5 Tips to Getting Your Business Started On Social Media
With the majority of people spending more time online these days, businesses have come to realize the value of an online presence. If you need to reach customers, you need to go where the customers are.
Everybody, from teachers to lawyers to students, uses social media. Most people spend more time on Facebook, Twitter and a lot of other forms of social media. If you run a business, it has become important, no, necessary that you reach out to your customers via social media.
So you’ve decided to create social media accounts for your business. There’s just one problem. You’re plagued by the same question all business owners looking to implement a social media marketing strategy face:
“Where do I start?”
Well, for starters, calm down. Relax. Don’t worry. Be happy. Because the answers you seek are what this post is all about, and by the time you’re done reading, you will not only have a better idea of how to start; you will also know how to effectively manage and utilize your social media accounts.
Without further ado, let’s begin:
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Tip #1: Begin with the end in mind
It’s human nature to follow the pack, or herd, if you will. There is a tendency in everyone to look at what other people are doing and just do the same exact thing. Most businesses create social media accounts because they see other businesses doing the same thing. Eventually, at some point, they lose focus, and move on to the next trend, without achieving any significant increase in sales or customer base whatsoever.
You don’t want this to be you.
Before you even create any social media account, the first thing you should do is to decide on what you want to achieve using social media.
Do you want more sales? Do you want to increase the number of prospects you have? Do you want to increase your business exposure?
Decide on your business goal for using social media first. That way you can tailor your strategy to achieve your goal. This tip alone will dramatically increase your chances of success.
Tip #2: Know Your Audience (And Where They Hang Out!)
Someone once said: “Humans were given 2 ears and one mouth so they can listen two times more than they speak”. It might not be politically correct, but there is some benefit to adopting that mindset.
More so, if you’re a business owner. The customer does not really care about you or your product. He does what he wants where he wants and when he wants. Don’t expect your customer to change his habits. Instead, adapt to suit him.
This is important in social media marketing. You need to identify what social media networks majority of your clients use. You can do this by running searches for your product on social media and from the results, you can tell where most of your customers hang out.
These networks are where you want to focus a big part of your social media marketing effort.
Tip #3: Start Small, Go BIGGER
When you first start social media marketing, managing several accounts on different platforms can be a nightmare. It can take up a huge chunk of your time, and also because you have a lot to master on too many different platforms, it will lead to less-than-stellar content. And that is a big no-no.
A better approach would be to first begin with the social networks most used by your clients and then spread to others from there. This way, you will get more time to familiarize yourself with the network. Figure out what works and what doesn’t for the first few you begin with, and then you can create other social media accounts.
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“To fail to plan is to plan to fail” is a statement so popular it has become clichรฉ. When it comes to social media marketing, no plan = no success.
It’s as simple as that. But what is even crazier is that it’s even simpler to create a social media marketing plan.
If you followed the above tips, you should already have an idea of what you want to achieve, who your customers are and where they hang out and what works on each social network your customers use.
All you have to do now is to create a marketing plan. Here are some pointers.
- Have a schedule for how often you update each of your social media accounts. Too much or too little is no “bueno”. This varies across platforms, though. For example, 3-5 posts a week is good for Facebook. 3-5 posts a week on Twitter, on the other hand, implies inactivity.
- Provide value. There’s already too much promotional content on social media. Too much promotional content that gets ignored easily by your clients. Don’t follow the herd. Create content that provides values to your clients and they will love you for it. For every piece of promotional content you post, provide at least 3 times more content with value.
- Have a unique voice. People don’t buy from soul-less corporations. Well, at least not anymore. People buy from people they like. That being the case, your business needs to have a unique voice and persona that your client can easily relate to. A persona that represents your brand’s values and unique selling proposition.
Planning a strategy and then acting on that strategy is absolutely necessary to achieve your goals for social media marketing.
Tip #5: Get A Social Media Management Team
Yes, you can manage all your social media accounts by yourself. Yes, there are social media management tools such as Hootsuite that make it easy to do. However, it is a lot easier and a lot more time efficient to hire a social media management team. You can hire a team internally or outsource it. Ideally, you will need a creative copywriter who can create status updates, a video and photo editor (depending on what kind of business you do) for pictures and videos on Instagram, and a social media marketing analyst to analyze what posts and updates are getting more traction from your clients, and to improve on your strategy as needed.
Social Media Marketing has opened up a ton of opportunities to reach customers like never before. With these tips, it should be pretty easy for you to get your business started on social media today.
GUEST AUTHOR
Sophia Clark is a creative writer from New York who loves to share her thoughts with readers. In my free time, she enjoys writing fiction as well as reading it. Her big dream is to publish a novel one day. Connect with her on Twitter and Google +.
