Do I need to be active on social media?
New social media platforms are emerging all the time, and it may be difficult for business owners to stay on top of the latest digital platforms while also running a business. However, if your customers are using social media, it is an important channel for your business to stay connected with your customer base, build new relationships, and ultimately generate additional revenue for your business. We will try to sort out the concepts for you and hopefully make it a little less daunting to get started with social media.
Choose the right social media platforms for your business
With a growing number of social media platforms and channels, most businesses need to choose a few specific social media platforms they want to focus most of their time and resources on. This decision should be based on the specific target group for your business. Who is your target customer, and on which social media platforms do they consume information? There are several online resources that will provide you with the demographic profiles of the different social media platforms. Use this information to ensure that you deploy most of your resources where you can reach the maximum number of people within your target group.
What should you post on social media?
Memes, cat videos, and news. What should you post? There are no set rules or guidelines that limit what you can create. You do need to make sure that you create and post content that represents your company and does not conflict with its values. Do you drive a young company that targets a young audience? If so, memes and cat videos may be perfect posts to create. Are you targeting other companies and organizations? Then it might be more beneficial to create content for how to achieve good results in your industry. Start by thinking about how you can add value to your content consumers.
Inform, entertain, or educate
A simplified way of looking at content creation is that your goal should be to inform, entertain, or educate the content consumer. There can obviously be some overlap and a mix of all three in a single piece of content as well. Decide what will work best for your target audience and for your business. Explore different ideas that match both your company's brand and your target group's interests.
Think long term
Social media can be a great asset for your business - if used correctly. Plan and structure how you want to work with social media. A good way is to create a calendar. Depending on your level of ambition, you can create it for a few weeks or several months, but it should help you plan your content and stick to a coherent strategy for your social media activities.
Create quality content
In many cases, for content to be engaging, the consumer needs to have some kind of emotional reaction to the content. Try to create content that is relevant and shows why your particular product or service would solve their issues and make their lives easier. Show the value that your company can offer a potential customer and try to include a combination of emotions and information in your content flow. However, be sure not to make your posts feel like advertising. Most social media consumers are not interested in browsing through a stream of ads.
Track your results
Find a way to track your results. Make sure you track your views and clicks on the different social media platforms and have a good way to regularly view statistics from your website. Seeing results from your efforts is often the best motivator to continue to create quality content.
Read more about how to track statistics from your website
here.
