Social Media Tips for Businesses
Have a strategy
As a business owner, you have to wear many hats, and thanks to the internet, social media is just another one to add to your wardrobe. It is best to take some time to work on your social media, without allowing that to detract from your daily business duties.
The first step is to define your ideal customer. Is your ideal customer female, male, married, single, lgbtq, straight, under 30, over 60, etc., etc.? Once you can narrow that down, it will help you decide which social media platform is best for you, Step 2. Over 40, Facebook; Under 40, Instagram; Under 18, Snapchat; DIYer, Pinterest; the list goes on and on. The ideal customer for you has an ideal social media platform for them. Once you’ve narrowed that down, then it is on to Step 3.
How do you engage with them? There are many ways to do this and some that are more appropriate to the social media platform you are targeting. For example, Pinterest is mostly visual, some light text in the graphic is ok, but should be minimal. Instagram is also visual, but there can be more text in the post image than with Pinterest. Some other ways to do this include: using GIF’s or memes, create a poll, send an invitation, and use photos to tell your story. Just make sure your approach is the best for that platform.
Step 4 is to decide how you want to approach social media. Can you post every day? Do you need to post daily? Do you have the time to create content? How many platforms do you want to engage with? What platform is the best performing for you?
Focus on best performing platforms for you
How do you decide which platform is the best performing for you? Part of this depends on how you want to communicate. Are you better with writing posts or posting images? Knowing how you communicate will steer you towards certain platforms. Once there, it will take a little bit of time to gain insights, but they will come. Every platform has an area to check your insights. In addition to that, you should pay attention to which post gets more likes and comments.
Those that perform well should be mimicked: follow the ad copy but not the content; it shouldn’t look exactly like your other post. Within your insights section, you should be able to see the time of day your content is being engaged with, the day of the week with the most engagement, and what the demographics are of those engaging with your content. Are these people your target audience? If not, it’s time to examine your content.
Be Organized
This is perhaps the most important tip. You need to organize your social media life. You should automate as much of this process as possible. Even if you are an event planner, there will likely be downtime within your business and you should make sure that time is filled with auto-posting so you don’t forget or get lazy. There are many apps for automating posts; Planoly and Later are two of my favorites.
Content Calendars are a great way to organize content for your scheduling software. These can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or as complicated as…well, I don’t know what programs are complicated for this, I use Excel. Hubspot offers a great free version that you can edit.
When in doubt, or need, outsource! If you don’t have the time to do something or the knowledge, then outsource to someone who does. Fiverr has great gig workers who are talented and can be less expensive.
Understand your Analytics
Every platform and website will offer you analytics, it’s your job to understand them and learn how to use them to your benefit.
Facebook has some of the easiest insights to understand, but I would suggest you walk through the tutorials they have.
Google AdWords (above) and Google Analytics (below) offer many variables that you can customize. Google Analytics is great and you should make sure you have a Google Tracking ID installed on your website. It will allow you to see when visitors are on your website, which pages are engaged with the most, and what content they are consuming.
Probably every website out there will have their own methods to analyze your metrics. Some are better than others but make sure you learn what your web host has available.
Be Authentic
This applies to so many things in life! You have to be your authentic self on social media. Followers, and potential customers, will quickly discover if you are not being your true self. Make sure that your message follows the tenets of your business vision and mission. Reread your mission statement and vision statement, use that to guide the message you want to send on social media.
However, using humor at appropriate times also helps to create rapport with your audience. I have a name that is difficult to pronounce, so I made some videos that showcased my name and also gave people a little laugh at the same time. And, of course, stay away from political discourse in your business life (unless that IS your business). Politics, especially now, can be more than polarizing and it only takes one person to blast you on social media to bring your business to a screeching halt.
Don’t be afraid of Video
I’ll say it again, DON’T BE AFRAID OF VIDEO! You don’t have to start with live video, though Facebook is really pushing that hard, but you should get comfortable with video. There are plenty of apps that are user friendly which can help you to edit videos shot with your iPhone (or Android). InShot is my personal favorite; it is easy to use and free. Facebook and Instagram have the ability for live video, LinkedIn is working on that, and I’m sure Pinterest will follow suit. Practice makes perfect, but your videos don’t have to be. Let yourself be yourself on camera, it will come across to the viewers.
While I can’t guarantee more sales, I can say that you should see more leads if you are following these steps, creating good content, and utilizing landing pages. Make links shorter, with a program like Bitly, to track users to your website and make sure that you have a Facebook Pixel installed. This is very important for retargeting your leads and turning them into customers (once you run Facebook Ads) as well. I am always here to answer any questions about social media. Interested in hiring a social media manager? Contact me for more details.
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