Tips & Tricks to Make Social Media Work for You

September 14, 2015

What is an online presence?

Your online presence is how your brand is perceived in all of its digital properties. It is what they find when they Google you, and what’s available when they search for you on Facebook. Since your brand should ideally be found first, the second and third results should also be other owned sites. While your website design and optimization are absolutely important in representing your brand and services, utilizing as many sites through social media management increases your brand recognition and customer loyalty.

While popular and successful brands regularly own the top five spots in search results, Google has implemented a new feature that also shows an “In the news” section showcasing recent news reports about the company. However, their website, their Facebook page, their Twitter page, their Instagram account, their Linkedin business page, and maybe a Tumblr, Pinterest, or Google+ page will show up in the sidebar, with a company description.

social-media-management

For example, CNN. Not only is their website the first link, but their social media profiles are also front and centre for their audience to follow along.

Aside from popular search results, social media platforms are a great place to build your brand voice, attract your desired target market, and to build an entire community around the product or service you offer. Based on research by Convince and Convert, 56% of Americans have a social networking profile, making it a great reason for you to implement social media management into your business plan.

How to get started:

Set Smart Goals

Make sure that your social media strategy is in line with your business goals. Are you trying to convert more clients? Sell more product? Establishing a smart plan that focuses on not only building brand awareness but is in line with your business goals will set you up for social media success. Hubspot recommends setting SMART goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

Platform

Choosing the right platforms, and understanding their core market is an integral component of establishing your strategy.

  • Facebook: A great option for any brand due to a large variety of users. The Convince and Convert study found that Facebook has a 47% influence on purchasing behaviour. Consumers who recognize the brand from Facebook are more likely to purchase their product or service.
  • Twitter: Also a great for any brand because of the large user base. While it can be hard to navigate at first, curating lists based on conversation, influencers you follow, and topics you’d like to monitor, it can be a great tool for understanding your consumers.
  • Instagram: The image-based site has proven a great space for brands to get innovate and target millennials by displaying images of their product.
  • Linkedin: The perfect place for the consummate professional looking for career advice and insights, Linkedin is a great space for promoting business-related content and to connect with corporate influencers.

Provide value

This is important across all content creation channels. You want to provide value to your audience. This doesn’t just mean promoting your latest sale or event, this means re-sharing industry news that your followers would want to read or watch.

This is a great space to develop relationships and create thought leadership by providing insight into issues facing your industry and customers.

The biggest error that most brands make on social media is to focus on promotion. The best rule-of-thumb is to implement the 80/20 rule.  Provide information and education with 80% of your posts, while the other 20% can be promotional.

Consistency is key

Posting once and then forgetting about the site isn’t a best practice. It’s easy to say that consistency is important, but one of the ways that your business can ensure regular activity is to create a calendar or assign a specific role to post and monitor your channels.

Going through bursts is a good way for your brand to be forgotten and for your messaging to get completely missed.

There are brands who have managed to create themselves through viral marketing, skipping the traditional stages of business growth. The direct-to-consumer approach enlisted by the Dollar Shave Club saw their YouTube video go viral, and they adopted 12,000 customers in the first two days of business.

Older brands have revolutionized themselves by adopting social media management as a way to engage their audiences. That, and perfect timing. OREO’s SuperBowl blackout tweet, “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark” received 15,000 retweets and more than 20,000 likes on Facebook.

Their social accounts on regular days are just as impressive, innovate, and engaging. Those are just two big brands to watch as you develop your own social strategy.

Engage

Creating a captive audience isn’t just about constantly providing informative pieces and promotional materials, it’s about engaging with your audience. Based on your brand voice, you can be cheeky or informative, but it’s always important to respond to questions (customer service 101) and seek out opportunities to develop new relationships.

A great example of big brands creating a relationship is Starbucks. Not only do they maintain their mass brand following, but they look for opportunities to engage with low-hanging fruit who may have mentioned their brand offhandedly.

Monitor & analyze

Throughout all of your efforts, it’s important to consistently monitor and analyze. Keep your brand reputation in check by following what others are saying about you. Use statistics to back up what you’re doing well, and what could be done better.

Your online presence isn’t just about your website anymore, it’s the entire package. Consumers and customers alike will do their research about you and your company before deciding on a purchase or whether to sign that contract. Ensuring that you’re top-of-page in search results, combined with numerous positive pages that are all owned and operated by your brand is increasingly important to your brand reputation.

Make sure that your entire brand package is optimized, user-friendly, and informative. Pixelcarve can assist in the entire creation or revitalization of your brand’s pages and profiles, ensuring that you have a comprehensive social media management strategy in place. From website design, inbound marketing, to brand development, get in touch with us for a solution that fits your needs.

Click here for some interesting social media statistics.