In years gone by, in the days before social media, businesses would advertise as best they could with newspapers, magazines, notice boards and billboards, to name but a few. In the social media era, things are different. If you stick to traditional advertising, you will easily lose out to your more tech-savvy competitors.
In 2020, there were over 3.6 billion social media users worldwide. That’s a number that is predicted to grow to 4.41 billion by 2025. It’s a simple fact that whether you are self-employed, a small business or a large multinational organisation, you will need to have a social media presence, to allow you to reach and connect with your customer base, which could be global. Social media users tend to use their accounts daily, giving you and your business the perfect opportunity to reach them. Take a look at the survey below, to see how many active users each platform has, as of October 2020.
In previous blogs, we talked about how and why you should optimise your website for search engine performance and why it is important to have a thorough Google Business profile for your business. Whilst very important, in a world that places heavy emphasis on social media, they are only two ingredients of the cake. For the remainder, you need to set up a social media presence for your business. Don’t worry though, you don’t have to feel daunted by this. Below are six different things for you to try, to create a good social media presence for your business.
Build Awareness of your Business
To put it simply, if you do nothing, the vast majority of your potential clients won’t even know you exist, which means you will lose out on a lot of potential business to your competitors. In addition to having a website and a Google Business profile, social media is the key here. It is completely free to create a profile on most of these platforms for your business and it can exponentially increase your visibility, so it’s a win-win.
Right now, you might be wondering how to actually engage potential visitors and clients, once you have created your free social media accounts. In all honesty, it’s not just about posting as much as you can, of all types. That can be daunting to visitors of your accounts and can actually put them off using it. According to a social media survey by Clutch in 2017, the following types of social media content were the most engaging:
- Written articles – 27%
- Videos – 26%
- Images – 24%
- Offers/promotions – 10%
- Infographics – 7%
- Quizzes/polls – 3%
- Webinars – 2%
Clearly written articles, videos and images are the most engaging types of content, according to those surveyed. Knowing this, it is still important to think about what you actually want to achieve by using these. Creating a ‘brand strategy’ is important here. Are you wanting new customers to discover your services? Are you wanting to bring more shoppers into a local store? By understanding this, you will be able to decide which platform suits you best.
Effectively Communicate your Brand Authority
Have you ever been thinking about using a business for its products and services, like a plumber, hairdresser or even a restaurant? When you were thinking about using them, did you take a look on their social media profiles and find nothing, or something well thought-out? Even if you didn’t, that’s what the vast majority of people do these days.
To ensure all current and potential new clients see an established, knowledgeable and respected business, you need to make sure that you are regularly updating your accounts with useful and exciting content, to grab their attention. You should always look to demonstrate that you’ve got the expertise your potential clients are looking for. For example, you could do that by creating engaging written or video tutorials, or informative articles, as I am doing here. By doing this, you will be displaying your knowledge and establishing confidence in potential clients or customers.
Show your Brand’s Authenticity
When I talk about authenticity, I don’t just mean ensuring that your content is original (i.e., you were the first one to create it). It’s much more than that. You don’t want your content to have a dry, boring, almost corporate feel to it. Instead, you want to show that your brand has a wonderful personality that your potential clients or customers would want to interact with. With all your posts, you need to be aware that they will tell your clients a lot about you and will often help make their mind up as to whether or not they want to give you their money.
To that end, you need to show that you are engaging and approachable, whilst at the same time, you are able to take a stand, without offending others. Take a look at the Twitter thread below.
Whilst you may not be a Leeds United fan, or even a football fan, their twitter account has a reputation for taking no prisoners, whilst being humorous and engaging. When your business is on social media, you will inevitably get interaction from members of the public, some who will be happy with you and some who won’t. Even if you get negative feedback, you need to handle it well. Your potential clients will want to see a real personality behind your social media profiles, so show it to them.
Stimulate Client or Customer Engagement
If you have created social media accounts, but you’re still not getting the reach you want, you might be wondering what you can do to change that. Remember, your content needs to be stimulating. You want to ask questions of your audience, post relevant content and even use the right hashtags to attract the audience you want. You also don’t have to be posting the same type of content all the time. For example on one week, you might want to post an interesting video tutorial and on another, you might want to post a ‘day in the life’ insight into how your business works, to show your audience that there are real people behind the accounts.
Josh Krakauer, founder and CEO of Sculpt said “It’s really important that companies have the right organisational structure to support social media. A customer support team and a product development team tends to be extremely effective.”
Of course, for a small-scale business, having separate divisions isn’t always possible, or even necessary. It is simply a recognition that you don’t have to do everything, all of the time. For small businesses, often the best way of achieving a successful social media presence is to do something as simple as setting time aside in the calendar each week, guaranteeing you have time to post to your social media followers and garner support.
Avoid Overspending on Paid Adverts
Have you ever been scrolling through your social media accounts and seen, for example on Facebook ‘Sponsored’ on top of a post, such as for a product or service? That means that the owner of that post paid to have it appear in your feed, and that of 1000s of other people. It is likely to be part of their advertising campaign strategy.
Large companies have the capital and resources to spend a lot of money on these. However, for the smaller businesses, this isn’t always possible. If a small business is desperate to get new customers, they can often spend far too much on paid adverts for pretty much every post they make. That leaves them short of money to actually run their business, which is something nobody wants. It also could mean that the paid adverts become less effective, since they are no longer unique.
My recommendation, as always, is to primarily ensure that your social media activity is optimised, which includes using the right hashtags and posting regular, engaging content across the platforms you operate. Paid adverts are important but to use them effectively, you want to decide which posts or types of posts should be boosted by paid adverts. This could be, for example, when you start a new promotion such as a Black Friday offer, or when you launch a new product line or service.
Provide Support to your Customers and Clients
With the invention of social media, gone are the days when it’s a necessity to call a customer service phone number only to find you are far down in the queue and you’ve got an age to wait to speak to someone, not even knowing if they are going to be helpful to you. Now, you can simply turn to Facebook, Twitter or even Instagram for the support you need.
The majority of customers these days want to support businesses that are perceived to be caring and compassionate. That makes it vitally important that you cement such a reputation very early on. After all, first impressions count, don’t they? Here are some ways you can do that through your social media accounts:
- Respond as quickly as you can to all questions and concerns that are raised.
- Always make sure you are positive and helpful with your communication.
- Make all customers feel heard, even if they are being highly critical.
- Know when you need to take certain conversations into the private domain, through messaging.
How will Digital Lychee Help You?
Social media is an ever-developing phenomenon. It is impossible for all businesses, especially new and small ones, to know what to do right from the off. That’s why at Digital Lychee, I will provide you with all the advice I can to get you up and running, free of charge. If you require more in-depth support, no matter how big or small the website, then I would be very happy to discuss your specific requirements, which would involve a small extra fee. Get in touch now to find out more.