Thursday 28 September 2017

How to Engage With Your Social Media Followers Quickly and Authentically

How do you feel when people comment on your social media posts?

Awesome, right?

A comment is or some form of engagement is usually a sign that people love your social media content. And it’s important to reciprocate and respond to these interactions.

But at the same time, engaging with your followers can be time-consuming. If you are a solo social media manager or a small business owner, you know you don’t have the whole day to engage with your followers.

So how can you minimize the time it takes to engage with your followers and still be authentic at the same time?

In this post, we’ll share the tactics and tools we use to engage with our amazing social media followers quickly and authentically. 

How to Engage With Your Social Media Followers Quickly and Authentically

5 creative types of replies you can use

If you have been replying to comments and mentions with a thank you, that’s a great first step. But it can be easy to fall into the habit of using a few standard replies. I’m definitely guilty of that!

There are many ways you can spice up your replies, show your brand’s personality, and delight your followers. Here are some that I like:

1. Questions

Instead of a simple “Thank you”, I love to engage with the person further and continue the discussion. A great method is to ask for her or his opinions on the topic.

For example, if someone commented on your social media post that links to a blog post, you could ask the following questions:

  • What is your favorite part of the blog post?
  • What’s your main takeaway from the blog post?
  • Do you agree with the idea mentioned in the blog post?
  • How has your experience with (a strategy or tool) been like?
  • Have you tried any of the tips in the blog post before? If yes, how did it go?

If they reply to your questions, that’s awesome! You can continue the conversation and build a good relationship with them.

2. Emojis

Emojis in replies

The easiest way to make your replies a little more fun is to include emojis. ðŸ™Œ

As emojis become part of the social media language, most people are used to seeing and using emojis in their social media posts and comments.

It is also an efficient way to convey your tone and emotions in your replies. Unlike talking face-to-face or on the phone, it’s not easy for your followers to pick up your tone and emotions in a text reply. But with a happy emoji such as ðŸ˜„, your followers would know instantly that you’re smiling while replying.

Both Mac and Windows have a shortcut for adding emojis. If you’re on a Mac, an emoji app that I would recommend is Rocket. It allows you to quickly type emojis by starting with a colon (:). Here’s a demo from the website:

Rocket demo

3. Images

Sometimes, the fastest and easiest way to show or explain something on social media is to use an image — especially on Twitter where you have only 140 characters.

We found that images are generally best for answering support questions where we have to show or point to something.

Tools like CloudApp, Nimbus, and Droplr (which we’ll discuss below) allow you to add annotations to your images, making your explanation clearer.

4. GIFs

Using GIFs is our favorite way of thanking people who shared our content, gave us a shout out, and more.

With the new GIF button on Twitter and Facebook, you can easily find and add a GIF to your replies.

Twitter and Facebook GIF button

If you would like to create your own GIFs, here’s our guide on how to create your own GIFs in minutes.

5. Videos

In 2015, the User Happiness team at Medium did a #AskMedium campaign where they answered questions with video replies. And their followers loved it!

In a blog post about Twitter’s video feature, Gary Vaynerchuck explained why video replies are great for engagement:

It takes me nine to twelve seconds to make a video and reply, but those extra seconds hold a lot of meaning. Not to mention it’s more personal, visual, and we are living in a world where the visual is often regarded as a better engagement than the written.

It’s easy to Like a comment or reply with “Thank you!”. Recording a video reply — even a short one — takes a little more effort, which shows your followers how much you care about them.

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6 ways to save time while engaging with your followers

While engaging with your followers is important, you likely also have many other important things to do, such as creating content, planning, or running your business.

Here are six strategies to help you save time while you engage with your followers.

1. Craft your replies to common comments in advance

Thanks for sharing this informative video!

How do you work as a social media team of one?

Do you have any tips for growing an Instagram account?

These are some of the common comments we get, and you likely have yours.

Preparing the answers to these common comments and questions can help you reply faster as you don’t have to think on your feet.

I would recommend coming up with a few variations so that you aren’t always replying with the same phrases. For example, instead of saying “Thanks for reading our blog post!”, you could also say the following:

  • Yay! Thanks for reading this! (GIF)
  • You rock for reading our blog post! 🙌
  • Thank you for checking it out! Will you be trying any of the tips mentioned?
  • Thanks! Have you tried any of the tactics before? It’ll be great to hear how it went for you!

Variations of replies

2. Have a handy list of GIFs, emojis, and more

Besides searching for GIFs on Twitter and Facebook, I have a folder of my favorite GIFs for various types of replies. This way, I can grab and use them quickly without having to search. (There have been times when I was looking for a particular GIF and just couldn’t find it through search).

Here are some of my favorites:

Aww, thank you:

You’re welcome:

Awesome:

Excited:

You could download your favorite GIFs into an easily-accessible folder so that you can grab one quickly whenever you are replying to comments on your social media posts.

To download a GIF from GIPHY, click on “Download” on the right of the GIF and select the file type you want.

Download GIF on GIPHY

You could do the same for commonly-used screenshots and videos and also create a list of your favorite emojis in an Evernote note (or your preferred note-taking app) for quick access.

3. Use productivity tools

Using tools is another great way to help you reply your followers faster. Here are a few tools that we use:

Text Expander: Instantly insert snippets of text

Text Expander

With Text Expander, you can quickly type commonly-used phrases with just a few characters. For example, instead of typing “Thank you for sharing this post”, you could type “tks1” and Text Expander would automatically expand it.

If you have come up with a list of replies according to tip 1 above, you could add them to this app. You can customize the abbreviation for each of your snippets.

Other tools like Text Expander: Alfred, Typinator, and Phrase Express

CloudApp: Quickly create & share GIFs, annotated screenshots, and more

CloudApp

With CloudApp, you can capture anything on your screen as an image, GIF, or video in just seconds. You can even record a video of yourself — which is great for creating video replies!

CloudApp will automatically add a link to your file to your clipboard. You can then paste it into your reply or download the file and add it to your reply.

What I love about CloudApp is that I can access its features by just hitting a few keys on my keyboard.

  • Cmd/Alt + Shift + 5: Take a screenshot
  • Cmd/Alt + Shift + a: Take a screenshot and add annotations
  • Cmd/Alt + Shift + 6: Take a screen recording (as a GIF or HD video)
  • Cmd/Alt + Shift + 8: Record a video with your computer’s camera

Other tools like CloudApp: Nimbus, Droplr, and Dropbox

4. Use a social media engagement tool

Our top tip for engaging with social media followers quickly is to use a tool that’s built specifically for social media engagement.

Instead of having to log in to each social media platform and open each notification in a new tab, you can efficiently reply to comments and mentions from a single place.

Our favorite social media engagement tool is Buffer Reply.

Buffer Reply

With Buffer Reply, you can have all your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram conversations in a single inbox. It works even better if you are in a team as you can respond to conversations together.

There are also many other social media engagement tools out there, such as Facebook’s unified inbox, Hootsuite, and TweetDeck.

5. Use automation to assist you

This is where a social media engagement tool can be super helpful. For example, we set up automation rules with Buffer Reply, such as the following, so that we can respond to social media conversations as quickly as possible.

  • Filter out spam and automated tweets and automatically close those conversations – so that we can focus on those that require a reply
  • Move Facebook and Instagram comments into a separate folder – so that Brian Peters, who manages our Facebook Page and Instagram account, can focus on them
  • Move tweets with our support hashtag, #BufferSupport, into a separate folder – so that our Customer Advocates can reply to them as soon as possible

Automation tools like Zapier and IFTTT can also be useful here. The way they work is that an activity in an app will trigger another activity in another app. For example, if you want to reply as soon as someone mentions your brand on Twitter, you could use Zapier to send any Twitter mentions into your Slack.

Zapier automation

Here are more social media engagement and monitoring automation by Zapier.

6. Schedule time to engage

It’s great to jump onto any comments immediately and give a prompt reply. If it doesn’t disrupt to your workflow, you should probably keep it up!

But for many of us who wear multiple hats, constantly stopping our work to reply to a comment can affect our productivity (unless your main role is to reply and help customers on social media).

One thing that Brian, who manages our social media profiles, do is this: he schedules two 30-minutes time blocks every day to respond and engage with our community. Here’s how engaging with our community fits into his morning schedule:

Brian Peter's schedule

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How do you engage with your followers?

Engaging with your followers is a great way to build your brand. While the process can sometimes be time-consuming, there are tactics and tools that can help to minimize the time it takes for you to engage with your followers while staying authentic:

  • Craft your replies to common comments in advance
  • Have a handy list of GIFs, emojis, and more
  • Use productivity tools like TextExpander
  • Use a social media engagement tool
  • Use automation to assist you
  • Schedule time to engage

I would also love to learn from you. How do you engage with your followers? What tips do you have for those who want to minimize the time it takes to engage with their followers? 

Image credit: Unsplash



source https://blog.bufferapp.com/engage-quickly-authentically

Tuesday 26 September 2017

The Ideal Cover Photo Size for Each of the Major Social Media Platforms

One of the first few things people see when they visit your social media profiles is your cover photo.

Whether it’s your Facebook Page, LinkedIn Company Page, or YouTube channel, your cover photo is the biggest image on the page. And people will see your cover photo even before they see any of your posts.

So how do you make your cover photo show up the exact way you want it to be?

One of the key factors is the size. Without the correct dimensions (width and height), your cover photo might be cropped to fit the space available and people will miss the important details on your photo.

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all cover photo size for all the social media platforms, the information is out there.

We’ve collected all the answers here so that you can have a single point of reference for all cover photo sizes.

The Ideal Cover Photo Size for Each of the Major Social Media Platforms

The best cover photo size for all major social media platform

Some social media platforms display cover photos slightly different on the desktop and on mobile. But in general, here are the ideal cover photo sizes for the platforms with a cover photo.

(Feel free to click on a social media platform to see more details for that particular platform.)

Facebook – 820px x 462px (Profile, Page, and Group), 820px by 465px (Page video), 1920px by 1080px (Event)

LinkedIn – 1584px x 396px (Profile), 1536px x 768px (Company Page)

YouTube – 2560px x 1440px

Twitter – 1,500px x 500px

Google+ – 1600px x 900px (Profile and Page), 368px x 207px (Collection and community)

Tumblr – 1600px x 900px

If you spot an error or an outdated information, I’m be grateful if you could let me know in the comments section below. Thanks!

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Ideal cover photo size for Facebook

Facebook profile cover photo – 820px x 462px

Facebook profile cover photo

The ideal size for your Facebook (personal) profile cover photo is 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall. According to Facebook, your cover photo has to be at least 720 pixels wide.

There are four important details to take note of when creating a cover photo for your Facebook profile:

1. Your cover photo will look slightly different on mobile. 

On mobile, Facebook shows your cover photo at a different dimension — slightly taller or narrower. Facebook will either show more of your image if your image is tall enough or crop the sides away.

From my tests, 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall is an ideal size for both desktop and mobile. Facebook will show the blue section on the desktop and both the green and blue sections on mobile.

Facebook cover photo template

You can grab a Photoshop file of this template here.

2. You can reposition your cover photo on the desktop.

In case you have any important details at the top or bottom of your cover photo and you worry that Facebook will crop them away on the desktop, Facebook allows you to reposition your cover photo by dragging it up or down.

Drag Facebook profile cover photo

3. Your profile photo, your name, and a few buttons overlay your cover photo.

As you might have noticed in the example above, several things overlay the cover photo. You might want to take this into consideration when choosing or creating your cover photo. On mobile, your profile photo will overlay your cover photo in the middle.

Facebook profile cover photo on mobile

A good rule-of-thumb is to avoid having any important details in the lower half of your cover photo that might be hidden behind your profile photo.

4. Facebook shows only about half of your cover photo when someone lands on your profile.

When someone navigates to your Facebook profile, Facebook would not show your entire cover photo immediately. She or he has to scroll up a little to see the full image.

Facebook profile cover photo

To encourage people to scroll up and check out your full cover photo, you might want to have something attractive enough in the bottom-half of your cover photo.

Facebook Page cover photo – 820px x 462px

Facebook Page cover photo

We have a post that goes into more detail about the Facebook Page cover photo. Here are some of the key points:

1. Unlike your profile cover photo, nothing overlays your Facebook Page cover photo.

This is great because you don’t have to worry about anything blocking important details on your cover photo.

2. Like your profile cover photo, your Facebook Page cover photo will look slightly different on mobile. 

According to Facebook, your Facebook Page cover photo displays at 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on desktops and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on mobile.

From my tests, I found that it’s best to use an image that is 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall and to have what you want to show up on the desktop within a 820-pixels wide-by-312-pixels tall box (or the blue section).

Facebook cover photo on desktop and mobile

You can grab a template of the ideal Facebook Page cover photo here.

3. Use a PNG file for better resolution.

According to Facebook, if your cover photo has your logo or text, your logo or text might show up better when you use a PNG file.

Facebook Page cover video – 820px by 465px

Buffer Facebook cover video

Yes! You can use a video for your cover photo. Isn’t that amazing?

Here are the recommendations by Facebook for your Facebook Page cover video:

  • Your video should be at least 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall. For best results, upload a cover video that’s 820 pixels wide and 456 pixels tall.
  • Your video should be between 20 and 90 seconds.

As for the video file format, I believe MP4 or MOV is recommended; though any of the formats on this list should work, too.

Facebook Group cover photo – 820px x 462px

Facebook Group cover photo

The Facebook Group cover photo is almost identical to the Facebook Page cover photo — just a little shorter.

The ideal cover photo size is 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall (similar to the Facebook Page cover photo). But the area visible on the desktop is 820 pixels wide by 250 pixels tall (slightly shorter than the Facebook Page cover photo). Your photo has to be at least 400 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall, according to Facebook.

Feel free to grab a template of the ideal Facebook Group cover photo here.

One thing to bear in mind is that while nothing overlays your Facebook Group cover photo on the desktop, your Facebook Group name will overlay your cover photo on mobile.

Facebook Group cover photo on mobile

Another thing you might want to think about is how your cover photo shows up in the Groups section of the Facebook mobile app.

Facebook Groups on mobile app

According to Marie Page, it’s best to have your copy in the center of your cover photo for the copy to show up nicely.

Facebook event photo – 1920px by 1080px

Facebook event photo

The recommended size for the event photo, according to Facebook, is 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels tall (a 16:9 aspect ratio).

For a public event, anyone who views the event can see the event photo. For a private event, only people who are invited to the event can see the event photo.

 

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Ideal cover photo size for LinkedIn

LinkedIn profile background photo – 1584px x 396px

LinkedIn background photo

1. The ideal aspect ratio is 4:1.

Your LinkedIn profile background photo is displayed at a 4:1 aspect ratio. LinkedIn recommends using photos that are 1584 pixels wide and 396 pixels tall.

If your background photo looks blurry after uploading, LinkedIn has some suggestions for you:

If your background image appears blurry or pixelated, please choose an image with a file size as close to the maximum as possible [8MB], as images with larger file sizes typically look better. Photos will also look better than images with logos. If your image is still blurry or pixelated, you may want to run it through a compression tool such as Trimage for Windows or ImageOptim for Mac before uploading it to LinkedIn.

2. LinkedIn will crop your background photo on mobile.

In its mobile app, LinkedIn will crop away the sides of your background photo, as seen in the screenshot below.

LinkedIn profile background photo on mobile

LinkedIn Company Page cover photo – 1536px x 768px

LinkedIn Company Page background photo

1. LinkedIn will crop your cover photo on the desktop.

While LinkedIn recommends the dimensions of 1536 pixels wide by 768 pixels tall, it seems to crop away the top and bottom of the photo on the desktop, as seen in the screenshot above.

So it might be best to keep the important aspects of your photo to the middle of the photo if possible.

(The minimum dimensions required by LinkedIn is 1192 pixels tall by 220 pixels wide.)

2. LinkedIn will show a bigger cover photo on mobile.

The reason LinkedIn recommends those dimensions might be because it displays a bigger cover photo in the mobile app.

LinkedIn Company Page background photo on mobile

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Ideal channel art size for YouTube

2560px x 1440px

YouTube channel art

1. Your channel art looks differently on the desktop, mobile, and TV.

The cover photo for your YouTube channel is known as the channel art.

Because YouTube can be viewed on a desktop, mobile, and even TV, your channel art will be displayed differently on different devices. The ideal dimensions that YouTube recommends are 2560 pixels wide by 1440 pixels tall.

Here are a few more details to take note of:

  • Minimum dimension for upload: 2048 x 1152 px.
  • Minimum safe area for text and logos: 1546 x 423 px. Larger images may get cropped on certain views or devices.
  • Maximum width: 2560 x 423 px. This means that the “safe area” is always visible regardless of screen size. The areas to each side of the channel art are visible or cropped depending on browser size.
  • File size: 4MB or smaller.

YouTube has created an awesome channel art template that you can use to see how your channel art will look like on various devices.

YouTube channel art template

The template comes in a Photoshop file and a Fireworks file so you can overlay it on your image to get a sense of how your image will be cropped and displayed. Here’s an example that Ash created previously:

YouTube channel art template example

2. Be mindful of your profile image and channel links.

When you are creating your channel art, you might want to avoid having any important details in the upper-left and lower-right corners of your channel art.

That’s because your profile image and channel links will be placed on top of your channel art when viewed on the desktop and mobile.

Here’s how your channel art will look like on the desktop and mobile with your profile image:

YouTube channel art overlay

YouTube channel art overlay on mobile

For tips on optimizing your YouTube channel, you might like our guide on creating a YouTube channel.

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Ideal header photo size for Twitter

1500px x 500px

Twitter header photo

Twitter recommends that your header photo be 1500 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall — much wider than it is tall, compared to most cover photos.

It’ll be great to use an image that is wide enough to prevent Twitter from stretching the image and making it blurry.

1. Your profile photo overlays your header photo.

Just like your Facebook profile, your Twitter profile photo will cover a tiny part of your header photo. It’s great to be mindful of this so that your profile photo doesn’t cover anything important in your header photo.

2. Twitter allows you to reposition and scale your image.

Something nice about Twitter’s header photo is that Twitter allows you to reposition and scale the photo you uploaded to your liking.

Twitter header photo adjustments

3. Your header photo is slightly bigger on mobile.

On mobile, Twitter seems to show a little more of your photo on the top and bottom if it is tall enough. (Notice how you can see my shoes in the mobile header photo but not in the desktop header photo.)

Twitter header photo on mobile

If your header photo is 500 pixels tall (or shorter), Twitter might scale your photo up and crop a little of the sides away.

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Ideal cover photo size for Google+

Google+ profile and page cover photo – 1600px x 900px

Google+ cover photo

Google+ cover photos seem to be displayed at 1084 pixels wide and 610 pixels tall, which is very close to the aspect ratio of 16:9. To ensure that your cover photo looks clear on your profile, it might be best to use an image that is 1600 pixels wide and 900 pixels tall.

1. Keep the important details in the middle of the cover photo.

Here’s something amazing about Google+ cover photos: they are responsive. Your cover photo will automatically crop as you scroll down the page so that the middle of the cover photo will always be in focus.

Google+ cover photo scroll

2. Google+ lets you crop your image according to its recommended dimensions.

When you upload your cover photo, Google+ allows you to edit the crop of the image if it doesn’t fit the aspect ratio of 16:9.

Google+ cover photo adjustments

3. Your cover photo looks and behaves the same on mobile.

On mobile, the cover photo seems to appear at the same aspect ratio (16:9) without any crop. It also automatically crops as you scroll down.

Google+ cover photo on mobile

Google+ collection and community cover photo – 368px x 207px

Google+ collection and community cover photo

For Google+ collections and communities, your cover photo will show up as a small image in the upper-left corner, at 368 pixels wide by 207 pixels tall (which is a 16:9 aspect ratio again).

On mobile, your cover photo will show up with the same aspect ratio without any crop.

Google+ collection and community cover photo on mobile

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Ideal header image size for Tumblr

1600px x 900px

Tumblr header image

1. Most people won’t see your Tumblr header image.

Tumblr is an interesting case: Unless you are using the official Tumblr blog theme, people will only see your header image when they view your blog within Tumblr itself — when your blog shows up in their search result (screenshot above) or when they hover over your profile image (screenshot below).

Tumblr dashboard popover

According to Morgana Johnson, Tumblr will display your header image at various sizes on the desktop and on mobile with a fixed aspect ratio of 16:9.

2. There might not be an ideal size.

If you are using the official Tumblr blog theme, there might not be an ideal size for your header image. I noticed that the size of the header image and the crop change as I change the size of the browser.

Tumblr header image sizes

From my tests, it seems best to use an image with an aspect ratio of 16:9 that has the important information in the middle of the image.

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Over to you

I hope you found this resource useful for creating the perfect cover photo for your social media profiles.

Do you have any tips and tricks for creating cover photos? It’ll be great to hear from you in the comments section below!

Finally, I would love to keep this resource updated. If you spot any outdated information (or mistakes), would you be up for letting me know in the comments section below, too? Thank you!

Image credit: UnsplashMark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile, TED YouTube channelThe Late Late Show with James Corden YouTube Channel, Social Media Examiner Google+ Page, Our Universe Google+ collection, Tumblr



source https://blog.bufferapp.com/ideal-cover-photo-size