Much has been talked about how everyone you know and their aunt is on social media and how important it is for businesses to have an active presence. Many brands/companies have jumped in to the Social Media bandwagon full steam and then fizzled out after a few months or a few years of poor ROI and engagement on their channels. Many brands struggle to engage audience, especially if their social media budget is limited. This post will tell you the basic necessities of Social Media Marketing for business and the mistakes to avoid while doing that.
Pick the Right Channels
It is very important to carefully select the right social media channels for your business. While it is essential to maintain a presence in the Big 4 channels – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus – it is crucial to focus on a few that have the most likelihood of your audience being present. Having a lot of followers on channels does not mean that they are the right audience who will convert into clients. B2C brands do well on Facebook and Instagram while B2B companies fare well on Linkedin and Twitter.
Post Content that Connects
Hard-selling on social media is a huge turn off for the audience and day after day of posting about your products will not get engagement. Many people use social media as their primary news and entertainment source now and it is better to serve them what they seek. Inform your audience, wow them with new information so they feel compelled to engage by either liking/commenting or sharing your post with others. For example, if your company is in the business of laying roads, talk about road safety, inform about new highways being built (even if you are not the one building it), give them trivia about the technology of laying roads – basically anything and everything about Roads. The company/brand gets associated with the domain and that establishes trust and then the audience will start engaging with your channel.
Pictures Speak a Thousand Words
Facebook prefers to show pictures than words to their users – the main reason being that the attention span of social media audience is only a few seconds and within that time it is possible to communicate better with pictures than through words. So make sure you have a picture or video to accompany your posts that strengthens the content of your post. Having a graphic artist to create these posts may not be always necessary but branding your pictures is important.
Have a Budget
Organic Reach (see my post on Facebook Glossary to understand what Organic Reach is) is almost non-existent on Social channels these days and the only way to reach more people is to pay to boost your posts. Creating great content is important but distribution of the content is even more important and it is vital to have a budget for this. Without spending on boosting, all your creative efforts will be a waste since no one will get to see your posts.
Stick to a posting schedule
It is not necessary to post incessantly on your channels since organic reach is not great anyway. But it is important to have a regular frequency of posts depending on your business and the social media channel. If you choose to post more frequently, maintain that frequency at all times. Do not post everyday for 2 months and then go on a silence mode for 2 weeks. It is better to distribute content evenly through the week so your loyal followers know when to expect a post from you.
Be responsive
One of the mistakes that businesses do on Social Media is slip up on responding to audience. If there is a comment on a post, do acknowledge it through a like for the comment or by a reply to it. Similarly, if someone messages your Facebook page, make sure they get a response immediately. If you cannot do it yourself, you can set up an auto response system to do that. This is also very important when you get a negative feedback. An immediate response is always seen favorably by the aggrieved consumer.
Be Dynamic
Social channels are constantly evolving and not a month goes by without an algorithm change on these channels. It is important to stay abreast of these changes so you can adapt your social media strategy to suit the changes. Subscribe to blogs like this to know about the latest in the areas of Digital Marketing and Social Media.
Whether you manage your social channels yourself or have an agency run it for you, knowing these essentials will help you strategise well for the success of your social media marketing.
