Welcome To Social Media Hogwarts

Jan 2

Every creative entrepreneur (that would be you) has their strengths when it comes to managing professional social media. Today, I boiled them down to the main four and created a personality quiz that identifies where you feel most comfortable. Bonus: it’s Harry Potter themed.

Hogwarts, the magical school in the Harry Potter series, splits their new students into four houses. Each house has their own common room, dormitories, supervising professors, mascot animals and uniform colours. As the year progresses, the houses are pitted against each other in good fun with Quidditch matches, as well as good academic deeds or rule breaking earning and losing house points respectively. The house with the most points at the end of year banquet is awarded the House Cup.

Now, eleven-year-olds first starting school in this magical universe don’t get sorted into houses at random. On their first day, they stand in line in the Great Hall and one by one get an old wizard’s hat placed upon their head. This hat can essentially read their personality and sorts them based on their strengths, values, and family history. The whole school watches and cheers as the hat signals where these children belong. Here is a basic summary of the four Hogwarts houses.

Gryffindor: Students in this house are known for being brave and noble. Their mascot is a lion, and their colour is red.

Hufflepuff: Students in this house are known for being loyal and hardworking. Their mascot is a badger, and their colour is yellow.

Slytherin: Students in this house are known for being ambitious and cunning. Their mascot is a snake, and their colour is green.

Ravenclaw: Students in this house are known for being wise and logical. Their mascot is an eagle, and their colour is blue.

Because I can’t read minds from across a computer screen, here’s a fun little quiz that determines your strengths and will place you in your appropriate house at Social Media Hogwarts.

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THE SORTING HAT QUIZ

1. What is your Twitter strategy?

A) Showing up every day. Even if I don’t have anything super exciting to announce, I give it my all to stay on people’s minds.

B) I carefully plan out and schedule my Tweets in incremental distances from each other. Sometimes, I’ll repeat them.

C) I jump on relevant trending topics and make sure to only Tweet at peak hours that my followers are online.

D) I just join in conversations and make nice comments on people’s Tweets. They then come to me.

2. What is the main reason you upgraded to an Instagram business profile?

A) To add an easy contact button for potential connections to reach me.

B) To show that despite my fun content, I’m actually mega-serious about my online presence.

C) To get access to my post analytics, and see what type of content I post creates the most impact and engagement.

D) To get access to my follower demographics, and know a little more about who I’m posting to.

3. What is your secret recipe to success on Facebook?

A) Knowing I don’t need to have fresh and exciting content to post. I can give updates on projects, share memes, and re-share posts that didn’t get enough attention, so that new people see them this time.

B) Posting every day, several times a day. With the new Facebook algorithms, I need to make sure I can cut through the noise and find what catches my audience’s attention.

C) Facebook ads and boosted posts. Because I know all about my target audience, I can tell Facebook exactly what I’m aiming for, and then let them do their thing.

D) Asking questions to create engagement with my fans. I reply to every nice comment, and create a community atmosphere.

4. It’s a quiet Sunday night online, what are you up to?

A) Reading up on the latest news to do with my niche, may it be reviews, behind the scenes or celebrity gossip.

B) Planning my main social media content for the next week. Obviously, a lot depends on real-world events or the weather for photos, but like this I’m never stuck for ideas.

C) Studying my engagement and view numbers from the last week, and setting goals for how I can improve.

D) Replying to all the comments my fans have made on my social media accounts, asking them how their weeks went.

5. What is your social media pet peeve on other artists’ accounts?

A) Them showing up only to announce their new and exciting thing, and then disappearing again.

B) Their content being all over the place. One week, it’s all concert photos, the next, it’s all bathroom selfies, and after that, pictures of their dog. I followed you for the concert photos!

C) Their public, professional social media accounts being used as a photo album full of inside jokes that the average follower isn’t in on.

D) Impersonal automated private messages asking me to buy their new and exciting thing, when they haven’t even said hello yet.

6. Finally, what is your favourite colour? 😉

A) Yellow

B) Green

C) Blue

D) Red

RESULTS

If you scored mostly A’s, your main strength is CONSISTENCY, and your house is Hufflepuff.

Hey there, Hufflepuff! Your loyal and hardworking badger butt is going to get you places. You know that the slower you rise the slower you fall, and half of social media’s success in the long run is just showing up. Keep going!

Do you want to improve your consistency skills? Here are a few tips and ideas:

Start a ritual where you wish your followers good morning every day or ask them what their weekly goals are every Monday. Bonus: the comments will boost you up in the Facebook + Instagram algorithms.
If you have a slower week without big news to post about, re-share past content that doesn’t have an expiry date, or memories with Throwback Thursday/Flashback Friday.
Try keeping up with the latest news in your niche by subscribing to podcasts or blogs on relevant topics.

If you scored mostly B’s, your main strength is ORGANIZATION, and your house is Slytherin.

Yo! Slytherin! You already know that your perfectly crafted plans for content save time and your skin if you ever hit an improv drought. Knowing how to keep a system that is still adaptable to real life news will help you scale up as you grow exponentially.

Do you want to improve your organizational skills? Here are a few tips and ideas:

On a Sunday afternoon (or any quiet time), take an hour or so to plan what you’ve got going on this week that needs to be posted about online. If you’ve got gaps in your schedule or nothing much to say, try a hand at graphic designing inspirational quotes or finding cool articles/resources to share.
Use Facebook’s internal scheduling feature if you’re going to be away from the computer at the time you want to post. Facebook’s algorithms punish third party posting apps, but scheduling with your official page is really convenient.
Try placing a folder or spreadsheet document on your desktop of things you want to post where, what day and what time. Like this, you can keep better track of your content ideas.

If you scored mostly C’s, your main strength is ANALYTICS, and your house is Ravenclaw.

As a Ravenclaw, you know the importance of making sure there are fans eagerly waiting for you on the other side of the screen. Where most folk see numbers and lines, analytics just make sense to you, and you know how to work them in your favour to see tangible results.

Do you want to improve your analytical skills? Here are a few tips and ideas:

Explore the insights tabs on your professional Facebook and Instagram accounts. Does anything in the demographics strike you as completely making sense or surprising. Write it down.
Take a daily glance at trending topics on Twitter. See if you can jump in and say anything insightful or witty to do with them.
Try mapping out a detailed description of your idea fan/customer. What are they like? What could you post to appeal to them? Then, execute it.

If you scored mostly D’s, your main strength is SOCIAL SKILLS, and your house is Gryffindor.

Jumping into conversations (IRL or online) takes a lot of courage, everyone knows that. As a Gryffindor, you appreciate the art of being your genuine, kind self who simply radiates warmth and friendliness that others naturally gravitate to. You understand that social media is first and foremost social.

Do you want to improve your social media social skills? Here are a few tips and ideas:

For a week, every time you double tap an Instagram photo on your feed, try writing a short, genuine comment to go along with it.
If you see someone you follow tweet about an event they are a key member of, tweet them independently after to ask them how it went.
Like a couple of Facebook pages of companies slightly similar to your own. Use the down arrow toggle to comment as your page when their posts are on your timeline. They’ll quickly associate you with someone who’s nice and supportive of what they do, and might click on your own page to return the favour.