Allow room to experiment authentically and have fun. Just be sure to check your analytics reporting after you do so.

Grow your TikTok presence alongside your other social channels using Hootsuite. Schedule and publish posts for the best times, engage your audience, and measure performance — all from one easy-to-use dashboard. Try it free today.

Get Started

Grow on TikTok faster with Hootsuite

Schedule posts, learn from analytics, and respond to comments all in one place.

Start your 30-day trial