Everyone is on it, everyone uses it, yet few truly know how to leverage the opportunities that lie within social media. Which one should you choose, how active should you be, and what and how should you post? We’re here to help.
If you’ve decided it’s time to establish a presence on social platforms, be prepared for this to involve investment—either in time if you handle it yourself, or in money if you outsource it. The good news is that this investment pays off. To achieve this, however, it’s worth approaching it with careful planning.
Social media communication with intention
What works on Facebook doesn’t work on Instagram, and what works on Twitter doesn’t work on LinkedIn, and so on. So first and foremost, you need to understand the characteristics of different platforms. How many people visit each one? What are the typical demographic characteristics of their users? What are their interests? How does communication flow there? Once you’re clear on this, map out your own target audience. Precisely define how old they are, their gender, education level, socioeconomic status, and areas of interest. With this information in hand, you simply need to pair your target audience with the social media platform that’s closest to them, and you’ve already narrowed down the options to work most effectively for you.
Define your audience and choose the right channel for them
Long-term goals instead of immediate sales
At first glance, it might seem obvious that the purpose of your presence on social media can be nothing other than boosting sales. However, it’s been established for some time now that on social media platforms, you generally shouldn’t promote sales-driven content to cold audiences—people encountering your business for the first time. First, establish a more personal connection with your target audience to build brand loyalty, create a community, or handle customer service matters here. Once you reach this point, make a list of possible conversion goals and supplement it with creative “soft conversion” goals through which you can build additional lists for your business.
Find your target audience
Different communication strategies for different platforms
So you’ve chosen the right platform for you and clarified what your goal is in appearing on that particular platform. Now all you need to do is find your target audience so you can reach them. This works differently on each platform, so let’s look at the 5 biggest ones:
Facebook boasts 2.7 billion users. When you think about this enormous mass, it’s important to remind yourself why these people are here: to stay in touch with their acquaintances, family, and old friends. So if you’re promoting your business on Facebook, you need to bring some emotional appeal and personal touch to your communication. You can’t think of it as just a simple advertising platform.
How should you communicate?
Those who follow your business page are likely doing so because they expect valuable, current information about upcoming promotions, new products, or want to learn about upcoming events or activities. It’s important that you connect with those who follow you and always provide useful content for them. Try sharing a few different types of content (gallery, video message, game invitation, testimonial, etc.) and observe which type your target audience responds to most. Which gets the most likes, feedback, shares, and comments? Once you find what works, try to communicate through as many of this type of content as possible.
How often should you post?
There’s no golden rule for this, but it’s certain that your business posts shouldn’t dominate your followers’ timelines. You need to find the optimal frequency. The Socialbakers survey can help with this, which shows that popularity decreased both for businesses that posted twice a day and those that posted only once a week. Additionally, always keep in mind that quality is always more important than quantity, so don’t post something worthless just to meet your weekly two posts quota.
LinkedIn is the oldest social media platform, existing since 2002, and is used by 750 million people. Users are present on the platform for business purposes. It’s a good place to bring your business to public attention, be recognized by competitors, and access useful information. It’s worth joining groups relevant to your field and sharing content, asking questions, and commenting on topics there. This way, more people will get to know your company and find their way to your website.
How and how often should you post?
Since this is a business platform, the language should be too, so unlike Facebook, a personal tone here should be avoided as it could undermine the appearance of professionalism. The majority of users are from the older 40-55 age group. It’s important that you always publish valuable and error-free content so competitors can’t find fault with you, but rather you win their respect. Statistics suggest it’s worthwhile to post once a week.
Twitter is an excellent platform for increasing your business’s visibility. A good method is to search for hashtags to see what topics are trending now, what most people are talking about. Participate in the conversation yourself. What’s trending now, what’s on people’s minds is key information for you because you can tailor your posts accordingly, which will certainly become popular.
How and how often should you post?
This is an extremely fast-paced platform where 5,787 tweets start their journey every second. In this environment, it’s worth posting multiple times a day so your followers have a chance to encounter your tweet. Here too, display only valuable content within the 280 characters available to you. These are generally short current news and information about your activities, but on this platform you can certainly be playful and share funny, industry-relevant snippets.
Instagram is one of the fastest-growing platforms, and since its launch in 2010, it now has 1 billion users. It’s the most visual social space, so for businesses where this is a defining factor—such as art, food, beauty industry, photography, etc.—it’s worth being present here.
How and how often should you post?
Here you have the option to share images or videos, and you can choose between two types of content sharing. One is the “Post,” where you share photos in the news feed, which you can caption with text or display text in the comments. Be careful to only upload premium-quality content here, because if a new user views your page, this is what they’ll see first. The other type is “Story,” which offers many more creative possibilities, and your followers can access the uploaded content for 24 hours. It’s worth using this if you’re announcing a new product or service, running a poll or survey, sharing useful information about one of your products like a tutorial video, or sharing behind-the-scenes photos or videos. The frequency of posts should mainly depend on how much valuable content you have available. But it’s worth keeping in mind that you need to maintain your profile consistently. If you started posting daily, then it should stay that way going forward.
Youtube
The video-sharing giant with its 2.3 billion users and more than a billion hours of video watched daily is the second-largest search platform and the second-busiest website after Google. Since people prefer to watch videos rather than read, it’s worth creating a short film about your products or services or uploading video tutorials. This can greatly increase trust and commitment to your company.
What to keep in mind
So the best approach is to publish videos that hold value for your followers; promotional videos won’t be very successful. You should also consider that if you’ve already started, roll out new material at regular intervals and don’t neglect your channel. Quality is also important. Only start building a corporate YouTube channel if you can meet all of these requirements!
Sounds complicated, or don’t you have enough time for it? No problem! Get in touch with us, and we’ll take the burden off your shoulders.
