It goes without saying, social media is pretty damn important today. Not just to catch up with friends and show your holiday selfies, but to promote your business, engage with your customers and understand your target market. Social media has given us an abundance of raw data about our potential consumer, we can almost get into their mind and understand what they’re thinking and feeling. So how do we communicate with them?
Engage Don’t Shout
Many business make the mistake of simply telling instead of engaging with their followers. You won’t build an interactive and loyal follower base by shouting about your latest products and not responding to questions or involving yourself in conversations. Engagement is a two way street! Respond to other people’s tweets, spark up a conversation and look for any specific chats related to your industry. These chats are particularly popular on twitter, for example bloggers of sectors such as lifestyle and parenting often host chats scheduled numerous times in the week. This could benefit you by getting involved.
Follow Relevant Influencers
It’s important to know the influencers within your industry, whether that be a CEO, speaker, leader or blogger, follow them! Don’t necessarily expect a follow back or a reply but keep up to date with what they’re saying and doing. They may provide you with some interesting insights.
Share Exclusive Offers
Especially if you’re a B2C company, give your followers something back and a reason to visit your social media channels. An exclusive discount or giveaway is a great strategy for building up your follower base and spreading awareness of your business. For example, a giveaway on Twitter may require followers to retweet a tweet of yours, this opens up your brand to their own followers who may retweet it to their followers…and so on.
Use Imagery
Recent studies have shown Facebook posts and tweets with an image receive up to 150% more engagement! Social media users enjoy a nice image, cute animals are particularly popular! Users also enjoy ‘behind the scenes’ shots too, so why not try and incorporate this so your followers can get to know your team a little better?
Upload Interesting Videos
Facebook users especially, enjoy watching videos. It’s a great way to show off your business and encourage interaction. Video content can be made relevant to your business, for example demonstration videos and behind the scenes videos can be useful. Sharing funny videos from the web can also increase engagement, don’t be afraid to use humour!
Research Your Timings
If you want to get your social media posts in front of the largest audience possible, then you should research which time of day is best to post for different social media channels. You can find this information easily on the web, but it’s worth testing out different times and measuring engagement so you can find what works best for your business. As a tip, commuter times (early morning and early evening) are often a good time to post.
Be HUMAN
You are not a robot. If you find something funny, no doubt someone else will too! Bring some personality to your social media channels, don’t talk like a machine and try not to be too boring. You won’t build up a following with dull posts so even if you’re selling insurance, think creatively!
Keep Up To Date With Events
Get involved with world events, sporting games and big festivals on social media. Show that you’re up to date with current affairs, send out tweets and posts when big these events are happening. For example, one of our clients who provides luxury tennis holidays – we recommended them to get fully involved with Wimbledon and interact with tennis fans on social media when games are on.
Hopefully these tips will give you a basis in understanding how to use social media for business, but if you feel you don’t have adequate time to nurture your channels why not see our social media management service page to see how we could help you.