Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed an easy way to connect with the world online. Once used only for personal use, businesses have swiftly realised the marketing potential that social media can have. Alongside having a website, social media is becoming a must-have medium for every business wanting to promote themselves online. If you’re thinking of creating a Facebook and Twitter page for your business or already have social media pages and are wondering how to utilise them, here is a brief guide to help you market your business effectively and conquer social media.
Choose the social media platform best suited to your business
Not every social media platform is going to be beneficial to your business. Generally, Facebook and Twitter are suitable for all businesses as they attract a wide audience that caters for all types of clientele.
Instagram is another popular social media platform that specialises in sharing images. For businesses with physical products that they can show off such as retailers, restaurants and manufacturers, this is a great platform to have. For other businesses that deal more in services, having a platform may be slightly redundant (for example, if you’re an accounting firm, what images are realistically going to be able to post that gain interest and relate to your business?).
For business-to-business trades, Linked In can be another useful social media platform to promote through – less suitable for business-to-consumer trades. Linked In is a networking site for professionals and allows you to endorse others and search for specific staff in specific industries. For some businesses, this may be even more useful than Facebook and Twitter, and therefore should be the focus of most of your marketing.
Build up a following
If your business’s social media page isn’t popular, people may think that your business is not popular. It’s therefore important as soon as you create social media pages to build up a following. Invite friends and family to like and follow your social media. If you have staff, encourage them to do the same. Next, go about ensuring every client likes and follows you. Buying likes and follows is also an option, although social media sites have recently been having a crackdown on this so be wary.
20% promotional 80% non-promotional
This is the golden rule of social media. Constant promotional posts will not engage strangers to like and follow. Many use social media in their spare time as a leisure tool and are more drawn to posts that are entertaining or informative. From here you can start to convert social media users into clients.
Popular non-promotional posts include facts, news and anecdotes relating to your client’s interests. For example, if you’re a mechanic, try posting car news and advice on how to prevent faults and improve economy.
For your promotional content, try keeping it fun by relating it to current events (eg. ‘Need a last minute Valentine Day gift?’ or ‘need help warding off the January blues?’) or alternatively run a competition (this is one of the major reasons people said they followed businesses on social media).
Needless to say, you should be posting content all the time. The busier your social media, the busier and more successful your business will appear to be.
Link to your website
Make sure that your social media links to your website. You can do this by simply adding a link in the information box, as well making regular posts linking to your website.
On top of this, you can also link your website to your social media. You can embed a social media badge onto your homepage that allows any visitors to your website to easily like you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter.
Meanwhile, if you run a blog on your website, you can synchronise these posts so that they’re automatically shared on social media.
Use images
Images are a great way to lure people into your social media pages as they immediately make an impression on people’s news feeds. As discussed already, for some businesses there may not be much to photograph. You can try to be creative with stock pictures that represent a mood or thought you have. Memes are also an option, but makes sure they suit the formality of your business.
When taking photographs, ensure that they are high-quality as to not damage the reputation of your business. In many trades you may be able to outsource professionals that can take these photos, for example if you run a hotel and are trying to show off your rooms on social media, a specialised hotel photographer might be worthwhile investing in.
Run ads
Both Facebook and Twitter allow you to run ads that will appear on the news feeds and timelines of stranger, helping you to get more clientele. On Facebook, you can promote a post, or promote your entire page. You can also pay for PPC ads on all platforms. Generally you will be able to set the demographic, allowing you to create a more focused advertising campaign if your business is niche. This includes age, location and interests.
Post in community groups
On Facebook, there are a number of community groups that you may be able to post a link to your Facebook page in. These community groups work like conventions for certain groups of people and are a great opportunity for networking, providing you regularly post and interact with users. Some community groups may have strict rules when it comes to promotion – avoid breaking these rules or otherwise you will be thrown out of the group. In such cases, you can still answer queries and ask questions under your page name, getting your name out there and creating a persona for your business. As well as groups centred around interests, there are also groups for local regions and areas. For many you may need permission from an existing member to join, although this is generally not hard to obtain.
Keep on top of trends
Relating your posts to trends will give your social media greater appeal. A great way to jump on trends is to use Twitter’s ‘trending’ feature. This lists all the most common hashtags of the day – the topics that people are talking about.
Hashtags are a way of categorising posts to get them seen by a greater audience. People searching for tweets related to a certain event will be able to find your tweet if you’ve hashtagged that event. For example if you want to let people know that you’ve got a stall at a business convention, you can hashtag the name of the business convention in.
Even if your business has nothing to do with a certain event, there are ways that you can creatively link yourself in. You can create a ‘feeling inspired by #theolympics’ post or wish happy birthday to an influential business figure. Just be careful hopping onboard some trends that may be too overtly political and polarising, as well as exploiting events such as celebrity deaths that could be seen as distasteful.
Time your posts wisely
The time and day in which you post on social media is important and should be catered to your clientele. Business-to-business trades are best off posting on social media during weekdays between nine and five. This is when other businesses will be operating and using their social media and when they are most likely to look for services and product to help with their company. Friday evening should definitely be off-limits.
For business-to-consumer trades the opposite times are true – weekday evenings and weekdays being the most popular times to check social media. Mornings before work are also popular time. To target these clients, you may wish to schedule social media posts for certain times. This saves you having to post on your business’s social media out of working hours.
Note that there are exceptions to this rule. If you want to relate a post to a breaking news story, you should post it then and there to get the biggest impact. Also, if your clients are international, it really doesn’t matter when you post as people will be using social media around the clock.
Cross promote
The last big way in which you can use social media is to cross promote. This involves tweeting or posting about another business in exchange for them doing the same for you. This is best done with businesses that have different purposes but similar client bases. You will then both get the benefit of one another’s followers, potentially gaining new clientele. It is also possible to pay people with large social media followings to promote your product on their Facebook and Twitter pages. In this case, you should also make sure that your product is likely to appeal to their fanbase in order to create the best impact.
