Social Media has become an integral part of our day to day lives and has fast become part of growing and managing our businesses. It’s a great way to get to know your audience, interact with them, keep customers up to date, as well as an easy way to market your business and drive traffic to your website.
It can also be time consuming and feel like you are wasting your time, but it works when you get it right. Here are my tips on how to be a pro at social media.
Create a strategy
Okay so what are you going to do with your social media? How do you want to interact with your audience? What content are you looking to share or show them, what updates are you planning to give them, what are you using the social media for? How often are you planning to post? What do you want to achieve from using social media. Spend some time thinking about exactly what you want from it and then how you are going to achieve it.
Scheduling
Social media is time consuming. You want customers to think that you are there but you can then become distracted from other tasks. Use a scheduler such as Hootsuite, Buffer or MeetEdgar and spend a day a month, or a few hours a week, scheduling the majority of your posts. But I would also recommend doing some impromptu posts in real time. Working on something a bit different or special? Share it with your audience.
Know your audience
Okay so who are you trying to reach? What do they like, what do they want to see, what do they want to read about, what time of day do they visit? These are very important things to think about as there is no point in posting things that aren’t going to interest them, they won’t’ see or leads to them unfollowing you. Spend time getting to know your audience and what they want.
Post little and often
It’s all about consistency. Posting 5 times a day for a few days and then disappearing is not going to get you noticed. This is where using a scheduler really helps. I use Buffer to share articles, blogs and tips throughout the day to ensure I have a steady flow of content, and will post impromptu updates on what I’m working on.
Use visuals
Whether it’s an image or a video, visual posts stand out far more to your audience than a block of text ever will. I’ve not gone down the route or video as yet but it has amazing results. For images, I use Canva to create simple designs to help stand out.
#Hashtags
I’ve heard business owners being overwhelmed at the thought of using hashtags and not knowing what to use. Spend time searching for hashtags that are relevant to you, check out what Twitter Hours go on for your industry and area so you can join in and I guarantee your following will start to increase just from adding in a few relevant hashtags with your posting. And use it to your advantage. Rather than spending hours scrolling through your news feed, search for a specific hashtag and you will see who and what they have posted using that hashtag.
You don’t need to be an expert on all platforms
There are so many different platforms available and it can be overwhelming thinking you need to know them all, but this is where it is important knowing your audience and where they hang out. It is worth trying other platforms to see if it can work for your business but ultimately focus on regularly engaging across two platforms. You can’t be everywhere all the time!
Share content rather than copying
So look at this from your point of view. You have gone to the effort of creating content and posting to social media. Rather than sharing the post, someone copies and pastes it to their page. If has your branding then great as they may still head in your direction, but it doesn’t give you the credit you deserve and also doesn’t give you a true reflection of where your marketing is working. If you have shared a blog to your social media and someone just uses the URL link and pastes, it will show on your analytics as someone visiting you directly when actually they have reached to you via social media. You could be missing out on a major audience if you then started redirecting your efforts for engagement.
Don’t forget to analyse the results
Reviewing what works and what doesn’t work is very important. There is no pointing in wasting your time using the same content or the same format over and over again if it doesn’t work. Spend time looking at the data and either carrying on with what works for you or scrap and start again with the stuff that isn’t working so well.
There are so many benefits to using social media for your business but it can be hard getting it right. Spend time looking at your social media as part of your marketing and business development and look at what you want to achieve and how you are doing to do it.
Need some help creating or managing your social media? Contact me now to discuss ways I can help ease the burden of your social media. Email info@njrvirtualpa.co.uk or call 07538 715537.
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