Social media offers small business one of the most powerful branding tools and it’s essential to have a presence in order to engage with customers, reach a wider audience and keep up with the competition.
Knowing where to start can be a daunting prospect, but don’t let that keep you away. Instead, take a look at our ‘how to’ guide for building your brand on social media.
HOW TO…
Build a strategy
Social media can offer one of the most cost-effective ways to connect with your target market. It is constantly evolving so you need to put in place an adaptable strategy that can keep up and move with the times. Your overall business goals and objectives are essential to building your strategy.
- Think about whether you want to boost web traffic, increase sales, raise awareness of your products and services or all of the above
- Identify your target audience and find out which platforms can be used to best reach them
- Align your social presence across all platforms with your brand values and voice
- Remember that social media is a two-way conversation – listening and responding is as important as the content you publish. Make sure your strategy includes clear guidelines for dealing with any negative feedback and customer complaints
- Establish metrics to help you measure and analyse your efforts so that you can allocate resources effectively.
Choose your platform(s)
Use free analytics tools to see which social media sites are sending you visitors. Once you know where to find your target audience make sure you develop a presence on those platforms. Think about what each platform has to offer your business and take time to understand the etiquette of each one.
- Twitter and Facebook provide direct access to customers and prospects and can be effective marketing tools
- Facebook advertising can be an effective way to broaden your reach if you want to gain more followers quickly
- Pinterest can be ideal for your business if you have products you want to showcase through images
- Google+ can help your business rank on search engine results page and if you create a local profile, you business will also appear on Google Maps
- LinkedIn is a business networking platform, where it is worth your business having a profile.
Post the right content
Your content should reflect your brand voice and align with your values. If you’re a serious business, for example, then create content that reflects that tone and similarly, if your brand is fun then make sure fun is reflected with more upbeat posts. It’s important that your posts are consistent at all times and across all platforms.
- Posts should be a true reflection of your brand
- Never make your posts all about you. Find out what your targets are interested in and create relevant and meaningful content
- Establish a content calendar that also schedules your posts at regular intervals – too frequently and you risk losing credibility, not frequent enough and you could be forgotten about
- Be careful about posting the same content on every channel. What works on Facebook and Twitter, for example, would not work on LinkedIn
- If you’re finding it a challenge to know what to post on what platform, review what type of content is shared by other businesses in your industry and what the audience is responding to.
Social media can be an effective way to reinforce your company brand and all that it stands for. As a two-way channel, it offers a great marketing tool, provides you with chance to gauge instant feedback and is an effective way to learn more about what your target market wants.
For more advice on building your social presence, speak to the team at your local Kwik Kopy today.
