There’s no doubt that social media is an indispensable marketing tool, and one that no business owner should be without. This is a principle which the owners at Keen understands all very well. However, as with any marketing platform, you need to plan and coordinate your efforts in order to get the engagement and conversions you desire. Here are a few key steps on how you can effectively use social media to grow your business.
1. Be Consistent
I’m sure you’ve heard it plenty of times before, consistency is the key to success in anything that you do, and social media is no different. In order to achieve consistency, you need to plan your posts ahead of time and have a theme and stipulated schedule for the specific times on which you’ll be posting.
For example, if you decide to post multiple times per day or per week across your social media platforms, then you have to maintain that schedule at all times because that is what your followers will be expecting. Consistency makes it easier to build a loyal audience which you can then leverage to drive conversions to your products and/or services.
2. Create Customised Content for each platform
While your social media posts might carry the same theme, it’s important to keep things exciting. Ensure that each platform communicates the theme from a different perspective. For example, while you might need to keep it short and sweet for Twitter, you could opt for a long-form post on LinkedIn and carefully curated photos on Instagram.
In the end all of these have to feed into one another without seeming like fake duplicates of each other. Creating customised content will keep all your feeds looking unique and fresh, and your audiences will come back for more. Ideally, content should be the same, but different. Find that balance and you’re good to go.
3. Stay True to Your Brand Message
Keep in mind when planning your content that each post should reflect your brand’s message, as this represents your company’s vision and values. This was my major takeaway from the conversation I had with Joe Curmi, the director and Founder of CurmiMarketing a Never stray away from your brand image for the sake of likes and followers, or to follow the latest trends and hashtags.
Rather keep your message consistent across all the platforms, and ensure that it’s aligned with your brand’s overall message at all times. Doing so will cement your status as a reliable brand in the eyes of your followers, and can go a long way in building trust with customers, because no one wants to be associated with a flaky brand that doesn’t know their story.
4. Create Relevant and Original content
Granted, there’s nothing new under the sun, but that shouldn’t stop you from creating content that matters. Doing so involves understanding current trends, your audience and the platforms which they prefer to engage. For example, if the target audience in your niche prefers Instagram over Facebook, that gives you a clear idea of the kind of content that you need to create in order to reach those audiences.
And posting relevant content is a great way to attract and retain clients that really appreciate the niche you’re serving. So don’t allow external factors and the drive for popularity distract you from building a reputation for your business as an authority in your field. That’s one of the reasons to have social media accounts after all.
5. Go for What Works for You and Your Business
As you’ll find, some social media platforms will work better than others at growing an audience and driving conversions. That’s why it’s important to do your research early on to determine which platforms work for your niche and where your targeted customers are. That way, you can intentionally create relevant content to communicate directly with your target audience through that platform.
6. Post on All Platforms
While you might prefer one network over the other, it’s important to post on all the social media platforms. Ideally, you should have an account with all the major social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. YouTube is another valuable network to grow and engage an audience with, but it does require more upfront investment and low initial returns than the others.
But YouTube followers tend to be more loyal, and the network has the potential to provide more conversions over time as well. There’s automated social media management software that can this like hootsuite.com and sproutsocial.com that can help you make better use of your time.
7. Don’t Just Post for the sake of Likes and Shares
Not all of your content is going to be popular, but if it’s an integral part of your brand’s message, then it still needs to get out there. Things like technical blog posts, charity posts and testimonials are all very essential elements that help to flesh out the background of what your brand is all about. And yet, they probably won’t get as much engagement as your other posts.
Bonus Tip! Find Creative Ways to Drive Engagement
There are a number of ways to keep your audience engaged. For example, you can run fun competitions where you encourage followers to give you feedback by answering mystery questions in exchange for a prize, or you can get them to share your content with friends to improve their chances of winning the contest.
Another great strategy would be to affiliate yourself with a popular social media influencer like a YouTube vlogger, who can then market your products on their channel. This would then give you access to a wider audience with which to market your product using an authentic approach. Plus, this is a popular and ail-safe strategy that works great for most brands.