Almost everywhere you turn these days you’ll find another article extolling the virtues of Improving Your Social Media Presence for big and small businesses alike. And, for the most part, that attention is merited; never before have there been such direct and reliable channels for consistently building your brand and reaching customers.
However, the Improving Your Social Media Presence landscape is riddled with faux pas, and many businesses have to consciously change their mentality as they shift from traditional marketing to this more interactive, community-based form. With so much to know, it’s important to study up with a good social media guide. Here are five quick and easy top five tips to get you going.
1. Choose your content types
Sure, your Twitter feed isn’t a major news publication, but it’s important to curate your social media posts with as much care as if it were so. The key here is to keep the form and content of your posts diverse while keeping the voice and overall themes consistent. You could, for instance, begin the day by sharing an expert blogpost, retweet customer stories midday, and respond to breaking industry news at the end of the day. Linking to content from other industry experts, talking about quirky contests, and having conversations with followers are also fantastic ways to grow engagement and passion for your brand.
2. Stay away from a promotional tone
You know those cheesy car sale ads that blast onto the TV screen in the middle of the local news? Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of tone you want to avoid on social media; in fact, even a tamed down advertorial tone is likely to generate snarky comments from followers or, even worse, no attention at all. On social media, developing your own, distinctive and authentic voice is crucial, particularly if you’re operating in a flooded market and want to stand out from your competitors. Back off the sales pitch, keeping the company promotions to a minimum and interacting with followers without an agenda (even if you may have one).
[ad name=”bnr-middle-post”]3. Create a regular posting strategy
On social media, timing is everything.
- When to post. Overall Facebook usage peaks at 3PM on weekdays, while apparel and sports Facebook page users are more active on the weekends (at least, according to one study). Research the stats for your industry across all of the social media platforms on which you have a presence, and schedule posts accordingly using an app like Hootsuite — particularly if those top times are outside of working hours.
- How often to post. Do a little research into how frequently you should post on each platform. Facebook users, for instance, tend not to like companies to post more than once every three hours, so it’s best to avoid anything that will be interpreted as spamming.
- Other activities to schedule. When developing your schedule, don’t forget to build in time to interact with followers, rather than just pushing out new content. This is a crucial element of any social media strategy, but it often gets left by the wayside in busy offices, seen as something extra. It’s not.
4. Start a blog
One of the best ways to keep your social media posts varied and engaging is to curate a varied and engaging blog. The blogging platform, after all, is a fantastic way to highlight your company’s expertise, become a go-to resource to answer any burning customer questions, and develop relationships with other industry influencers with a savvy guest posting strategy. What’s more, a blog will allow you to experiment with varied content formats like video and infographics that cannot themselves be posted directly to short form social media sites but can be promoted via those channels.
5. Use multiple platforms
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn. There are more social media channels out there than ever before. While some are devoted to niche interests, others are more general and contain niche interest groups within their umbrella. Take a good look at each platform before creating your accounts, and determine what kind of landing page and content you’ll post to each one. While some crossover is acceptable, it’s best to keep the content of what you post to each site varied, as the most avid users will follow you on all of your platforms. Along those lines, make sure to keep your usernames consistent so that you can be easily found.
Social media has a lot to offer businesses of all shapes and sizes. In fact, the opportunities seem just about boundless. But to take advantage of all that social media has to offer, the savviest businesses will do their research and develop their strategy for posting the most unique and engaging content out there. Good luck!
