With the rapid adoption of social media across society, it is becoming increasingly necessary for businesses in all industries to focus attention towards their social media both in terms of marketing and PR. To help business with this we have collated a list of 10 tips which we believe are the most important when it comes to social media.
Focus and Master
You are better off mastering a couple of social media platforms rather than attempting to learn how every single one works. There are social media platforms appearing on a daily basis and each one offers different features.
You should instead focus on the platforms your customers spend the most time on or that fit your industry. The 80/20 rule applies here. By focusing on the two or three platforms used by the majority of your target audience you not only get the most audience for your time but also can learn the intricacies of using each platform.
Measure — but Only What Counts
Social analytics sound fancy, with sites like Twitter and Facebook updating them constantly. This means you could spend hours obsessing over pretty graphs to ascertain your follower growth but does that metric really matter to your business? Not necessarily. You can have 100,000 followers, but if none of them use your services or buy your products, you may as well have none.
It is more beneficial to choose a few metrics that you can use to track the benefits to your business. This could be tracking which types of posts get click-throughs to your website or what times are best for posting in different styles or on different platforms – does a serious business post on Sunday at 8am on LinkedIn get seen? Whilst deciding what to track, ask yourself “how does this benefit my business?”
Experiment to Excel
It is only natural to continue doing what you are used to, habits are a hard thing to break. Your approach to social media is no different, it is easy to get stuck in a rut doing what others do as it worked for them or simply “we are used to doing it this way”. Social media is a constantly evolving medium which is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing as every business is different and social media allows multiple approaches, so that you can use social media in a way that works for you.
To put this into action you could try out different ways of engaging with your followers through several styles of posts. Create some with videos, some with pictures, some with links and hashtags. Change one thing at a time so you have a controlled test and can tell what works. Give each change enough time to measure the effect and if it is positive stick with it. If it doesn’t work then be ruthless, drop it – write it on a list of ‘don’t bother’. If this is done with some creativity and focus then you will save time on social media in the future.
Pick a Date
The best way to approach social media is to set aside time in an organized manner for it. The best way to do this is through a dedicated calendar so that you know what you are doing and when you are doing it. This reduces the stress and increases the efficiency of your time spent on social media. Social media works well if you have a little bit of time set aside each day.
The group at smallbiztrends.com have created a useful template for a social media calendar for a small business click here to view it
Over perform don’t Overwhelm
The main aim of social media is to have your business at the front of peoples minds. This means that you are better off in general to post more often on social media than leaving long periods of ‘silence’. However this does not mean post something every 5 minutes, as that will just annoy followers and may end up with your account being reported as spam. Regular updates are more crucial than a lot – in that one post a day, every day will look better than three on Monday, two on Tuesday, none on Wednesday and Thursday and then 10 on Friday to ‘catch up’.
Keep an eye out for part 2 next week!
Some information sourced from: smallbiztrends.com
