Social media management can seem intimidating for a business owner. There are so many considerations and factors you need to think about when you are launching a social media campaign or starting new social media accounts for your business. Where do you draw the line between personal opinion and business interests? How do you draw followers without being gimmicky? And just what is the appropriate use of a meme? In this age of social media superiority, it’s critical to ensure that you know how best to approach social media management to get the most out of it for your business.
The real key to effective social media management is building a plan. Planning keeps you on a schedule and makes it so you never wonder what you should be posting about. It is the most important aspect of social media management.
The most effective social media management isn’t overthought, overstudied, or overdone. The appropriate use of memes is “not at all” unless they’re applicable to the work your business does, the services you provide, or the product you sell. Of course, since most memes are sarcastic, you probably don’t want to be associated with them too much. You need to at least have a passing familiarity with social media. It helps to consider your own social media habits. What grabs your attention? What makes you want to engage with a business presence on social media? What makes you want to like a Facebook page or follow a Twitter account? Ask yourself these questions as a launch pad for further ideas.
Your own preferences and those of others are a key component of what makes social media work. After all, if you do not have a good handle on how social media works, it’s hard to know what will work for your business. Do a little research to see what works for others, and find out if you can incorporate it into your own social media plan.
The post types that work best to draw followers, and customers, are the ones that are the most interactive. Ask questions, and reply to followers. Social media isn’t called “social” for no reason. Talking to people, getting involved in trends, and keeping tabs on what’s going on is important. Keep in mind, you do not want to get involved in trends that aren’t relevant to your business. Just because that cat video is cute and guaranteed to get you like doesn’t mean that you want that kind of attention. What posts have you seen recently that made you want to engage and participate?
However, visuals are a key component of the social media experience. What you can say in a tweet, you can also show with an image. Show your product, your service, or your employees happy at work. No matter what kind of business you are running, the best social media management means showing your followers what you are doing, rather than just telling. Use the power of visual apps like Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest to generate followers that will remember your company thanks to cutting-edge visuals and images that made you stand out in their minds. These apps are easier to use than ever thanks to smartphones.
Engaging with followers is what really gets you noticed. How are people getting to know you and your company? Sure, branding is important. It can help you nail down your market, get your message across to others, and get your product into the hands of your target market, but without the power of effective social media management, your branding isn’t going to help you out in our ad-filtering Web space.
Effective social media management also means knowing who your market is. You may know that most 20-somethings are on Facebook or Instagram, but you also know that your market is a specific subset of 20-somethings that probably do not actually use their Facebook except to talk to Grandma or play irritating games. What you need to do is locate where they are. Do some research to figure out what social media is most popular with what markets.
What is your niche? Niche marketing is particularly important in eCommerce, where your niche can make or break your business. Combining social media management and niche marketing is particularly important if you want to nail down a dedicated customer base, important if you sell consumables or disposable products. Do some serious legwork to narrow down your market. This will make your social media management job much easier.
Focus on just a few social media sites at once. While it may be tempting to spread your reach to as many sites as possible, it’s not going to help you. You’ll end up abandoning your less-used pages after a while anyway, which leaves perpetuating inaccurate and outdated information cluttering up your social media influence with customers uncertain of where to go. You should have a list of social media sites that you will use, and use them in that order. For instance, you could start by focusing your efforts on one or two main sites, then two more auxiliary pages that don’t need to be updated as frequently like a splash page or a Facebook business page, then keep moving – as long as you can keep the momentum up. Keep these up to date, though, so that you don’t run the risk of losing business over something as avoidable as a changed phone number.
There are also other ways to engage with your customers on social media. For instance, ask a question. You are much more likely to get responses, likes, and engagement with your follower base if you ask them questions. You aren’t just some social media post machine. No one wants to follow a bot that is just going to tell them to buy something. You have to engage and interact with your followers in order to generate a truly loyal following. People want to feel like the person they are dealing with is a real person, someone they can relate to and trust to sell them a decent product.
