Hello sweet, sweet summertime.
Well, if by sweet you mean slooooow, then we’re on the same page. Summertime in the jewelry industry is infamous for its seasonal slowdown. So, if your spring cleaning didn’t happen because you were buried in Mother’s Day business— it’ll happen this summer. And what about the inventory that hasn’t had any attention in years? Time to melt them down! You know what else you are going to do this summer? You are going to spend some downtime stepping up your social game. And I’m going to tell you how!
Here are my summer social media suggestions to turn your downtime into social showtime.
1. Take Inventory on Your Audience
What’s the key to getting your audience to engage with your content on social media? Understanding who your audience is in the first place. Think about it. How can you create posts that your audience will like if you don’t even know who they are? That’s why the first, and most important, social task you should complete this summer is to conduct an audience inventory.
An audience inventory (see examples below) is simply a quick exercise to help you understand your audience relative to each platform. You will use the different insights available within your active social spaces to get the following information:
- Total Follower Count
- Gender Breakdown
- Age Distribution
- Location Concentration
- Most Active Day/Time
Gather this information for each platform and use it to learn more about your audience. Having a clearer picture of who you’re talking to will help you create more engaging content!
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2. Perform Hashtag Research
This summer social media suggestion is for all the Instagrammers! By now, I think we’re all pretty familiar with the concept of hashtags. We know how they work AND how important they are for discoverability and engagement. What you may not know, however, is which ones freaking work! Take some time this summer to do some hashtag research and make that 30-per-post hashtag limit count.
NOTE: If you were like, “Wait, girl, I know nothing about Instagram,” check out this Instagram For Beginners blog post.
How to Conduct Hashtag Research for Instagram
To conduct hashtag research, start by simply checking out how your current hashtags are contributing to your posts’ success. Do this by clicking View Insights when looking at a particular post. Next, look for the following two metrics: % of accounts reached that weren’t following you AND impressions from hashtags. Both of these are under the Discovery section of your account. This will help you understand how users discovered your Instagram post! If either of these numbers is higher than that of your other posts, this is an indicator that your hashtag game was on point for that post. Try using similar combinations in future posts and see if you achieve the same results!
If you want to take it a step further, there are tools like SmartHash that allow you to search for hashtags (ranked by highest performing), get new suggestions based on hashtags you already know are popular, and even split-test different sets of hashtags on your posts!
3. Build Your Community
Our first two summer social media suggestions were designed to help get more people to discover your accounts on social media. This next step is all about you discovering others on social media, which is just as important— especially on Instagram!
Engagement goes two ways, and the algorithms know that. In fact, many platforms prioritize showing your content to users who like and comment on your posts regularly AND those you proactively engage with. Spend some downtime this summer liking and commenting on your customers’ (and prospective target audience) posts from your business account. This will signal to the algorithm that two-way communication is happening. This will ultimately start showing your content to those users more often.
And there you have it! These are my summer social media suggestions. Follow this three-step guide to step up your social game this summer. I will openly admit that each of these recommendations requires a bit of your time. BUT, if you’re serious about improving your social strategy, doing the heavy lifting over the next few months is totally worth it. Get it out of the way to set yourself up for social success for the rest of the year!
