There’s no denying that if you want your small business to be seen and heard, you need to embrace social media. You’re not alone if you’re wondering where on Earth to start. To help, we’ve put together our top 10 tips for getting off to a great start.
1. Work out what it is you’d like to achieve.
What exactly do you want your social media presence to do for you? Are you looking for increased sales conversions, brand awareness, increased newsletter subscribers or an overall better customer experience and perception of your business? Perhaps your objective is something completely different?
2. Be realistic
Set goals based on what you’d like to achieve. To make it happen, you firstly need to be realistic about how much time and effort you can dedicate to your social media. If you can only dedicate 15 minutes a day then maybe aiming to gain 20 new likers per week on Facebook is a realistic and achievable goal. Aiming to achieve 100 new likers per day and still only dedicating 15 minutes per day of your time is not going to end well. Above all, be consistent.
3. Focus on the most suitable social media platforms
It’s extremely difficult to master all platforms, all of the time – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, SnapChat, YouTube… the list is almost endless. Choose your battles. Where does your target market frequent and where are your competitors making a positive impact? If your target audience is the under 25 audience, Instagram or Snapchat is where you need to be. Over 30s tend to be Facebook fans. Find out the most popular and suitable social media networks for your audience – SproutSocial’s post “Social Media Demographics to Inform a Better Segmentation Strategy” is a great start (note that these are US figures and just over a year old but still relevant here in Australia). Make sure you are aware of age, gender, location etc.
4. Keep it uniform
Keep the same uniform branding and username across all platforms where possible. Your social media presence should appear seamless and all profiles should be instantly recognisable as your brand/business. On usernames… make them simple and easy to remember and spell. Getting too clever can backfire big time.
5. Get inspired and mix it up!
What content are others in your industry posting? Is it successful? What content do you find interesting? Simply posting about your products or service 100% of the time is not going to cut it.
Your audience will be bored fairly quickly and flee like rats off a sinking ship. Mix your product/service posts with varied and interesting content. The well known Pareto principle (aka the 80/20 rule) should apply. In a nutshell, your content should be no more than 20% promotional.
Images and graphics are extremely important too, especially on the likes of Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. Make sure content is always on point and pro looking. Try various media – everyone loves a good video (particularly if it’s a scream). Also look at social media leaders in completely different fields as well. What do you think they are doing right? Finally, always be relatable.
“Focus on how to be social, not on how to do social”
– Jay Baer (268,000 followers on Twitter)
6. Plan ahead
There are plenty of tools available that allow you to schedule your posts ahead of time. HootSuite is a great tool we recommend and use (and it’s free for 1 user with three social profiles – scroll down to an almost invisible link under the four paid plans 😉 ). Also knowing when your target audience is online is a must. Targeting Mums during school pickup is going to bomb big time!
7. Be relevant
Is there an industry event, a big news item or some kind of viral phenomenon such as a #hashtag perhaps that you can incorporate into your content (Google ‘trending hashtags 2018‘ or ‘popular hashtags 2018‘ for a truckload of suggestions)? Tread very carefully though… the best laid plans can go horribly wrong!
8. Respond
There’s no point building an audience if you’re not going to interact and converse with them – it is called ‘social’ media after all! Make sure you monitor your accounts and respond in a timely manner to questions and comments. Commenting on other profiles is another great way to encourage new followers and a larger audience. Let your personality shine through!
9. Integrate with your website
Add buttons and feeds to your website to make it super easy for visitors to like/follow what they see, even when they’re not on that particular social media platform at the time.
10. Tests and measures
Evaluate what worked and what fell flat on its face. Measure likes, comments, shares and clicks on any included links. Test different types of content. Be diligent.
