ZC Social Media Academy

I attended my first ZC Social Media Academy last Tuesday at the lovely St.George’s Hotel in Chatham. There were around 30/40 attendees eager to get their teeth into all the latest social news, presented by social superhero, Zoe Cairns herself.

Zoe began the session by highlighting the importance of having a social media strategy for each platform which you can measure against and refer back to in order to analyse the success/failure of a campaign. Your target audience, chosen platforms, and goals are amongst some of the things that need to be included in your strategy (I won’t give too much away, come along to the next academy to find out the full details!)

However, the focus of yesterday’s academy was social media algorithms and in particular Facebook’s. Zoe gave her top tips and tricks which increases the chances of your post being shown to more people… until the next time it changes! So act fast!

One of the factors that Facebook’s algorithm considers is affinity, which is how you engage with other people and the connection you have with your Facebook community. Having no interaction means Facebook will perceive you to be a ‘broadcaster’ (which they don’t like) they want to generate a ‘community’ feel on the platform.

The ‘weight’ of your post is another factor the Facebook algorithm looks for, in order to determine the number of people your post will reach. Zoe explained this using a bar chart which I have recreated below. Weight + Affinity = Engagement

Zoe also shared with us her knowledge of the new Instagram features; such as the question tool (which is not anonymous, so don’t make the mistake some people have) and IGTV (Instagram TV), the new vertical video tool. As well as this, she mentioned how to maximise your reach when posting an Instagram story ensuring you have the following 3 things: location, hashtag, and mention. Check out our mso story below!

You may have already gathered that there was a lot to take away from the session and I would highly recommend those eager to improve their social media knowledge to attend. Looking forward to next month’s academy, thanks Zoe!