Believe it or not, creating a solid social media strategy for your business requires a lot of imagination, planning and hard work. And like it or not, social media is here to stay, which means that your business needs to be marketing on social platforms to get noticed and stay relevant.
As soon as you decide to pivot to marketing on social media, you’ll discover many opportunities to find potential customers. This, coupled with the fact that people spend so much time on these platforms, makes social media a prime platform to attract new customers.
So what are you waiting for? Social media marketing doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective. You just need to know the basics to get started.
1. Come up with a plan and set some goals
To start, you first need to know why you are doing this. Why does your business need to leverage social media? Once you have determined that, you can start to set some goals.
To set goals, use the acronym, SMART which stands for specified, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. This will help you to determine precise time frames and outcomes.
2. Don’t overwhelm yourself
Some business owners think that they need to create crazy amounts of content just to stay up to date on all social platforms. But the truth is, you don’t need to create overwhelming amounts of content, you just need to create a couple of pieces a month to stay relevant.
When you go nuts producing too much content, it ends up being sub-par because you don’t have enough time to make it good. And this can significantly dilute your marketing efforts. Your content should be about quality, not quantity.
3. Consider your audience
Get to know your audience and then post what they enjoy seeing. Don’t only showcase and talk about your business, offer helpful tips and insights to show your audience that you actually care about their interests. After all, they are looking for content that can ultimately help solve their problems, so show them that your service is the solution that they need.
4. Broaden your audience
The best way to broaden your audience is to share content that speaks to people within the same industry as you. It’s a good idea to share valuable content that is not only helpful to your customers, but to your industry as a whole. And make sure that the information you share is helpful to everyone.
5. Join the conversation
When someone comments on your post, keep the discussion going to encourage engagement. Your social strategy should allow for enough time to reply and respond to comments and messages from your audience.
If you want to engage even more with your audience, you can look at creating Instagram polls, making use of Twitter threads and doing Facebook live videos to encourage further two-way communication.
Social media comments and messages are helpful because they offer businesses the chance to receive honest feedback and apply it to their social strategies going forward. They also assist with building brand loyalty and making your audience feel included and involved.
6. When should you post?
Many business owners often wonder how often they should be posting on social media. But of course, this all depends on the social media channels that you choose to be present on.
Below are some guidelines on how often to post on the most popular social media channels.
- Instagram: You should post every day, preferably using stories to increase connection and engagement.
- Facebook: Once a day is enough to keep your audience engaged.
- Twitter: A few tweets per day will do the trick to catch follower’s attention.
- LinkedIn: Contribute relevant and helpful content several times a week to get people to engage and have meaningful conversations.
If you need help with the management and creation of your social media content, get in touch with us for a tailored solution.
