No one can deny the impact that social media can have on a business’s online presence. In discovery, a quality social media presence can help someone find and be introduced to your business, brand, & value proposition from their device and preferred social media platform. When qualifying your business a strong social media presence with an engaged audience can help create a sense of trust & quality for your brand.
As a matter of fact, social networks are one of the most popular ways to research brands, right after search engines. Your social media presence needs to be engaging, relevant, and provide value; all at the same time. This can seem like a daunting task, but a necessary one, here are some tips on managing your social media presence for results you can see.
Create Quality Content
Make sure your content is something worth listening to, because the content your brand produces is a reflection of your brand. This means that while you should create as much content as you can, you have to ensure your stay within your means to create something that is consistently quality.
Imagine seeing a post about any service company and seeing that they misspelled a certain industry term, or mentioned some outdated information. This could reflect to the viewer that the company does not review their work, and may not be that on top of their services and industry.
On the other side, if a viewer sees a post on LinkedIn and learns about a new industry update that they did not know about, the viewer will be thankful for the content and will establish the brand as an expert in their industry and field. This ensures that your company stays in the viewers mind and could lead to an immediate conversion, a conversion in the future, or a personal referral.
Learn What Works
Creating content is the first step, but to continue creating content for the sake of posting can leave you missing out on some great feedback from the people that matter the most, your audience. A great way to see viewer feedback is through your analytics. Each social media platform has a different way of showing user engagement and actions, but a good review can give you great insight on your postings.
You can gain insight on the best time to post (based on when you see the most engagement), see what kind of content gets more shares, see the type posts that get clicks or saves, and much more. By reviewing the analytics and numbers you can see what is working and what isn’t, straight from the horse’s mouth.
Friendly Communication
When engaging with your audience you want to ensure that you are speaking in a way that reflects the tone you are trying to establish. The days of aggressive sales are done (if they ever existed), and pushing products down your audience’s throat can set a tone of aggressive sales.
Being blunt and rude on comment replies can show your viewer that they are a nuisance, and they can be put off on engaging with your company.
The words you use and the format mean a lot when trying to speak with your audience. Make sure your good intentions are apparent, having a second pair of eyes review your post can be a great way to ensure you are communicating what you want to, both verbally and nonverbally.
Use Scheduling Tools
With so many platforms, different content types, and communities online; social media management can seem like a very big task. A great way to minimize your daily workload for your social media is to use a scheduling tool to help manage your daily tasks.
Some great tools for managing your social media posts are the following:
The benefit of a tool is that you can do more things on a single platform, viewing more social media platforms and metrics easily. With post automation you can create your content for later and have it set to post when you’ll see the most engagement.
Removing repetitive tasks will open your time to create more quality content and be more authentic and engaging with your audience.
Be Authentic & Engaging
A must for any social media presence, because without authenticity & engagement, you’re missing the whole point of social media, being social.
Something too many companies do is post a lot of great content, but then not connect with other businesses. You may get the casual follower, but by engaging with other profiles you create a push and pull effect. You ensure they see you by directly engaging them, and create an easy motive and reason for them to engage back. A reply, thoughtful communication, sharing another post, all of these things help create a better social media presence, one of engagement.
And always ensure your message and actions are authentic with good intention. In the 21st century people have learned to see what a real message is vs a fake one. If your mindset is purely to get them to buy a product or service, you’ll come off as salesy and they probably won’t respond, much less follow your brand. Create a message on the emphasis of creating and leaving value for the person; it tends to pay off big returns in the long run.
Social media can be your biggest strength or an achilles heel, but regardless of your current standing, a quality social media presence can only benefit your company. These tips should set you up for success to get some great results from your social media platforms. Make sure to try new things and be consistent and you’ll have an engaged audience for your industry and field in no time!
