As a business owner, it’s extremely important for you to be using social media as often and as effectively as possible. Social media has been the king of online content marketing since it took off as a major internet force, and never has that been more true than it is in 2020. There are things that every business should make sure it’s doing in order to succeed and stay relevant on social media platforms, and they differ according to each platform and to the demographic you’re trying to attract. Here is what every business should be doing on social media networks.
Post content regularly
Keeping up a regular presence on social media is crucial if you want to make sure you’re raising brand awareness. If you don’t post often, people will soon start to forget about your brand, because everyone else’s posts will subsume yours on their feed. For this, you need to make sure you have unique and interesting content (see below); posting the same thing over and over again won’t be an effective strategy for maintaining interest. Create yourself a schedule and stick to it; you’ll soon start to see this approach paying dividends in the form of followers and brand awareness.
Be human
Nobody likes a robotic corporation, or worse, a corporation trying to get “down with the kids”. Even if your business is relatively small, if you don’t keep your register human and engaging, you won’t see a return in terms of brand faith or followers. Make sure you’re talking to your followers as people and not as “potential customers”. Treating them like they’re wallets with human faces won’t help anyone. Keep your posts informal, try to keep up with trends (but don’t be too cringeworthy), and make sure to talk to as many customers as possible – it builds a trustworthy face for your brand.
Be there for your customers
First and foremost, as a business, you should be making sure your customers are satisfied. While the old adage that “the customer is always right” shouldn’t necessarily ring true all the time, it’s still true that you need to take care of your customers. If you’re on social media ignoring people’s enquiries and being rude or dismissive of complaints, then you won’t get very far. Your goal on social media is to be approachable and friendly while still maintaining professional distance, so make sure that whatever your customers need of you, you’re meeting those needs (within reason, of course).
Maximise advertising potential
You’re on social media for your customers, but it’s also a great idea to try to attract more customers through social media advertising schemes. Depending on the platform, your advertising will take a different form, so make sure you’re tailoring the ad to the platform on which it’s going to appear. Different demographics use different networks, too; your audience on Instagram isn’t going to be the same as your audience on Snapchat, for example. You should be leveraging the power of social media advertising to make sure you’re maximising your customer base.
Optimise for SEO
That’s right – you should be optimising your social media platform pages for SEO, not just your content. Doing so ensures that it’s easier for people to find you if they search for you; they won’t just find your main website (although that’s important too – more on that in a moment), but also your social media profiles, each of which should have distinct (although occasionally overlapping) content. The more of your presence users can find online, the more likely they are to spend time looking at your products, which increases your chances of conversion as a business.
Keep it consistent
This is something you can achieve with a dedicated team of social media writers, each of whom knows what your company’s core values are and how to enforce them. Your content should be consistent across all of your platforms. That’s not quite the same thing as your content being identical across all platforms. Your register should be the same no matter where you’re posting (although different demographics will alter that register somewhat from platform to platform); that way, consumers will know your brand is solid and dependable, and they’ll be able to rely on your content.
Make content valuable
Everyone’s idea of valuable content is subjective. This means that no matter what you post, there’s going to be someone reading it who doesn’t think it’s worthwhile. Still, you can maximise the value of your content by keeping it informative, statistically-minded, and reasonably brief. A thousand-word opinion piece is not as useful as an instructive video, for example, or a study that demonstrates a point you’re trying to make. The more valuable your content is, the more people you’re likely to attract with it and the more retention you’re going to see.
Shore up brand loyalty
Brand loyalty is a vital concept when it comes to social media marketing. It’s important to keep customers coming back to your content time and time again to ensure that they’re not using your competitors’ services. One way to do this is to create consistently great content, but you should make sure to include lots of calls-to-action and to redirect attention back to the brand wherever possible. Remember that although you want to create valuable content, your primary purpose is to increase awareness of your business. As such, your content should always reinforce your business’ values.
Don’t overdo it
Although posting content regularly is good, there is such a thing as too much. If you inundate your readers with content, they’ll quickly grow tired of the frequency with which you post. You need to keep your customers keen; they should always be looking forward to new content from you without ever growing bored with what you’re posting. The upside to this is that you can think of fresh concepts between posts so that your content always feels fresh.