Every social media platform has its own idiosyncrasies, styles, audiences, and results. For small business owners finding the time to create and execute a strategy for all of these sites can be an impossible endeavor. What usually happens is a business will launch an account on every social site and then use the same content across all of them. This strategy can create a dull and lifeless social media presence that does very little to increase your ROI. In the end, many businesses will forgo social or have a younger family member manage the accounts.
There is an alternative. Instead of being a Jack of None, become a Master of One. By learning the ins and outs of one social media site you can narrow your focus and therefore increase your success. Not only will you be able to improve your presence online, you will also be saving time posting content to other sites.
Here’s what you need to know to get to started down the path of mastery.
- Choose the best social platform for your users. Every social site caters to a different audience. If your customer base is millennials, Snapchat or Instagram may be a perfect way to reach them. If your customers are Gen X or Y, Facebook or Twitter may be better options. If you offer B to B services, LinkedIn or even Facebook may be your sweet spot. Take a few minutes to review the following chart. This can help you decide where to start.
- Learn everything you can about the platform. Create a personal account. Find out what content is being published and what content people reacting to. Not only will this help you gain a lay of the land, but you will also get inspiration for future post ideas.
- Create reasonable goals to launch your campaign. You need to be able to measure your success, which means you need to track what it is you expect to see. Some examples of great goals include: increase traffic from the social page to your website, increase conversions from social media users, and improve post engagement. It’s important to keep in mind that growing your social presence can be slow. Some sites, like Facebook, are pay to play. You will need a small budget to promote your page and and posts. The advantage to having slow growth is that you have time to perfect your strategy before the masses come a calling.
- Develop a long term strategy. Posting day to day can be great. However, you can be missing opportunities to promote community and your services. Planning ahead will give you the time to create campaigns that fit in with upcoming events and activities. For example, with Black Friday only weeks away, you could create a campaign that highlights products, shopping tips, and money saving ideas that lead up to the big day. Looking ahead can also help prevent dropping the ball on a big event or holiday that would have been perfect for your company.
- Practice, practice, practice. You want to treat your social account like a science experiment. Applying new treatments to the testing subject and then measuring the results. Create a wide variety of content, post it on varying days (including weekends and evenings) and see what works best. There is no generic sweet spot for social media. Sure, usually 3pm is the time when Facebook becomes the place to be while we take our afternoon break. But, that may not be when your customers are ready to give your content the time it deserves. Finding the best types of content and time to post will come through trial and error.
- Do not self-promote. Social media is not about you or your business. It is about what you can do for your customers. How does your service or product make your customer’s lives better? This is the most important advice we can give you. The business that spends all of its time talking about how great it is, is the business that is unfollowed, blocked, and/or ignored. I know this feels counter intuitive, but the best brands on social media are subtle. Be subtle.
Developing a successful social media campaign is a challenge. It becomes infinitely easier if you focus your efforts on one site. Become really good at it and then start over with a new site. You will be much happier with the results, and your fans will be able to tell that effort has been put into creating a great community.
If you need help with your social media strategies give us a call. Our skilled team can help you snap with the best of them.
