Over 3.6 billion internet users all over the world spend around 144 minutes a day on social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, whether to communicate with others, express themselves, keep up-to-date with the latest trends, read the news, or search for information.
If you are a small business owner or an aspiring entrepreneur who’s building a brand, you might need to harness the power of social media. With billions of tech-savvy consumers worldwide, a well-planned and superbly executed social media campaign can strengthen your brand’s online presence and bring your small business endless opportunities.
How to Maximize Social Media Platforms
Here’s a quick guide on building your brand on social media channels:
- Identify your goals using the SMART framework.
There are several social media marketing tools available today, but none of them would be effective without a well-designed marketing plan. Before posting online, you must identify what you want your business to achieve and why you’re doing it.
Having an end goal can help you measure the success of your marketing strategy later on. Set goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.
- Choose which platforms to use.
Posting on several platforms can help you broaden your business’s online presence, but investing efforts on strategically selected channels would be more efficient, particularly if you have a niche type of service or product.
To determine the ideal platform for your business, conduct research on your target market and look into the social media channels they frequently use.
For example, if you are offering recruitment services, you can connect to top-quality candidates via LinkedIn. If your business is under travel and tourism, you can drive more visits to your webpage if you invest on Instagram or Facebook.
- Do competitor benchmarking.
Checking on what your peers are doing would give you a better idea on which strategies are working and which ones are not. Doing this can help you see how to differentiate your product or service, identify areas for improvement, uncover market trends, and determine what type of content to produce.
- Create a content calendar.
Mapping out a calendar that plots the content types and themes you’ll be sharing would also help you prepare for a strong social media campaign execution. Types of content can be photo, GIF, or video posts. You can share thematic messages, announcements, promotional activities, partnerships, or any information about your brand.
Having a content calendar can help you stay organized across all your social channels, and it ensures that your message is constantly visible to your target audience.
- Link social media profiles to your website.
Apart from featuring your social media profile links on your website, make sure that your social media pages or, when possible, posts contain links to your website. This can help drive website traffic and allow you to capitalize on the wide reach that social media channels provide.
Having your social media accounts linked to your official website can also help build brand credibility and allow prospective customers to learn more about your company, your products or services, and ways to contact you.
- Engage with your audience.
Sharing or posting information is not enough if you want to keep your audience interested. Here are some ways you can boost audience engagement:
- Come up with reader personas and create content for that particular group.
- Conduct surveys and polls regularly to ask your target audience what type of content they want to see. This allows you to improve the type of content that you create and share.
- Take time to respond to comments and messages on social media posts.
- Be consistent in delivering insightful content. If visitors like what they read, they’d be more likely to engage and develop a strong connection with your brand.
- Produce valuable and relevant content.
Content marketing drives deeper audience engagement and establishes your brand as an authority in its field. When producing content, think about what helpful tips, insights, or information your business can provide.
Then, consider each stage of a customer’s buying process, and try to provide content that caters to each phase. Offer content that is easy to understand and provide closure by summarizing or reiterating the key points.
- Optimize content for each platform.
Using different tactics to capture the attention of and connect better with your target audience. Here are a few social media optimization tips that you can implement:
- Use photos and videos
Most people are visual. Images and videos are more likely to grab a reader’s attention faster than a simple text post.
- Use hashtags
Hashtags are not just campaign or thematic signatures. On social channels like Twitter and Instagram, using hashtags connects your brand or your content to a particular subject, event, or discussion. It would help make finding or discovering your brand easier for people looking up a topic that’s relevant to your business.
- Optimize your profile
Always feature your brand logo on your profile. Make sure that the username you use is consistent across all your social media platforms. Also, completely fill-out the bio or the “about us” portion of your profile, as this section is meant to provide visitors with an overview of your business and the products or services you offer.
- Track performance.
Monitor and evaluate the success of your social media efforts based on your established metrics and campaign objectives. Review page and post data and, depending on your goals, looking into the following:
- Engagement or the number of people who are participating in the conversation.
- Reach or the total number of views.
- Impressions or the total number times your content is displayed.
- Website clicks or the number of visits to your website through social content.
Once you have gathered the above information, you can identify the channels that are most efficient and the types of content that perform the best. This will help you recalibrate and improve your social media marketing strategy.
Pr.business Can Help You Amplify Your Online Presence
Let pr.business be your digital partner in growing your customer base and building stronger online visibility for your brand. Their team of experts will help you create a successful action plan for improving your digital assets.
For more information about their products and services, contact them by visiting soc.pr.business.
