Social Media – Getting it right

There are two main purposes social media can be used for: Reach and engagement. Depending on the size, stage or service of your business you might want to focus on one of the two.

Are you a start-up, or do you want to promote a new product? Then focussing on reaching a high number of users will be beneficial. Do you want to strengthen the relationship with your customers and create an online community? Then increasing your engagement rates through interactive postings will be the better strategy.

You can use social media advertising and boosting to promote your posts and reach very target audiences based on each goal.

Write down how many people you want to reach or how many interactions you want to get within a given time period. If you reach those numbers earlier – you might want to raise your targets. If you fail to reach them by a fair bit – adjust your goals to more realistic numbers. Always keep track of your stats.

What is your company’s voice?

In most cases, the best person to manage social media channels for any business is someone within that business. Social media needs to be right up-to-date and focused on the company’s activities. Someone in-house is connected enough to ensure all posts reflect the company’s attitude and values.

Why is a brand’s voice so important? Your social media presence is part of your overall brand identity. It has to resonate with how you write your emails, how you promote offers and how your sales team talks on the phone. It’s part of the picture you’re painting and the idea you’re creating into your customers and targets minds. On social media your brand appears within normal people’s life updates, so you need to come across personal to fit in but professional to gain trust.

Consider whether your potential clients are on platforms like Facebook or Twitter looking for businesses and services like yours. Aligning with your brand’s voice you have to pick on which channels you want it to speak for your company.
You can find the demographics of users of every platform from Facebook, to Instagram and LinkedIn within minutes through a quick Google search.

Generally speaking, you can follow these rules:

• Is your target audience rather young? Do your products have wide appeal? – Then Facebook is a good fit.
• Are you generally targeting businesses or professionals? – Try LinkedIn to reach the right audience.
• Do you offer niche and/or more expensive products or services? – Instagram is a great platform to show your product’s or service’s features in visual detail.
• And maybe you are better off using more targeted forms of customer acquisition after all.

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Before you start your social media marketing efforts – no matter if in-house or external but especially if more than one person is in charge – have a strategy for negative feedback in place. Your band’s voice isn’t only determined by how formal or informal you speak to your audience, or by which emojis you are using, but also by your reaction to users comments, good and bad. If you have a fixed plan at hand about what to do when you get negative responses, you’ll save time and stress for your employees in charge.

How to create content that turns followers into customers?

It is a fact that potential customers are best reached when they are actively seeking for their problems to be solved or needs to be filled. Like any other marketing activity, you want to show (and sell) solutions.

All your social media activities have to fulfil one purpose: adding value to your products and/or services.

Use these platforms to give detailed insights and information about your offerings. You could do that with great visual images of product details, a live Q&A about a service, an insight story about your office life, or a testimonial of a happy client.

Familiarise yourself with the different tools the different platforms offer. Instagram focuses on strong visuals and catchy images. On LinkedIn, you can share long(er) articles and information. Facebook is a bit of a mix of both.
Note: Video is the number one type of content users want to see (across all platforms), so consider investing some time into motion images. 

To get users from your social accounts onto your website and then into your online shop or inbox you have to have good and compelling CTAs in place. Your Calls To Action can be links to your blog posts, products, offers, sales, newsletter subscriptions, etc. Your options are nearly limitless. Get creative! 

More helpful tools and tricks for you:

• 5 great free Stock Photography (and Video) Websites 
• The best Tools to manage a busy Social Media Schedule
• Social Media Stats every Marketer should know [Infographic] 
• How does Social Media fit into your Content Marketing Strategy
• And our Social Media Cheat Sheet, with summarized pros and cons of all the main platforms.
  (Including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, & Tik Tok)

Not sure social media is the right marketing tool for your business? In our post-Covid world, social media use has globally increased. You do not want to miss out on the opportunity to reach that many prospects with such little investment. Read about what social media can do for your business and how you can use it to your advantage.

If you’ve read the article carefully you know that we’re not going to promote ourselves as your social media copywriter. We are convinced that this is best done in-house for that personal touch and consistent tone of voice.

BUT we can help by setting up accounts and deciding on the right platforms; creating graphics and editing images; tailoring your “About” information; planing a schedule and implementing it.

The source of the information always has to be you, otherwise, you risk having irrelevant messages sent to the world in real-time about your business and products.