We are no stranger to helping businesses find out more about social media best practices here.
Lately there is a new type of competition for resources like Social Fresh, and it is coming from an unlikely source: the social networks themselves.
The scale that companies like Facebook and Twitter have to deal with, means they simply cannot provide any 1-on-1 customer support solutions for users. Or even for businesses that want to market on their platform.
Talking To The Actual People That Run Social Networks Is Rare
One option you didn’t have was actually talking to the social media platforms who build the sites people were trying to do the marketing on.
Finding a “Facebook rep” to talk to and help you with a problem, or similar rep at Twitter, Pinterest, etc, is next to impossible if you are not spending enough money with them to get noticed.
Unless you had the money, or inside connection, you were out of luck when it came to receiving any sort of best practices or other help from these sites.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and newcomers Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr can no longer ignore the need to define official best practices for marketing on their specific sites, which is why more and more social media sites are developing specific training portals for business customers.
The more a social network can educate the businesses marketing on their websites, the more time and money those businesses will spend on their social network in the future. And the happier users will be with their platforms as well.
Below, we’ve rounded up a few of the major social networks providing official business portals for you to learn how to use each platform, plus a brief synopsis of each.
Recently redesigned and re-launched, the Twitter for Business portal includes more than 10 different pages of best practices for using the Twitter platform for beginner to advanced users.
Topics range from how to best use hashtags in small business marketing campaigns and adding a social feedback loop to your Primetime television program, to learning how to target new audiences using paid products like promoted tweets and promoted accounts, Twitter’s revamped site is a treasure trove of content from
Additionally, you’ll find more than 25 case studies of brands using Twitter to achieve success in their marketing, and a great blog serving up the latest improvements and announcements.
Facebook offers a number of resources for brands, journalists, and media companies alike designed to showcase best practices for content creation.
The Facebook for Business Portal and Blog includes a number of robust step-by-step guides designed to educate beginning or experienced marketers alike how to use each feature of the Marketing Suite.
Their blog provides regular updates on ad products, case studies, and general improvements to Facebook.
The Facebook Studio is a site showcasing the most creative and innovative work done using all the different facets of the Facebook platform and also features educational videos describing what’s possible at multiple levels of involvement.
The Facebook Studio Awards recognize top work done on Facebook each year, prior winners include American Express’s Small Business Saturday and Skittles’ Mob the Rainbow.
Pinterest has been busy working on the rollout of tools for brands, and their new business site describes in detail the ins and outs of pinning, defining the pin cycle, and how to create boards, case studies from popular brands, and how to engage the community by interacting and discovering other’s content.
For example: Instead of just showing off your products, show what inspires them. Create boards for the ideas, places, people and moods behind your brand.
They also provide a list of best practices for running promotions on Pinterest, highlighting how businesses can integrate their branding into in-store signage or even packaging.
With more than 100 Million (predominantly mobile) users, Instagram has become an essential social network for visual storytelling between people.
The Instagram Help Site offers a number of brief articles about setting up your business with Instagram, how to post Instagram photos to your Facebook Fan Pages, and how to connect with fans who post photos to your business location, and branding guides.
Their Instagram for Business Blog is a nice collection of featured brands and campaigns that have been done on Instagram from the likes of CBS, Johnny Walker, and others
Youtube
Youtube has been a powerful force online for celebrities, media companies, and brands alike and recently rolled out new guides with best practices for creating content, designing Youtube sites, and using features like annotations and ads.
These new content playbooks also solidify Youtube’s play as a premium content provider moving forward, as media companies, sports teams and more are being recommended to not only engage with a larger audience through the use of social channels, but to produce really high quality content, even going so far as to suggest using high quality graphics, bumpers, and logo overlays in produced videos.
Youtube Brand Guides
Youtube Playbook for Music
Youtube Playbook for Sports
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Advertising and growing a brand today using these social networks is as much of a technology game as it is about relationships.
Learning from the people who actually make the sites you’re marketing on is important to staying in tune with the latest developments and best practices.