Best Practices for Social Media Usage in Your Business
Both new and existing brands are using social media to improve their following, create leads, and enhance sales. With all the platforms accessible, creating a brand on social media may appear to be a daunting task. However, using social media to engage with people and promote your business organically is easier than ever.
Suppose your small business isn't on social media. In that case, you may be missing out on valuable chances such as new customers, brand insights, and audience and interaction opportunities with both customers and competitors. Furthermore, using social media to reach out to your clients in a tailored manner can be cost-effective.
However, if you're thinking about putting your business on social media, you should consider which sites are ideal for you and would bring the most benefit. There's always an opportunity for improvement on social media networks, whether you're just looking to start or have been using them for years. Each platform has its own set of applications.
Best practices for social media usage
Over 49percent of the world's population accesses social media in some capacity. It equates to around 4 billion individuals. You're likely aware that your company should have a social media presence. On the other hand, the steps required to express or improve such presence may be ambiguous. You won't get the outcomes you seek until you have a solid strategy supported by hard facts.
Do some research on your target market.
One of the most crucial essential elements in any marketing effort is understanding your customers. We can use social media to build a vast database of client data which we can use to inform company decisions and marketing efforts.
Only 1% of firms who tap into their social networking and legacy consumer data on a regular basis actually exploit it to its maximum potential.
We can predict client desires, needs, and expectations in real-time if we better understand their wants, needs, and expectations. We can also transform the way customers perceive our businesses by changing the character of customer support and radically reshaping the sales funnel.
Audit your competitors.
It's usually a good idea to look at what your competition is doing when putting out any company strategy. It is also true in terms of social media strategy. In comparison to traditional advertising and media mediums, social media's availability and access make it exceptionally easy to locate, track and assess competitors.
When it comes to developing your brand's social media strategy, turn to your opponents for ideas on what types of material are being shared and what works (and what doesn't). It will help you get a head start on improving your campaigns and boost the chances of your brand's social media success.
Suppose your competition is advertising on Facebook, for example. In that case, you may make educated assumptions about the demographics they're targeting, how much they're spending, and whether they're using videos or any other media to reach specific audiences.
Set Objectives
Never begin a social marketing campaign without a set of objectives in mind. SMART goals are usually the best goals. For example;
Set fixed figures with precision (ex: "Company will achieve a 5 percent increase in engagement this quarter").
Measurable: Establish a metric for tracking progress toward each target.
Aspirational: Your objectives must stretch your abilities while remaining realistic.
Relevancy: Achieving this aim will aid in the achievement of a successful business outcome.
Time-bound: It must be completed by a specific date.
Create and sustain your brand's tone of voice.
Because your social media profiles are an outgrowth of your brand, they should be consistent with the rest of your brand messaging. Having a constant voice allows your brand to stand out from the crowd while staying faithful to its core beliefs.
It's an intelligent option to spell out some parameters for your team if your business hasn't identified its voice yet. Evaluate why your brand is different, what it stands for, how you'd like to explain it, and how you'd need people to feel when they connect with it.
You can also use customer and market research to assist you in figuring out what kind of brand message will appeal to your target market. Use whatever personas you created as a result of your customer research to discover a style that speaks to them. You can conduct competitive research to understand how they handle brand voice and then determine whether you want to enhance that technique or take a new way.
Using a Social Media Calendar to Plan
Keeping a hectic social media schedule organized is practically impossible without a calendar. Among the many advantages are:
Time is saved by planning beforehand. Understanding what you'll post ahead of time cuts down on time spent looking for things to share.
Calendars help teams stay on track with deadlines. Projects are more likely to be completed when everyone knows when they are due.
You have the option of posting in a more planned manner. Instead of scrambling to put up a festive post at the last minute, you can set out entire promotions around a fixed schedule, everything in one spot where your entire staff can interact.
Decide on the best time and quantity to post.
Are you still trying to figure out the optimum time to reach out to the maximum number of people on Facebook? Instead of guessing, use data to determine when and what to post. Use online marketing analytics to help understand how your content performs based on time of day, regularity, location, and other factors. Then you may use the information to tweak your social posting approach for the best results.
Another excellent opportunity is to include competitor and user research into your marketing approach. Pose the following questions:
- What time do my rivals publish their content?
- What percentage of the time does it work correctly for them?
- What effect would a modified cadence have?
Similarly, you can fine-tune your rhythm to maximize the advantage of crucial publishing periods by measuring how your community reacts to the scheduling of your articles.
Try to Automate things.
It's pointless to do things manually when they can be easily automated. What aspects of your social media strategy can be automated?
- Messages on social media are scheduled.
- Including photographs in your social media posts.
- When it comes to resharing content, it's essential to do so at the right time.
For example, scheduling your social media updates so that they go out automatically could save your team action. You won't have to worry about going over your postings to see if they're being sent at the appropriate times.
Not surprisingly, over 40percent of customers who contact brands via social media are more inclined to purchase and recommend their friends and family to purchase from companies who respond quickly.
Contact your customers quickly.
Retaining a happy client base necessitates speed. Customers want a speedy reaction from brands: half of the people on social media expect a business to reply to their tweet within three hours. Customers will abandon brands that fail to match this expectation. Around 30% of customers indicated they would cease doing business with a company and voice their discontent on social media as well as to family and friends.
Make Your Content Diverse
No one wants to see postings on social media that are solely about products all of the time. Because brands post too many promotional items, 45 percent of individuals will unfollow them.
Because they've taken some time to observe you on social media, there's a strong possibility they're already interested in your business. Your business will turn people off if you publish promotional posts on a regular basis since it appears that you care so much about your items than you do about interacting with them.
To get around those promotional posting schedules, try experimenting with other message topics, such as:
- Job openings
- Posts on company culture
- News from the community
- News from the industry
- GIFs
- Personalized content
- Educational blog postings
Make Social Media Contests a Wise Investment
Because who doesn't appreciate free goods, social media events are generally a big hit. Using this sort of content can have a lot of advantages, such as increasing your audience and fostering interaction with your fans.
So, how can you make a social media contest a success?
- Choose the channel where you want to concentrate your growth or interaction efforts.
- Decide on what you'll give away. Make some media about the giveaway with your graphics team.
- Set a deadline for your audience to participate in the contest.
- Make a schedule for your posts.
- Keep note of the contestants' names who have completed all of the entrance steps in a spreadsheet.
- After the deadline has passed, notify and tag winners in posts on social media.
Humour should be used lightly.
On social media, humour can be a gift and a curse. Your joke can quickly devolve into a media platforms disaster with just one blunder.
However, if you hit the proper notes in terms of humour, your brand could take off.
Testing out a few light-hearted jokes and seeing how people react is the most significant approach to assessing if humour is your audience's proper voice. You can't make your audience laugh, so be careful how and when you utilize it.
And if you're unsure, don't tweet it.
Employees' access to corporate social media accounts should be limited.
Social media is a social undertaking in and of itself. That is to say; you want your staff to be a part of the discussion as well. However, that does not imply that everyone in your firm ought to have access to social network accounts.
Think about what happened to HMV after they sacked a large number of employees at once, including their social media team. Members of the team went rogue, claiming that they were all being dismissed at the same time. Worst of all? The individuals that stayed didn't know how to turn it off.
You need to be able to regulate who has that level of authority, so spare yourself the trouble and draw up a list of who had access to that profile.
Who should be able to access your social media accounts? To get you started, here's a possible list:
- CMO (chief marketing officer)
- Social media experts and writers
- Designers of graphics
You must also remove access and reset passwords when someone on the list departs the firm.
Share positive customer feedback.
Ask your clients whether you can share their chats or if they'd like to post a review once they've received positive conclusions about specific difficulties, mainly if they used social media. Not only on your social media channels but also internally. Internal excitement and a cooperative approach to social involvement can help turn your staff into brand ambassadors.
Top 3 social media platforms you should target
With over 2.9 billion active users as of 2021, Facebook is a hugely popular social platform with a diverse clientele. As a result, every company should set up a Facebook profile. A Facebook profile, when handled appropriately, may be highly beneficial to a small company.
Everything from images to essential company updates can be shared on Facebook. You may access significant marketing tools and in-depth data with a business account. Customization opportunities abound on business pages as well. You can use Facebook to showcase information like your contact information, business hours, and items and services you provide.
Instagram is also very popular, with an estimated 1.1 billion monthly active users. Businesses may utilize a variety of techniques to market their services and products on Instagram.
Instagram is a great network that focuses solely on video and photo posts, so it's ideal for companies with a lot of visual content to offer.
It's worth noting that this network is nearly mobile: You can't snap photos or make new articles on the desktop version. Instagram is more prevalent among artistic niches; thus, it might not be the most excellent choice for your business. Regardless, the person in charge of your profile must have a keen eye for detail and, at best basic photography abilities to ensure that the photographs and videos you share are of high quality.
While Twitter is fantastic for short updates, communicating with followers, and sharing blog post links, it isn't right for every business. You can share brief tweets (under 240 characters), videos, photographs, links, polls, and more on Twitter. This platform also makes it simple to communicate with your audience by referencing users in your posts and liking and retweeting tweets.
You might want to avoid this social media platform if your company is highly visual or if you don't have a good brand voice. Many firms, such as Wendy's, succeed on Twitter as they have a distinct, on-brand presence on their site. Customers who are most active on the network will seek out organizations to express their complaints or appreciation. Therefore, other businesses use this medium to handle customer service.
Twitter is a terrific tool for fast-spreading the word if you have interesting stuff and can speak it engagingly. Hashtags aid in the promotion of postings, and if a person with a large following retweets you, your work may go viral. However, it's critical to strike a balance when it comes to Twitter. Make sure you're sharing a lot of fascinating, relevant stuff from other Twitter users, not simply your links or media.
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Written and Published By The Strategic Advisor Board Team
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