Let’s say your company is brand new, growing steadily, or already widely known, social media brings real value to your brand. Just as social media connects one friend to another or a celebrity to a fan base, it can also connect a business to a consumer audience. Whether your company has a storefront or is an online business, social media is another window potential customers can browse by. It is up to you to entice a customer to visit or make a purchase!
Through your Twitter or Facebook account, you can connect with thousands of people through the internet, and they can connect to you. You’re able to transmit your brand and voice through ideas, products, and services that appeal to your followers.
Engage: Gain Momentum By Being In The Moment2
The moment your company gains momentum on social media is the moment that your customers have built trust with you as a brand. And just like building trust with someone face to face, in order to build that trust with your online followers you need to be available, be dependable, and respond to feedback and messages as soon as possible. You don’t want your new friends to think you’re not listening, and you also don’t want them to believe you’re only there to talk about yourself. Take time to listen and provide the content that is most helpful to your followers and your business. The beauty of social media is that it places everybody on the same level. Just like friendship, you need to balance your give and take.
If your company is about to launch a new initiative or unveil some new product, you hope your target audience will approve, support, or be willing to buy it. Think of a social media account as an ever-updating billboard for your company where your individual posts communicate quickly and effectively to “drive by users” that are scrolling through social feeds almost as fast as your average speedster flying by a billboard on the highway.
It’s becoming more important for businesses to engage in the social stratosphere. Digital marketing and advertising have almost completely eclipsed print methods. Consumer audiences constantly change in their tastes and trends, but they seem to remain fixed to their mobile devices.
99% of the world’s top brands have an active Facebook page. NINETY-NINE percent! That’s an undeniable statistic. At the beginning, we were all privy to stories of how businesses made it overnight with viral posts. However, that kind of viral possibility becomes more and more like a lottery with the number of pages present online today.
To effectively build brand awareness, you need to not just be another page. Here are some quick tips for ensuring that your social media pages aren’t just “in the know” about your business, but are the place where “in the know” people go.
To engage social influencers and build an organic following, follow these best practices for each of your social media accounts:
Do Not Post The Exact Same Content Across Every Platform
Your blog will let you link accounts, automatically publishing the exact same content to almost any social media account that you connect. Likewise, there are several tools out there that allow you to publish from one account to another. In the past, it was regular practice to allow Facebook to publish directly to your Twitter account. That is no longer promoted by Facebook in any way because it isn’t a good practice to put into place. In fact, the only social media account that I am aware of that promotes “linking” accounts for publication, is LinkedIn. That’s one place where publishing the same content to Twitter makes some sense, and the reason why is simply that your LinkedIn posts cannot be seen by the general public like any public Twitter account can.
However, I don’t want anyone to take this too seriously. You should be posting the same link across every platform. For example, let’s say you have a new published blog post. Share it everywhere! However, make what you say about your content unique to each platform. There’s nothing worse than someone sharing a Facebook post directly to Twitter and all that shows up in the 140 character window is ‘I found this article to be really ve…’ and only a partial link takes up the rest of the post. However, the average person has over 3 social media accounts. If you are a business or brand that follower loves, it is likely that they follow you on all of those social media sites. If the exact same content is posted from Instagram to Twitter to Facebook to Tumblr with no differentiation, that user is not compelled to follow you in multiple places and you’ve now lost out on have 3x higher visibility to one customer that already loves you.
By slightly adjusting your post times and your post to content to have variation that is true to its platform, your favorite followers will continue to follow you across multiple platforms and your organic reach will soar!
Stay True To The Platform Expectations
We somewhat touched on this up above. However, staying true to platforms isn’t always as straight forward as “stop at 140 characters.”
Here are some tips to get the most out of individual platforms:
Long-form posts have the highest engagement on Facebook. Type up to 400 characters on your Facebook posts.
Include your link in the middle of your Twitter and practice utilizing one key #hashtag as part of your content and not at the end of your post (like, “This is my post #this #is #my #hashtag #list).
Utilize no more than two hashtags per Tweet.
Use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram and post them separately. Do not include it in your original content. Keep of list of the most relevant hashtags you want to use and copy/paste them in as a comment after you’ve shared your post.
Very few businesses or type of business can get away with posting to Facebook more than 2-3 times a day. With Facebook, you want to be consistent and post often, but you never want to post something that isn’t of the utmost importance. Post only when it matters to keep your engagement high.
As long as you have something to say, posting to Twitter every 2 hours up to 10 times per day is recommended for maximum exposure.
Regardless of the account, do not post multiple posts in a row. While a 3-Tweet rant is somewhat acceptable on a personal account, it is never acceptable on a business account, and whether it is business or personal, nobody wants to see 5 baby photos in a row on Instagram. Give it time. Stretch it out.
Strategy is what strategy does. Give what you expect to receive online. If you expect to see really engaging content, colorful quotes, and sparkly posts – that speaks to who you are and the kind of image you want to portray. What works for you likely works for your audience or you wouldn’t be in the business.
Be Consistent
While you never want to post when you have nothing good to say because that damages your brand engagement more than it can ever help, you DO want to show up when your followers expect you to show up. Maybe you don’t have a lot of content to share. Many small businesses aren’t churning out new content like we do at Boostability.com. No one expects you to, and a whitepaper about your nail salon isn’t going to get you a massive amount of new customers. Think about what works for the type of business you’re in (see step 8 above). Decide on one thing you want to do consistently (such as a how-to video every Wednesday) and do it! Show up.
If You Want Engagement, You Have To Engage Back
This is one of those things I say all the time because I can’t stress it enough. If you want people to engage on your page, you have to present something engaging. Ask questions. Don’t be spammy. Post things that pertain to real-time events. Focus 80% of your posts on something that is “here and now” and not planned or curated. Let the other 20% of your posts be scheduled out in advance. Try to think of something every day that you can put out there that pertains to you, your business, and what your followers want to hear. Then, when you receive engagement. Like it! Reply to it! Get involved! Engagement is what engagement does.
Reach Out
Getting your brand known at first is hard work. When you only have a few hundred followers and very few comments, blog posts like these seem to be far from helpful. The question always remains, “Ok, but how do I get there?” You get there by reaching out.
Research hashtags that are relevant to your business and spend at least an hour every day clicking around recent tweets from those hashtags and engage in conversations naturally. Do the same for any social media website that makes sense for you and you feel like you are great at using. That includes getting on Facebook and finding local businesses you know and love, and liking their business pages as well.
Keep Your Content & Your Profile Up To Date
On each profile, you’re required to input your URL, your business phone number, and other various information about your business depending what social website you are on. Keep this information up to date! Utilize the space you have to let your followers know what your hours of operation are if it is not already an available field for you to fill out.
Likewise, make sure the information you are sharing on your social media accounts is relevant and up to date. Nobody wants to read “breaking news” from three weeks ago. If it is breaking news, it is a timely post that should go out several times very quickly and then no longer make the rounds in your regular social media posts.
Summary
Your company can reach new heights when you channel your passion, creativity, and authority into honest social media outreach.
Need help posting consistent, helpful messaging to your social media pages? We will do the work for you! Click here or call 1-800-261-1537 to speak to a Social Media Specialist now.
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