Insights

13. January 2025

28 Social Media Life Hacks That Make Your Marketing More Efficient

It is well known that small things can have a big impact. With some social media life hacks, you can save a lot of time in the long run, make daily work processes more efficient, and make your company’s presence on social media channels more successful.

Here we introduce you to 28 small measures and tips that make a big difference.

How and to what extent hashtags ensure more success in social media marketing is controversial. One thing is clear: they can help you achieve more reach on Instagram, TikTok, X, or Bluesky.

But you need to use the right hashtags for this. Hashtag generators such as All Hashtag or the Instagram Hashtag Generator from Sistrix can help you with this. They show you particularly popular and/or relevant hashtags as well as “niche hashtags” and support you in creating your hashtags.

Social Media Life Hacks: Hashtag Generator — Social media life hack: Hashtag Generator

Benefit: You can find good hashtags for your posts more quickly and perhaps achieve more reach and interactions as a result.

Of course, you also want to share your new blog article on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. If only it didn’t take so much time.

This tip makes things easier. Use a tool like IFTTT or Zapier that automatically posts new content to the channels of your choice.

Benefit: Your new articles will automatically appear in your social media communities without you having to lift a finger.

Many recurring tasks can be shortened by using shortcuts and automation in social media management tools. Depending on the tool, you can, for example, automatically assign posts that contain certain keywords to selected teammates, set moods, or hide comments.

Tip: In Swat.io, you can display a list of all key combinations by pressing “?”. You can find automations in the respective channel settings.

Social media life hack: Keyboard shortcuts

Benefit: You save time for recurring tasks, reduce the error rate, and ensure greater efficiency.

Keeping an overview at all times is a wish in social media marketing that is not so easy to fulfill. With the Swat.io activity log, you can get a lot closer.

You can find it directly to the right of the post composer and also in the inbox of every ticket. Among other things, it shows you

when and by whom a post was created.
who suggests and approves it.
to whom it was assigned.
when it was published.
what changes have been made to it.

You can also leave notes, tag colleagues and upload files.

Benefit: You have an overview of the entire history of a post and can also communicate with colleagues and upload content on the spot.

With artificial intelligence, you can quickly write good texts for social media posts and/or rewrite existing texts for other channels.

There are different methods you can use for this.

For example, write a prompt for ChatGPT, Claude or Google Gemini. Remember to provide the tool with sufficient information on factors such as the content of the post, target group and desired effect. You can also ask it for ideas for images or even a video.
Use an AI text creation tool such as Jasper.ai or Neuroflash.
Text creation is even faster with the AI tool integrated in Swat.io:

AI Create
Select “AI Create” and have various suggestions created for your post.
AI Enhance
Optimize existing drafts with just a few clicks or rewrite them for other platforms.

Swat.io AI provides you with various templates and setting options.

Benefit: You save a lot of time when creating and adapting content.

Word has gotten around that AI makes text creation easier. But did you know that you can also use artificial intelligence for community management?

You don’t need any additional software besides Swat.io for this either. Our integrated AI tool performs the following tasks:

Assigning sentiments for comments
Marking comments that do not require a response as “read”
Hide inappropriate comments

Of course, you retain full control and can make the settings that meet your needs.

Benefit: The effort for routine tasks in community management is reduced.

Lifehacks for Facebook

Answering recurring questions is a real time waster in community management.

We recommend creating reply templates for such questions. You can do this directly depending on the network.

In Facebook, reply templates are called saved replies. You set them up as follows.

Click on the chat icon at the bottom right of your inbox.
Click on “Add new”.
Enter your message and preferably a “shortcut” for quick insertion.

In Swat.io, you can create answer templates in the ticket inbox via a drop-down menu and then use them for all your social media channels.

Benefit: You can answer recurring questions more quickly.

If you verify your domain on Facebook, you benefit from three advantages:

You have the option (only then) to edit the preview of your link in posts and, for example, insert a new preview image or change the headline.
You decide which external companies can edit the preview if they use your domain.
You can grant pages editing permissions for advertisements.
You can set the conversion events that should be sent to Facebook for your domain.

You can verify your domain on Facebook via the company settings in the Business Manager:

Under Brand Safety, select “Domains”.
Go to “Add”.
Enter your domain name and click on “Add”.
You will then receive instructions for verification. You can do this by making a DNS entry, uploading an HTML file or adding a meta tag to the website in question.

Benefit: You can edit previews of links, decide which companies can edit a preview with your domain and set conversion events.

Ads are becoming increasingly important to achieve reach on Facebook. However, especially if you manage several campaigns and perhaps even several advertising accounts, the administrative effort can be high.

To reduce this, Meta gives you the option of defining automated rules.

For example, you can set to

pause ads if the CTR value falls below a certain value.
increase the budget by a certain value if the CPC falls below a certain value.
get notified as soon as 80 percent of your budget has been spent.

Admittedly, the topic can be confusing at first. But it’s worth getting to grips with it. Take a look at this overview of all available conditions.

You can define automated rules in the meta ads manager:

Facebook life hack: Automated rules for ads

Among other things, a new custom rule can be set here.

Benefit: It takes less time and effort to manage Facebook advertising campaigns.

For a few years now, Facebook has been offering business page owners the option of adding an action button to their pages. You can use this tip to encourage visitors to subscribe to your page, book a service or write you a message, for example.

For doing so, proceed as follows:

On your business page, click on the three dots on the right under the header image.
Go to “Add action button”.
Select a button of your choice.

If you have clicked on an action, Facebook will ask you, for example, for the link to the website to which visitors should be redirected after clicking.

Benefit: You get page visitors to perform a desired action.

Link posts are important content on Facebook. However, it is sometimes necessary to revise blog posts and correct a mistake in the headline, for example.

The problem: If you share the article directly after the revision, Facebook usually continues to show the old headline or an outdated preview image in the link post.

The solution: Enter the URL of the post in the Facebook Sharing Debugger and click on “Debug”. By hitting “Scrape again” you can update the information associated with the URL.

The debugger will also tell you how many shares and comments the link post in question has. This allows you to estimate how many users have seen the preview with the old headline or the wrong image.

Benefit: Your previews of link posts are up to date.

Life hacks for Instagram

You can use the text tool to add as many hashtags as you like to your Instagram Stories. This increases the chances of more reach.

Unfortunately, there is a risk that the looks of your story will suffer.

You can prevent this in two ways or with two Instagram marketing hacks:

Place stickers over the hashtag

Reduce the size of your hashtags with your thumb and index finger.
Place an emoji, sticker or GIF over it.

Color the hashtag

Again, make the hashtags as small as possible first.
Tap on the hashtags.
Select the ink drop symbol at the bottom left.
Tap on the area where the hashtags should be placed (preferably a single-colored area).
Move the hashtags there.

Benefit: You can include more hashtags in your stories without negatively affecting their appearance.

You want to use more hashtags than Instagram allows per post? The caption looks too chaotic with all the hashtags and keywords?

There’s an Instagram hack for both problems: move hashtags completely or partially to the first comment.

Swat.io supports you with this. With our social media management tool, you can not only schedule posts, but also the first comment.

Benefits: You can integrate more hashtags into posts and your caption still looks good.

Formatting plays an important role, especially for longer stories. Above all, this means avoiding long, compact blocks of text. You can ensure clarity by using

Paragraphs
Different fonts
Bold fonts
Emojis

Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t help you much with formatting. This starts with the fact that the network does not accept paragraphs, no matter how many times you press the Enter key. You have more options for making long stories readable if you write your texts with a tool like Swat.io.

Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an

Photos by @ronan_donovan Locked in a momentary standoff, a boy on his way to collect water meets the gaze of a wild male chimpanzee in the village of Mparangasi, in western Uganda. With nowhere to go and not enough wild foods to sustain them, wild chimps across western Uganda have turned to foraging in farmers’ fields for corn, mangoes, sugarcane, and jackfruit. Luckily, people have dedicated their lives to finding solutions for these issues in western Uganda and beyond. I was guided by the work of Dr. Matthew McLennan and his late fiancé, Jacqueline Rohen, who started the NGO @bulindichimps. These images and the following words by writer @davidquammen are excerpted from the current issue and in conjunction with today’s @natgeo IG story. Photo 2: Clearing of forest, both by small farmers and by giant sugarcane and tea enterprises, has shrunk chimp habitat to patches and strips, such as this stream forest in the Kinyara Sugar Works plantation, near a village called Kabango. According to one source, four children in Kabango have been attacked—and two killed—by chimps during the past decade. Photo 3: In July 2014, a large chimp snatched and killed a toddler named Mujuni Semata outside the family home in Kyamajaka village. Over time, the chimps returned to loom menacingly around the house, posing a threat to the other children. After the family fled to another village, the chimps continued harrying Kyamajaka—even glowering at their own reflections in the windows of the vacant Semata house. Learn more about this story by following @ronan_donovan and @bulindichimps. Check out Nat Geo’s link in bio for more on this story.

Ein Beitrag geteilt von National Geographic (@natgeo) am Aug 13, 2020 um 7:47 PDT

Benefit: Longer captions are easier to read.

You are not always thrilled when your brand or person is tagged in a picture. Maybe the image is of poor quality, maybe you don’t want to be associated with the content shown.

No big deal. You can simply remove the tag:

Go to “Tagged” in your profile.
Tap on the image you don’t like.
Click on the three dots and then on “Hide photos”
Now you have the choice between “Hide in my profile” or “Remove me from the post”.

For company accounts, it is generally advisable to prevent marked photos from being added automatically. This can be done via the three dots on the “Tagged” page and “Tagging options”.

Collab posts are the result of two or three Instagrammers working together. They automatically appear on both profiles. All creators benefit from the engagement generated by the post and can view statistics on likes and comments.

Benefits: You achieve more reach and a higher engagement rate, can tap into new target groups, and provide varied content.

Looking for ways to spruce up your Instagram account? Try the grid format. This means you cut an image into 3, 6, 9 etc. parts and then upload them to your account.

The result of this Instagram hack looks like this, for example:

Social Media Life Hacks: Instagram Raster Account — Instagram life hack: Using a grid format

It is important that not only the entire grid, but also the individual posts “make sense”. You can work with carousels, as shown here in the screenshot, to give the individual posts additional information. Or you can create videos and use the snippets of the grid as thumbnails.

Tip: View your Instagram account as a complete work. By using the same filters, recurring colors, or a certain arrangement such as a grid format, you can create a harmonious overall impression. You can take inspiration from accounts from the design sector, for example.

Benefit: Your Instagram profile makes an impression.

Use the following Instagram marketing hack to keep users looking at your stories:

Choose a photo for your Instagram Story
Tap on the pencil icon and then on a color of your choice
Then tap and hold on the screen until the screen is solid.
Take the eraser icon and “clear” a section of your picture again.

This way you create a preview of the next part of your story.

Social Media Life Hacks: Instagram Story Vorschau — Instagram life hack: Story preview

Benefit: You spark curiosity and entice users to keep looking at your stories.

On the internet, as in real life, first impressions are often decisive. On Instagram, this includes the bio.

However, you can be convincing not only by combining a good profile description with a meaningful profile picture. Formatting tricks, such as special fonts, right-aligning, or bolding, will ensure that your bio looks different from the rest.

However, use such means sparingly. Screen readers cannot read them properly, so creative fonts in particular are not barrier-free. The following bio looks nice, but is not inclusive.

Social Media Life Hacks: Instagram Bio formatieren — Instagram life hack: Formatting your bio

Benefit: Your Instagram profile stands out from others.

Instagram automatically selects the first photo of a Highlight Story as the cover image. This is convenient. However, a cover you create yourself looks better and more professional.

If you click on the image icon under “Edit cover image”, you can add a picture from your smartphone media library.

The important thing is:

The format of the image should be 1200 x 1200 pixels.
The cover is displayed round. So remember that the corners will be cut out when you design the image.
Apps such as Canva or Adobe Spark provide you with templates.
Lettering or icons are hipper than images and easier to recognize.

Social Media Life Hacks: Instagram Story Highlights Cover — Instagram life hack: Story Highlights Cover

Benefit: Your story highlights look more professional.

Want to quickly record a video for your Instagram story without having to hold your smartphone?

No problem. There’s the “Hands-free” option, especially for this:

Go to the plus sign and Story.
Several functions are now available to you on the right-hand side, including “Hands-free”. Select the function.
Place the smartphone in the location of your choice and press the record button.
After three seconds, the device will automatically start filming.
If you press the record button again, the recording will stop.

Benefit: Recording Instagram stories alone while being in the shot is even easier.

Life hacks for YouTube

Not so long ago, YouTube introduced so-called handles or aliases. These are personalized usernames that make it easier to communicate on the platform, make channels identifiable, and stop fraudsters. An alias is also the URL of your channel.

However, the handle chosen by YouTube is not necessarily the best choice for promoting your channel.

No problem. Because you can simply change the name.

To do this, proceed as follows:

Go to https://www.youtube.com/handle.
Click on “Change alias”.
Enter the name of your choice.
Complete the process with “Confirm selection”.

Important: Each alias may only exist once. If your desired name is already taken, you will have to think of another one.

Benefit: The URL of your YouTube channel looks professional and is easy to remember.

You can make your videos more interactive with info cards. You can display them in a place of your choice and use a teaser text to encourage viewers to watch another video, click through to a playlist or subscribe to your channel, for example.

In this case, too, setting up is child’s play.

Select a video.
Go to “Info cards” at the bottom right.
Select an info card type.
Enter message text (optional) and teaser.
Select the position in the video where the card should appear.
Click on “Save”.

Social Media Life Hacks: YouTube Video Infokarten

Benefit: Users spend more time on your channel or with your content.

Video off, user gone? Doesn’t have to be.

You can get more out of it with end screens. These are credits that you can use, for example, to

tease another video,
invite users to subscribe to your channel, or to feature a playlist.
to feature a playlist.

You can add end credits or end cards as follows:

Log in to YouTube Studio.
Select content in the left menu.
Click on the title or thumbnail of the video you want to edit.
Select “Edit” and then “Credits”.
Decide on a type of end screen and customize the credits according to your wishes.

Important: Endcards are only available for videos that are at least 25 seconds long. You can only set external links if you participate in the YouTube partner program. You can only do this if your channel fulfills certain requirements, such as having a minimum number of subscribers.

Benefit: You increase interaction and gain new subscribers for your channels.

Commenting on your own video? Sometimes that’s not such a bad idea. This is especially true if you want to inform viewers about something or ask them to take an action.

YouTube gives you the option of pinning your comment at the top.

Social Media Life Hacks: YouTube Kommentar anpinnen — YouTube life hack: Pin comments

Follow these steps:

Write and publish your comment.
Click on the three-dot menu to the right.
Select “Pin”.
Voilá.

Benefit: You can share important information with users again and again without having to change the video description.

Life hacks for LinkedIn

For a long time, hashtags were everywhere but on LinkedIn. That has changed. In fact, hashtags can also help you on LinkedIn to expand your reach or that of your company and gain new followers.

However, there are a few things you should bear in mind:

Too many hashtags can quickly come across as dubious. 3 to a maximum of 5 is a good guideline for LinkedIn.
Make sure to combine specific and less specific hashtags.
In any case, it is crucial that hashtags and content go together.

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from LinkedIn. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

More Information

Vorteil: Your LinkedIn posts achieve more reach.

From hashtag to tag. Tagging relevant profiles in posts can contribute to effective networking and more reach. Ideally, the person in question will interact with your post.

But the same applies here: don’t overdo it. Indiscriminately tagging profiles is generally not very popular and will only damage your brand’s reputation. It’s best to tag profiles that are most likely to interact with the post.

Benefit: Your posts get more reach.

One prerequisite for success on LinkedIn is that you establish yourself or your company as an expert. LinkedIn newsletters make this easier. You can create newsletters by

selecting “Write articles” at the top of the homepage,
then completing “Publish as” for a company page and
selecting “Create newsletter” under “Manage”.

You can then add a title, a description and an image, among other things, and complete the process by clicking “Done”. Now you’re ready to write your first article. Your followers and contacts will be invited to subscribe to the newsletter after the first post has been published. This means that they will be notified every time a new article is published. However, everyone can read your newsletter, even without being logged into LinkedIn.

Benefit: You give your brand more visibility and reach.

Stay up to date with new hacks

Social networks and their functions are constantly changing. As a result, there are always new ways to speed up processes and save a lot of effort with small measures, especially for recurring tasks.

So it’s worth keeping up to date and regularly finding out about new social media life hacks. We’ll support you, we promise.

Life hacks are important, but the right social media management tool is even more important when dealing with Instagram, LinkedIn and the like. Swat.io not only supports you and your colleagues with a central ticket inbox, a clear editorial calendar, monitoring and analyses, but also with many helpful automations and an activity log. Try it out now and start a free trial!