Wednesday 16 April 2014

SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS PART 2 - Let's Get Practical

In last month’s blog we discussed how it is you can determine the type of presence you’ll have online by first considering the ‘personality’ of your business.

So now you have a strategy and you’ve determined the platform(s) you’ll utilize – where to from here?

Well, put simply, post! This might seem obvious but it is very easy to forget and not prioritise social media in the midst of life in business. However, if you have determined to be online, you’ll need to be consistent and regular.

Here are some very practical tips on what to post, when to post and how to engage with your audience:
  • Use images to grab attention in the busy news feed
  • Share, like and comment on other posts and threads. This means you need to first go on the hunt and find businesses or pages that compliment what you do, and might give you some great content to share with those connected with you
  • Post things that will interest people – behind the scenes images, How To articles, advice, special offers, interesting articles
  • Grow your audience through advertising (on the platforms that allow this like Facebook)
  • Use a link to your website or to a blog/article to encourage those wanting more information to click through. This naturally brings the opportunity for more traffic to your website
  • Support other businesses or individuals
  • Use each platform as it was intended – try to avoid posting the same content across all your different accounts
  • Ask for engagement. Rather than saying ‘look, we launched a new product today!’ try saying ‘look at our amazing new products. Which is your favourite?’

We want you to get the most out of your social media presence and we hope this is a good starting point.
I will finish on this though – obviously, you want your social media to work FOR you and of course, get you more sales! BUT, we are encouraging you to have a long term view on this.

Build your presence, grow your following, give to those connected with you and we do believe that if you are consistent enough, then you will see growth in your business too. In the back of your mind should always be that all these people are potentially future clients, customers OR they might refer you to someone key. Social Media is another way of networking to increase your word of mouth marketing but it might just be slower to see results in the business bank account. We feel like that’s OK – the more people that know of you and your offerings, the better it will be!

Hang in there and good luck!