You might be popular among your friends and family on your personal social media account, but managing social media for your business can be daunting. Your brand’s social media account is essentially a personal face of your company in the eyes of its followers. How you use your brand’s social media account can have big consequences for your business, many of them good, some of them … well, not as good.
However, you have nothing to freak out about. When you break it down into some simple, easy-to-remember steps, social media marketing is more manageable than you may think.
Six steps to get started with social media marketing
- Define your goals — Before you do anything else, you need to decide on what you hope to gain through social media marketing. Are you trying to generate more leads for your business? Are you looking to make a platform that is easier for customer service? Perhaps, both?
Determine how you want to use your brand’s social media platforms and form a strategy that matches your goals. - Research your audience — People have favorite social media platforms that they spend more time on than other social media platforms. Find out where your target audience likes to spend most of their time and make sure your brand has a strong presence there. For some brands, this may be Facebook. For others, it may be Twitter or Instagram.
Sure, it’s probably in your best interest to have a presence on multiple platforms, but as far as where you’ll spend the most of your time (and money), you should be where your target audience loves to be. - Share great content — Part of improving your brand’s visibility online is to create optimized content that is findable in search engines. You can also share this same content that you publish on your site with your followers on social media.
The majority of the content you share should be informative or entertaining to your audience. Yes, it’s OK to promote your brand every now and then, but what your followers are more likely to engage with is content they’ll find useful. - Create a schedule — Try posting on a regular schedule. This will make your life easier and can be something your followers regularly look forward to. You can even create posts in advance and post them at the right time on your schedule. Be careful when doing this, though. If there is a current tragic event, you’ll want to avoid ignorantly posting something chipper or insensitive just because it was prepared in advance.
- Respond to comments (yes, that includes criticism) — You have to get social on social media. People leave comments, feedback and reviews on social media platforms. You may not always be able to respond to these, but you should do your best to try. Thank people for positive comments. Answer questions. Respond to criticism politely and offer to fix solutions (don’t get sucked into arguments, though — if they’re just looking for a fight, you don’t need to respond anymore).
- Get a little personal — Share posts about life in your workspace. Share photos of you and your co-workers enjoying what you do. Share testimonials and stories of your customers if they agree to it.
People love seeing other people more than a corporate logo on social media. Help your brand break the barrier by sharing more personal and relatable content.
Talk to Burg & Co. today about starting social media marketing
Reaching your audience on social media can drive them toward your site and guide them toward becoming leads and customers. Our marketing experts at Burg & Co. can help you make this happen. Contact Burg & Co. today to learn more about social media marketing or to schedule a consultation.
