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Contributing Author: Ellen Brown
We all know how important social media is in day-to-day business life. If you’re just starting out or haven’t branched into social media yet, then today's post is especially for you!
Follow these six simple steps to build your presence with social media that will rival even your biggest competitors!
Tip #1 – Create an awesome social media tagline your prospects won't forget.
You need to be able to sum your business up in one sentence – something people can read to quickly discover who you are and what you do.
This can be tricky, so give it some thought!
Think about who your audience will be – what is the easiest way to sum yourself up to them? If you can pin-point this key sentence and make it snappy and memorable, you’re already off to a great start!
Decide how many different social media accounts you want your business to have. A good suggestion is to start with the bare minimum of two. Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media platforms online. The reality is that the more accounts you have, the more people you can reach.
Next, you need to consider whether the same tagline will do for every one of your social media accounts, or should you tailor them to fit?
Tip #2 – Make sure your social media profiles have the contact information for your business.
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For many consumers, your social media accounts will be their preferred way to contact you.
You’ll see this with all the major businesses that customer service increasingly revolves around Facebook and Twitter.
Keep in mind that some customers will want to reach out and personally contact you.
Make sure you provide as many options as possible.
List the best phone number and email to contact you. Don’t forget to include your company address and, if possible, a map.
You’re aiming to make business with you as easy as possible for your customer, so if your Facebook has all the information they could possibly need to reach you, they’ll be more likely to get in touch!
Tip #3 - Utilize Attractive Graphics and Images on your social media profiles.
In order to establish a theme, the images used on Twitter and Facebook should be similar.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot that can be done to customize your social media pages. To get a better idea on how to create an attractive theme for your social media profiles, take a look at any large company.
When creating your
Facebook business page, your profile picture should be your company logo. Your
logo will be easily identified by prospects and your current customers.
Another way to add a creative touch with your social media profile on Facebook is to include photos of your best selling products or your business premises.
Remember to always keep your images relevant to your business. For example, it will confuse people if you say you are a plant pot seller and your cover photo is horses.
This can be applied to any social media site – the most important thing to remember is you’re creating a theme for your company, so everything should be subtly linked, by color or shape, so it sticks in the mind of your customer.
Tip #4 – Set a schedule to post updates to your social media accounts on a regular basis.
It’s so easy to create your social media profiles and then forget about them, but this is absolutely the worst thing you could do!
Your aim is to build a relationship with your customers so they don’t have to think twice about doing business with you.
You should post at least two updates per day to avoid spamming and irritating users.
It is wise to create a marketing calendar for your social media accounts to schedule when and what updates you will post during the week.
There are tools that allow you to post for maximum impact by finding out the best time for you to reach your target audience.
But with a little common sense, you can manage without, just think about when you would visit these sites if you weren’t at work, when would your customers find time to go online and then post then.
Don’t have the time to spend tweeting or take care of your other social media accounts?
There are social media management tools, such as HootSuite and Buffer, allow you manage all of your social media accounts from one dashboard.
A great feature of HootSuite is that you can pre-schedule your posts. If you can set aside 10 minutes a day, you can schedule and plan your posts whenever you want throughout the day, or even the week!
Tip #5 –Make sure the updates for each social media account are appropriate for your target audience.
Since social media accounts for business are more complicated than social media accounts for personal use, you must remember you’re acting on behalf of your business, not yourself.
You want to come across as friendly and inviting to your customers, so keep posts light hearted and avoid anything which might offend.
So keep any angry rants for your private accounts.
Show people that you have a sense of humor and share things that made you laugh or made you think, just as long as they aren’t offensive to anyone. But be weary, as we’ve discussed, you’re building a relationship with your customers here, so don’t come across as all work and no play.
To show others you have the time to care for your customers and value them and their feedback. Always be sure to set time aside to reply to those who contact you via social media.
You can reply by commenting, re-tweeting, “liking”, etc.
Tip #6 Don’t forget to always keep track of your analytics for each social media account for your business.
You want your content, products, and services to be shared and talked about.
Monitor which of your posts has the greatest impact and don’t be afraid to try a different approach if it’s not working.
Facebook offers you weekly updates as well as a summary of your page activity above your profile. Keep an eye on this to discover what content your audience enjoys and actively responds to.
There you have it. Follow the above six tips and you’ll be pulling in customers from all corners of the planet and establishing yourself as a top brand worth talking about.
About the contributing Author:
Ellen Brown is a Marketing Assistant at Blooie. Ellen loves talking to customers and sharing great content with them.
Check out Blooie’s Twitter page @bloo_ie to find out more.
