We all have social media accounts for business and personal reasons and naturally lean towards one particular platform to which we post regularly, but are you making the most of your social media presence? Here are some great things to consider and put into practice to make you stand out.
Choose the correct platforms
Choose the platforms that best reflect your business. For example, if you sell arts and crafts, then Instagram and Facebook are your best friend as your products are visual things that your customers will want to see. If you sell business services, you will find that LinkedIn will work better for you because that’s where your potential customers are. That’s not to say that you just stick to one platform, posting across platforms is still beneficial but make sure that you are not wasting your time by posting to a platform where you are unlikely to reach the people that you want to reach.
Where are your customers and when are they online?
As well as researching what platforms that your potential customers use, when are they likely to be online? For example, if your target audience is families, try not to schedule posts during the school run. Each platform has days of the week and times of day which work better. Doing a little research will help you reach your audience more often.
Creating your posts
Where to even start? Spend time brainstorming ideas, no matter how out there or crazy, get it all written down. Don’t worry about the content at this stage, just think about subjects, ideas, offers, sharing information, etc. Include a complete mix of information, motivation, quotes, tips, recommendations, product and services, bios, sales, the list is endless. The idea is to give you a mix of topics for your posts to keep everything fresh and entertaining. Once you have your topics you can then build on the content. Posts that include graphics, reels or videos generally do a lot better than simple text posts. Keep posts engaging and entertaining, mix up your content and be sure to reply to every single comment!
Be consistent
Staying consistent with your posts is essential. Being consistent encourages organic growth, your audience gets used to seeing you and when they engage the algorithm reads that and puts you in front of them in their feed, especially if they comment and you reply consistently. Use a scheduling tool such as Later. This is ideal to ensure that you are posting regularly at the right days and times. You upload your social media links, upload your graphics, write your posts and schedule the dates and you can move on to creating more posts. Remember, you don’t need to post ten times a day to be seen, regular scheduled posts, once a day, every other day, or a few times a week is more than enough depending on your products or services.
Try not to oversell
People don’t like being sold to. Instead, talk about the benefits of your products or services leaving your audience to imagine how it will benefit them. Use testimonials to boost your credibility and case studies work well too. Pre-empt customers concerns and use that in a post. For example, if you are selling face cream, customers may be concerned that they have sensitive skin and may react to the product. So, use a post to talk about the hypoallergenic ingredients in the product.
Stay educated
The algorithms behind each platform are different. For example, Facebook and Instagram don’t like external links in posts because they want to keep you on their platform. A way around this is to write the link into your graphic or add it to your comments. You don’t need to be a specialist in algorithms, just keep up to date on changes so you can adapt your posts to make sure that you are reaching your audience.
Have fun
Fun and entertaining posts achieve the best engagement, so never be afraid of showing the human element of your business. Have fun with your social media, engage and entertain your audience.
I hope you found this helpful; I could have gone on longer! If social media is something that you need help with or you would like to share your top tips, feel free to get in touch or book a discovery call below!