Imagine having a set of great social media tips for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ at your fingertips. You know they’re always there when you need them and more importantly, you know they work. Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to get right now.

Social media has huge benefits for entrepreneurs and small businesses. You can target your audience more effectively, build a community, generate more leads and conversions, improve your SEO and become a real expert in your field. To help you, below are some tips that are almost always guaranteed to succeed. The points below have been tried and tested by social media users everywhere and they’ve all got results. So get your social media head on, and check out these bite sized tips that you can start using for your business today.

1. Do you know tweets with images generate 150 percent more retweets and 18 percent more clicks? That’s what Buffer found when they researched their Twitter visuals. It seems that images on Twitter are a really important factor. What does this tell you? Include images for as many tweets as you can. If you’re sharing a quote, include it in a picture. If you’re sharing a piece of content, include an image to go with it. This is a really great trick that everyone needs to take more advantage of.

2. If you’ve not set up for your website, try and apply for them as soon as you can. You’ll notice that some pins on Pinterest have a website name and icon displayed underneath the pinned image, which easily directs users to the source – your website. This is really beneficial for giving you more authority on Pinterest and getting you noticed.

3. Hashtag your life away on Instagram and only Instagram. Posts with eleven hashtags and more get the most engagement on this platform. There doesn’t seem to be a limit. You can include as many as you want, from 11 to 50. What’s even better is that this is an ideal way for small businesses and upcoming entrepreneurs to grow an audience quickly on this platform.

4. On each of your social media channels, you can add a URL. Usually, the majority of people put their direct website address in there. But here’s another tip. If you’re looking to grow your email list, include your newsletter landing page as the URL instead. That way, when people click on your link from Twitter or Pinterest, they’ll go straight to your newsletter landing page and hopefully sign up straight away.

5. Make everything consistent. Your images, your username, your bio, your voice – everything needs to be the same, or as similar as you can make them. The main reason for this is that it helps users to find you easily. If you want to advertise yourself as a business, consistency is key.

6. Share other people’s content. This is the number one tip to take away with you today. Sharing your own stuff is great because it’s getting your name out there. But sharing other people’s content is even better. You’re letting your community see the great posts and offers that are being shared around social media. And you’re also positioning yourself or your business as a constant source of high value information.

7. Sync Followerwonk with your Buffer account – and if you don’t use Buffer get it right now. There is plenty of advice telling you the peak times to post to different social media platforms. But why use generic times when you can find ones that are uniquely suited to you? Followerwonk analyses your Twitter followers to see when they’re most active. You can then sync it with Buffer to create your own custom schedule. So you’re tweeting the best content when you know your community are most active.

8. Change the style of your updates on Facebook. Social media is all about variety. So it’s great to switch up the content you share, especially if Facebook is one of your top platforms. It’s not enough to share the link to your latest blog post once a day. You should aim to share something different every day of the week. This could be a quote on a Monday, a useful piece of content on a Tuesday, a funny video on Wednesday and so on. Keep a calendar if that works best for you.

9. Join LinkedIn groups. Being an active part of different LinkedIn groups in your industry helps you network with other professionals and build your online reputation. If you see someone asking a question that you know the answer to – answer them. Discussions take place in these groups all the time, which means you’ll also generate a lot of profile views.

10. Take part in Twitter chats. If building your community, increasing engagement and building your brand’s authority are three of your top Twitter goals, taking part in Twitter chats will be a huge benefit for you. There are a whole host of different chats for you to choose from, which means you’ll never be short of people to interact with.

11. If you’re promoting something on a regular basis, change your wording. When you share your latest blog post, you don’t keep writing the same title each time you share it. People will notice if you do. It’s much more effective to write different content to go with the same link. For example, the first time you share it you can state the title. The second time you share it, you could ask a question. On the third time you share it, you could state a fact. The possibilities are endless.

12. Schedule everything in advance so in real time, you can focusing on engaging. Managing social media is a huge job. That’s why the big businesses all have their own social media teams. But when you’re an entrepreneur, it’s down to you. So it means you need to manage the time you spend on there. I find it useful to schedule all the content I’m promoting from myself or other the night before. Then during the day I can forget about that and focus on writing personal tweets and engaging with my community.

13. Join Facebook groups & interact with them. These have the same principle as LinkedIn groups, but with Facebook, you can speak directly to the people in your community – otherwise known as your potential customers. When you go on Facebook, go on it for this reason. Read through your groups and interact with the members. If someone is asking for help, give it to them. If someone wants your opinion, share it. It will all build up your reputation and authority.

14. If you run a business that has a blog alongside it, try publishing your posts to LinkedIn. All articles appear in something called that every LinkedIn member can view. This means you could be opening your business up to a whole new audience. Plus, it’s really easy to do and will only generate benefits.

15. Find out the best times for posting to Instagram through Iconosquare. Once you connect your Instagram account to this tool, it will analyse what days and times your community interact the most. This then tells you exactly when to post on Instagram so you can set up your own personal schedule and boost your presence on there.

16. Have fun with it. Social media is such an unbelievable resource we have at our fingertips. It’s something we need to take advantage of and have fun using every day for our businesses.