Social Media is one of the biggest things to ever happen to marketing. Done well it can benefit businesses hugely; driving engagement, getting your brand out there and importantly, giving your business a personality. With over three billion users worldwide, the power of social media is not to be underestimated. But is social media worth it for my business? Let’s take a closer look.
Get your brand out there!
80% of businesses using social media say their main objective is to increase their brand awareness. One of the main challenges we all face when we start a business is getting our name out there to key players in our field. We all rely on word of mouth and recommendations but why not utilise some of the biggest platforms around to put your business out to the world?
Before you dive into your social media strategy, it’s a good idea to firstly sit down and create your brand strategy. One of our partners, Fliss Lee (Honest Folk) wrote a very helpful blog about what branding actually is. That way, you can be more confident that all your social media platforms will be consistent. You want your brand to be instantly recognisable, no matter where you are.
Maximise your platforms to their full potential.
Similarly to if you were running a print, radio and TV ad simultaneously, think about how your approach might be subtly different on each platform.
When designing your social media strategy, think about what your objectives are for each platform you’re using. For example, making a certain number of relevant connections on LinkedIn, how many retweets can you get on your latest campaign or increasing your website traffic by a percentage based on visitors from Facebook?
Connect with current customers.
You’ve established your brand, you’ve set up your platforms, now what? Now is the time to have fun. Sprinkle your content with your personality. Give your audience a sense of you.
Not only is social media an enormous marketing platform, it has revolutionised how businesses can run their customer service efforts. We can now engage with our customers like never before – getting direct feedback, finding out what services they want going forward, drumming up excitement about new projects.
On the other side of the coin, your customers can get to know you – your values, your goals, your achievements. Be mindful of how much you decide to share with your followers. After all, this is your company social media profile, you want to make sure things are kept professional and strictly business.