When you use social media for marketing, you must be organized in your plan of attack. With so many channels, it’s easy to wind up with a scattershot effort, as you try to reach the largest possible audience. But you’re not a celebrity, so the size of your audience doesn’t matter—it’s the quality that counts. Here’s how to reach the people who can contribute to your bottom line.
Social media provides a great platform for you to enhance your business’s brand visibility without spending money on direct advertising. Creating and sharing interesting, relevant content on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X, and others is an effective way to engage with customers and prospects. Posting regularly, interacting with your community, and leveraging content from other sites and users can organically build a loyal following. Social media also gives you a platform for real-time communications to address inquiries and develop stronger customer relationships.
Where to Begin
Start by finding out where your customers and prospects hang out—and why. People use different social media platforms for different purposes. They may favor one for communication, another for entertainment, and another to find products and services they need. Find out which platforms your target audience regularly use to learn about what you offer. Ask them in person, or text or email them. Search online for studies on your market, and for analytics tools that track your audience’s online behaviors.
Take a step-by-step approach. Do not attempt to get traction on every platform out there. Spreading yourself wide can end up giving you less exposure to the people you want to reach. Instead, focus on one or two social media platforms where you can make a quality impact. Build a presence on those platforms before moving on to others (if they’re even necessary). Create a goal for each platform, and hone your message and visual content to get to that goal with your audience. Keep asking yourself, “What’s the most important thing I want to achieve right now?”
Keep Developing Your Content
The two overarching social media goals are to create interest in what you do and to build trust with customers and prospects. Content on your social media business pages should be informative, inspiring, even entertaining if you can swing it. Above all, don’t just talk about yourself. Follow the 80/20 rule—80% of your message is about how you can solve people’s problems and make their lives easier, and no more than 20% about your business. Finally, social media gives your audience a unique, personalized brand experience, so make sure that everything you post is an extension of your business’s branding.
Commit to Your Program
How you use social media for marketing is different from how you participate in social media on your personal accounts—and that takes more time. That’s because there are many ways to go and you need to explore them all. Plus, you need to post consistently—this is critical to making an impact on your audience. You need to continue to check your social media feed, to create and post new content, and to respond to questions and comments from prospects and customers. If you can’t afford to have an employee or third-party supplier do this, make time for it in your schedule.
To help out in this effort, use a social media content calendar to plan your posts over the next two or three months. This helps you decide on content, track deadlines, and strategize how to consistently spread your message. You can build a content calendar on a spreadsheet, or use one of the tools designed for the job, such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and CoSchedule.
And remember, your AdviCoach is ready to help you get the most out of your social media efforts.