Our PR and Social Media Account Manager, Samara , shares her top five tips on how to use social media to benefit your business.
1) Be Selective
With over 900 social media channels whirling around the web, it’s important to select the right channels for your business. Don’t just follow the crowd, take time to understand your audience, identify where they ‘hang out’ online and develop a clear and concise plan of attack – a great campaign is wasted if it’s not targeted at the right people.
2) Patience is a virtue
Gaining thousands of followers, hits or likes doesn’t just happen overnight (unless you’re Justin Bieber!) Take time to understand your market, what they engage with, what gets them excited and then use these insights to create rich and engaging content.
3) Content is KING
Social media is a beast that needs feeding. And now, due to the rise in smartphones and the introduction of 4G, if you don’t push out the right content at the right time, your message will be lost in cyberspace.
A well-managed social media channel is one that is regularly updated with engaging and interesting information. Content will vary from one brand to another, but it’s the interesting stuff that makes people come back for more!
4 ) Nobody likes a social climber
Social media takes no prisoners. Don’t be THAT person who always talks about themselves, listen to your followers so that they continue to engage with you. If you’re seen to be self-promoting it is likely that your followers will start to disengage with you.
If you’re in a position to respond individually to each person, do. This will work wonders for you – the powers of word of mouth are as strong today as they were before the social evolution.
5) Invaluable insights
Unlike some forms of traditional media, social media can be monitored based on a number of factors. Look at your objectives and work out what success means to you. Historically (well, two years ago), success was measured by the amount of ‘followers’ or ‘likes’ a brand had, however this has changed quite significantly, today it’s more about the level of engagement and positive sentiment.
My tip would be to track your tweets and use Facebook’s free insight tool to understand what kind of messages your audience is engaging with. Use these insights to create even more engaging content based on what your audience wants, not what you want!