A social media presence for businesses’ is a great way to reach potential customers and increase your brand visibility. Utilising the popular social media apps with regular content, can be beneficial to attract custom and stay relevant. Social media marketing can be quicker way of being able to reach out, compared to email marketing. For example, content shared online has the possibility to go viral, whether it be local or global at the click of the share button. This means that you can reach a larger following, quicker than an email, as they can have a limit on only going to the people either cc’d in, or on the mailing list. Social media has the potential to be your strongest and most effective marketing lead, but it needs persistence and dedication. It also needs to be done right, as if you do it wrong, you could have spent a lot of time and effort on something that has not gained you any benefits. Here are our tips on how to build your business social media presence.
Build relationships through engagement – Reaching out to your followers through commenting, sharing and liking their content is the best way to quickly boost your profile engagement and follower traffic. Spending as little as 15 minutes a day scrolling through your home feed, leaving comments on posts and sharing to your stories will encourage your posts to go the top of people’s feeds and show up more often when you post something new.
Post your content at optimal times –This can vary between the different social media platforms you may use, but follower and engagement traffic has peaks on certain days and times for your content to get the best reach possible. According to social media blog Hootsuite, the best times to post are usually early mornings or evenings. This is due to it usually being a time where people are on their phones while waking up, on their way to or from work, or are at home after a long day. Posting during these peak times will mean your posts will be the first post they see on their timelines when they open the app. Also looking back on old content that gained more likes and comments can give you a good idea as to when most of your followers could be active.
Use popular hashtags – Using hashtags within the caption of your post, and also adding some to the comments section will allow your content to appear in more related searches. For example if a telephone answering company looking to target local business did a post with general hashtags, such as “#telephoneansweringservice, #LocalBusiness, #Bookings, #Office, #Hertfordshire”, their posts would come up in more general searches related to these subjects.
Create visually pleasing content and stick with a brand style – Research shows that posts containing eye catching graphics and colour images grab attention, leading to more likes and comments. Research by bloggers, Social Media Lab shows that colour photos gained 24% more likes and 46.11% more comments, than black and white photos. Concluding their research, they found that social content with more imagery, and less text performed 14.14% higher in follower reach, 39.5% higher with likes, and 22.2% better with comments. When creating your content, sticking to a brand/colour theme that matches your business logo or brand will keep your content in a flush style on your grid, and will allow your followers to recognise your business and social content when it is posted.
Advertise giveaways or offers- Depending on your business type, and what services you offer, running posts with incentives such as giveaways or discounted offers can attract new followers and page attention. For example you could run a 50% off deal for new clients only to attract new customers to your services, or you could run incentives such as ‘10% off your next order’ if people share your page with their friends and family. It may only be something small, but the client reach will increase through word of mouth, and people are happy to share if they also gain something from it.
Plan your content – Planning your content ahead of time will allow you to have a clear plan as to what is coming up throughout each month and what to post on your social media. To stay organised and on schedule, you may find it helpful to print out a weekly or monthly calendar that you can mark off each week when completing tasks.
Decide which platforms are most beneficial – There are a variety of social platforms you can use to expand your reach, such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Pinterest and TikTok to name a few popular channels. Although each are popular in their own way, not all of these platforms may benefit your business and reach the right audience. For example, design orientated companies may rely on the features of Pinterest and gaining an audience on there through their design board and idea pinning tools. If a film or videography based company is looking for a way to share their content and gain a following from this, they may choose Youtube, an online video sharing social channel.
Make use of interactive tools – Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all have interactive tools such as voting stickers and polls. These are useful to get to know your followers, get their opinions and see what they do/don’t like.
Pay attention to what is popular – Keeping an eye out on the latest trends and what is upcoming can really help your content as it will be relevant to what is currently happening. For example, if Christmas is coming up, or a certain national day, create some content based on this so people will likely be more interested to stop and read your post.
Schedule your posts – Using the ‘scheduling’ option can help save time in your day. If you are busy running your business or with clients, and don’t have time to post, having your posts pre planned and ready to go will benefit you.
Make use of paying for adverts – Paying for an Instagram/Facebook advert is a great way to reach a larger audience across the world. When making your ad, make sure it’s eye catching to grabs people’s attention so they stop scrolling and notice your post. You also have the options to change the amount of reach it gets, and ultimately the more you achieve, the better. For example, businesses can start an advert running for as little as £10, if this was to span over 5 days, this could have the potential to reach hundreds more customers.
To conclude, putting these ideas into play will likely take time for them to take effect, but you will see results quickly just by simply using more likes, comments and hashtags as a starting point. Following these tips, you will soon start seeing the benefits of using social media.
