As a business leader, there are many things that come across your desk every day, from managing employees to sustaining your bottom line. Yet many business leaders and managers overlook an active and well-managed social media presence. The benefits of social are often overlooked because of its personal uses but social media is much more than liking your family members’ posts or commenting on videos of cute animals.
According to Marketing Tech, a thought leader in digital marketing strategies, a strong social presence can inspire more business and give you and your marketing team more insight into the niche markets you’re trying to reach. We’ve spelled out these 6 tips to make the social media world easier to navigate:
Create Content Rules
Saying you should become more involved with social is easy – but what socials? Analyzing which platforms your audience is most active on will help you dedicate your time where it’s smartest to spend. Narrow down the list to three or four platforms and create unique content for each site. Even if it’s the same link to a blog on your webpage, the copy should be unique to diversify your cross-platform social identity.
Make a Social Calendar – and Stick to It
According to Marketing Tech, “strong social followings are built on consistency.” Creating a calendar parallel to your businesses event calendar keeps social media top of mind and your audience actively engaged.
Optimize Posts with Appropriate Hashtags
Once a go-to element of every post, hashtags remain an important part of social, especially for businesses. But Marketing Tech warns of using general hashtags or hashtags that aren’t relevant to your business or post. Creating your own hashtags can also be a way to use brand keywords to get more views from non-followers.
Be Picky with Your Follows
Marketing Tech suggests being modest “about who you follow, and use hashtags and social search tools to identify who else is part of the conversation in your space.” Brand awareness is important and gaining followers surely helps but following every person who likes or comments can make your page appear spammy and can lose credibility from avid social media users.
Keep Your Followers Engaged
Good, in-person conversation isn’t passive and neither is engaging digital conversation. Be prepared to “respond to people when they share or comment on your work, and reply to (relevant, not creepy) direct messages.” Engaging with followers makes it easier to gain conversions to customers. When your brand is easy to connect with, people feel more included and more likely to trust your brand.
Set Goals for Your Social Growth
Creating a healthy social following is great – but you have to keep track of where you’ve been to realize how far you’ve come. Gather data on where you garner the most likes, shares and comments and use those to drive your content. Are your Instagram followers the most perceptive to your promotions posts and product images? Keep it up! Lacking in engagement on LinkedIn posts? Revamp how you’re targeting that audience and analyze the data often to see the effect.
The goal of social media is to help you meet your goals. Whether that’s gaining followers for brand awareness, driving followers to your website or introducing them to products, social media is a powerful vehicle that can help you build a stronger client base. Keeping up-to-date and relevant on social can greatly impact your business if enough attention is paid to ongoing trends and your consumer base habits.
Interested in revamping your social media presence and growing your followers? Reach out to us today and we can help take your digital brand to the next level.
