1. Set Measurable Social Media Goals
How do you want social media to help your small business? Establishing these objectives will help set marks that can be tracked and measured, which will allow you to focus on winning strategies, and rapidly pivot as things change.
Some common strategic social media goals and objectives include:
- Build Brand Awareness:Spread your name publically, with a positive perception of your business.
- Gain New Customers:Drive traffic to your company social media page or website.
- Boost Customer Service:Interact with potential customers by answering questions, or help existing customers with your products or services.
- Increase Engagement:Engage with fans/followers by providing reasons for them to mention your brand and refer others to do business with you.
2. Choose the Right Social Media Networks
Social media activity can be time-consuming. It can be damaging to try and manage all the networks because it will water down your resources and take away from the channels that bring successful results. Use your target customer and their online behaviors, to determine which networks will work best for your products and services. Narrowing down the field for your small business social media strategy will give you more time to create the right content for the right followers.
3. Maintaining Brand Uniformity Across All Your Social Media Profile Pages
The perception of your company’s identity should be uniform across all channels. You’re not only building a stronger brand but also creating awareness and loyalty. Make it easy for consumers to identify your business by maintaining consistency across the following areas:
- Logo & Tagline.Always use the same logotype for your brand. This is a huge visual that will stick with your audience. Maintain the same tagline everywhere and in conjunction with your logo.
- Use attractive graphics and photos that will strongly resonate with your consumers. Customize any social media page with images; use the same ones across networks to maintain a similar look and feel for your brand.
- Company Description.Use a clear, easy-to-digest “about us” description that is consistent across all your pages. Get to the point in the fewest words; your customers should instantly grasp what your business can do for them. Add your website in this description if you have room.
- Tone & Voice.What is the personality of your brand, and what kinds of words do you use to communicate? Connect with your customers in a genuine way, and in the same way across all social media channels.
4. Always Choose Content Quality Over Quantity
More is not always better! Similar to your website and blog, it is important to generate quality social media content that is valuable to your customers. A good social media content mix includes equal parts of the following:
- Promotional
- Thought leadership
- Engagement with followers
Ensure your social pages stay up-to-date with relevant and timely posts. Create an editorial calendar to help organize and schedule your small business social media strategy over the course of 3 months. Revisit it at the end of the set period, and update the calendar to reflect content types, which gained the most engagement.
5. Monitor Social Media Analytics
Use social media analytics weekly to provide the data required to support your goals & objectives. There are a few tools that do this: through a dashboard like Hootsuite or Buffer, with Google Analytics, or by using the native tool that each specific social network may offer.
6. Evaluate Competitors
Take a look at what’s happening around your business in social media by examining how competitors manage their brands on social channels. Find a few benchmark influencers in your industry, to see how your small business social media strategy can improve. Follow and engage with them!
Key items to monitor:
- Branding
- Popularity
- Frequency of posts
- Engagement
- Types of content
7. Patience and Consistent for Social Media Success
It can take time to build a loyal following, by gaining trust and nurturing the relationship. While social media posting may be fleeting among the massive amounts of content generated every minute, it pays to implement a strategy and target the right consumers.
By following the above best practices with consistency and patience, you’ll be on your way to social media success!
Written by Sonia Chopra Gregory
Originally posted on freshsparks.com