Social Media for Your Business

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Social media can be a powerful tool for businesses and nonprofits. However, it’s much more than creating a profile and sharing a few posts. To maximize social media’s potential for your organization, start with these simple tips to grow your online presence and engagement.

Review your social media profiles regularly

Whether your profiles are new or more established, it’s important to regularly review them for accurate and consistent information. If you capture a person’s attention with your content and inspire them to take action, a worst-case scenario is for them to call an outdated number or visit a broken webpage link. This is also a good time to ensure you’re utilizing “business” profiles for a more professional appearance and additional analytics insights.

Consider which platforms your target audience uses

New social platforms continue to emerge, adding to the already crowded competition for shoppers’ attention. If your business has limited resources to put behind social media, start by focusing on a few networks that you can actively manage well rather than trying to be everywhere at once.

However, don’t write off new networks altogether. What’s emerging today may be the go-to platform for your audience surprisingly soon. When you consider joining a new network, research if it’s where your target audiences are spending their time. If so, perhaps it’s time to claim that page and handle.

Ask for the follow

Are your employees and board members following you? Start with low-hanging fruit, and remind those groups of your profiles in your next meeting or email. Conversations with customers are another great opportunity to ask for a follow. Also, include your profiles on your print and digital materials (including your email signature) to make it as easy as possible to connect with you.

Engage with existing followers

If your profiles are rather established, you’ve likely grown an engaged follower base. However, don’t take those followers for granted while trying to attract new ones. If users are commenting on your posts or tagging your profile in their content, like those posts and comment back. With their permission, consider recognizing them by sharing their content on your profiles. Just like the adage of it being easiest to maintain an existing customer, the same applies to loyal social media followers.

Develop a content plan and media library

While many great social posts are serendipitous opportunities, you should have a plan behind the overall content you share. Start by developing a baseline posting frequency that’s manageable for you, whether it’s once a week or more often; this helps to prevent “binge posting” of posting multiple times sporadically. Let that great unplanned photo be the icing on the cake of an intentional content plan.

Whether it’s digitally or on paper, map out the next week or even the next month of what you can post, taking advantage of special days such as the first day of spring or an employee’s work anniversary. You should also develop a library of images/videos you can fall back on if you find yourself needing additional content at some point.

Follow an 80/20 content mix rule

Let’s face it – people don’t enjoy being sold to. How often do you unsubscribe to an email or unfollow a profile that only pushes products or services? The key to maintaining your followers is providing them with content they want to engage with.

Many organizations follow an 80/20 rule of 80% of their content being educational and/or entertaining with only 20% being an “ask.” Some organizations take that even further to, say a 90-10 policy. Focus on developing rapport with your followers so that when you do ask for a purchase or other call to action, they are listening.

Use hashtags

Hashtags are commonplace from sporting events to news broadcasts and offer a way to explore a larger group of content. Users can search and follow hashtags to discover content from profiles they might not follow or otherwise encounter.

Use relevant hashtags to increase your exposure to new potential followers, and consider starting a hashtag with your organization’s name or tagline; just do the upfront research to ensure your unique hashtag isn’t already being utilized by another entity.

Utilize free resources

Tackling these steps can seem challenging. Luckily, there are great resources to make planning and posting content easy. If you’re short on original photos, many quality websites provide royalty-free images. One of my favorites is Pexels.

When organizing your content plan, Google Drive’s tools offer free documents and spreadsheets for planning and collaborating with team members. Also consider social management tools like Buffer which let you post to multiple platforms simultaneously from one place and schedule posts in advance.

Summary

Social media is an impactful way to introduce your business to new shoppers and stay top-of-mind with your established customers. However, like any marketing channel, it does require consistent attention and effort. Begin following these simple steps today to gain a handle on your social presence and maximize it for the benefit of your business.

Picture of Taylor Brown
Taylor Brown

Taylor is the owner & digital strategist of Go-To Man Marketing. With a passion for digital marketing and analytics, he's helped clients to grow their businesses for more than a decade.

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