By Lydia Barley
With the rapid uptake of social media, which has become such an integral part of our day to day lives, it’s no surprise that social media marketing is also a key element to the marketing strategy of many businesses. If your business isn’t on social media, you’re missing out on an opportunity to engage with your existing customers and reach hundreds, possibly thousands of potential customers.
As fantastic as social media can be, the idea of being on social media can be extremely daunting to a number of businesses. To make the process a little less daunting we’ve put together 4 social media tips that will guide your business to social media success.
1. Know your audience
Now I’m pretty sure every single social media blog post discusses the importance of knowing your audience. This blog is no exception. Knowing your audience is essential for social media success. Without knowing your audience you’ll have no idea how to appeal to them. Your social media strategy should be catered towards your audience. If you post content that means nothing to your audience, your social media efforts will be useless, which is a waste of time and resources.
Take the time to learn about your audience; what their interests are, what motivates them and what frustrates them. In addition to this you should know the demographics of your audience: where do they live, what is their age, what is their gender, what is their profession, what is their income, what is their education level? By taking the time to get to know your audience you will begin to recognise what content they are interested in and which content will bring you the greatest return from your social media efforts.
2. Don’t try and be on every platform
For most businesses, particularly small businesses, it’s impossible to be effective on every single social media platform. Social media eats up a considerable amount of time and resources. If you try and be on every single social media platform available to you, you won’t have enough time to effectively create content and build relationships with your audience, which can impact both your budget and your success.
Make sure to have accounts on the platforms that your audience is on. And following on from our previous point, by knowing your audience you should recognise what social media platforms they commonly use.
3. Don’t try and sell your product 24/7
As tempting as it is to want to push out sales posts to your audience, don’t. Social media is about being social, your audience don’t connect with you to be bombarded with ads, instead they want to connect with your business on another level. Focus on nurturing relationships, building trust and creating brand love – doing so will make you top of mind when your audience has the need for your product or service.
Instead of being salesy try and provide your audience with something of value; whether that’s entertainment or education. Depending on your business there are a range of different ways you can provide value to your audience, such as; showing the behind the scenes of your business, sharing recipes that include your product or showcasing tips and tricks for using or repurposing your product.
For example: The team at Ignite Search provide value to their audience in the form of educational videos and blogs.
4. Take the time to engage with your audience and attract new audiences
In our final point we want to stress the importance of nurturing your audience, your social media strategy should never be to ‘post it and leave it’. Doing so will result in an unengaged (and potentially unhappy) audience. There are many different ways to engage with your audience, some of which are listed below:
- Liking and replying to comments
- Liking and commenting on photos that you are tagged in
- Replying to messages
- Sharing photos that were taken by your customers and clients
In addition to undertaking these activities to nurture your audience it’s important to take the time to engage with new people, with the goal of attracting new audience members. This step is often overlooked by businesses of all sizes however it is extremely effective in growing your audience. To attract new audience members, schedule some time each day to go through your social media platform and engage with new people. You can engage with them by liking or commenting on their posts. Doing so will result in that person noticing you, which could lead to them liking or following your page.
Hopefully by now, you feel a little more comfortable with the idea of effectively incorporating social media into your marketing strategy, and with our 4 tips you’ll be on your way to social media success in no time.you
