Social Media 101 For Businesses

Social media is an increasing presence in modern life, and this is expanding far beyond just documenting your personal day-to-day life. Businesses are using social media to promote their products and services as a way to reach their target audience alongside traditional advertising methods.

Using social media as an advertising tool is efficient and cheaper than some other marketing methods to reach both your existing customers and potential customers, increasing the awareness of your brand.

4.55 billion people now use social media which is more than half the population of the world, and 400 million have joined within the last 12 months with 1.39 billion actively using Instagram daily

Here are some useful tips for you to increase your business social platforms

Tips for increasing business social media presence

#1Identify Your Audience

Identifying your audience is one of the most important things you have to consider when creating content for social media, its crucial that you content is going to be appealing for your target market as well as considering the platform you’re using to reach the correct users. For example, if you were promoting towards an older demographic, we would advise Facebook rather than Tik Tok as Facebook tends to have an older demographic with the main audience being between the ages of 35-65+.

It’s all about making sure you understand who your product or service is for and making it so accessible and appealing. Who is your target market? Who are they? What industry are they in? what are their income and marital status? Questions like this are important to consider to make sure the content that you are creating, are attracting the right customers to increase engagement and conversions.

Identifying your audience will influence a lot of things, such as:

• What social media platforms do you use?

You need to make sure you are using a platform that will reach the right target market. You need to think about where your designated demographic is most likely to interact with your posts and ads.

• When will you post the content and when is the most active time for your audience?

If you’re targeting the average person that works 9-5 that is 85.8% of the world so you must be setting your social media posts at a time that the customer will most likely see and interact with the post (this is extremely relevant now Instagram have changed their timeline back to chronological). On a broad level, the most successful time to post is around 11-12 or 4-6 pm on Tuesdays, with Sunday being the worst day to post. Use this as a guide to start posting content and start to understand your following behaviour.

• The actual content you create, is it easy to understand and relatable, what is the colour scheme?

There needs to be some sort of personality to your account so that when your audience look at your account, it’s seamless and easy to look at. Aesthetically pleasing social media prompts the user to interact with your account, like, comment or follow so that you are gaining interaction as well as a new potential client. Setting a colour scheme, post timetable and a certain font are three key ways to keep your feed looking good.

• What businesses are already successful in your field, what are they doing and how are the consumers reacting?

Look at other similar businesses and see what techniques, hashtags and posts they are using and see how you could implicate that. Don’t copy of course! You want your page to be unique and your own. Using competitors is a great way to see what works in your industry and how you can create something even better!

#2 Build Relationships

• Interacting With Other Accounts And Users

When using social media, it’s important to remember that there is a screen in between you and the users, and they don’t know you or your intentions. It can be easy to come across as a sales pitch, rather than actual people wanting to create a relationship between the business and the users.

It’s extremely important when using social media that you are interacting with other accounts and customers. Commenting on other similar business accounts and being friendly will remind the customer that there is a human behind the screen which helps creates an inviting personality for the account, and the business. Getting personal with the customer is key.

Building relationships is also important, especially as the reason behind social media, is to be social! Create a personality for your brand, people remember positivity. If your business only thinks about the content and doesn’t interact, your name won’t be around the comment section so is easily out of sight out of mind as well as people not having an attachment to your brand.

#3 Be Organised & Use All Features Available

• Tag Locations

In your social media posts, try and tag the location (where relevant), this can help create trust and identity as well as familiarity and reply to comments to be an active account. When people see a place they like on a social media post, they click the location to see other photos from others. This may increase sales or interest in your brand or product.

• Have A Content Calendar

When creating posts for a business, it’s not as easy as taking a photo of yourself and posting it hoping for likes and comments from your friends. It’s more efficient to have your images and captions already posted over some time.  Using a content calendar is more efficient as you can plan your images and the order, they go in so you can make sure it all goes together nicely.

Having a certain time to post is crucial as there are particular times when posting will increase your likes and interactions, however as a business you need to figure that out for yourself. Luckily for you, Instagram has an option to become a business account, in which you can see your insights into what posts are the most successful and at what time. Apply this information when creating posts on your content calendar and you will see your interaction numbers increase.

Having a content calendar makes it easier for you as well as being more organised. You can plan your feed to make it seamless with a relevant theme to make your page more aesthetically pleasing.

Being consistent is important. 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day! Ensuring that all your posts are ready and checked to be uploaded, means that you have one less thing to worry about.

#4 Social Media Optimisation

Don’t worry, it’s not as technical as search engine optimisation.

Social media optimisation is a way to make your page more visible, and discoverable, to your target audience.

• Bios

In your bio, you can promote your products or services and give people who land on your profile a quick insight into your business offering.  This is a short, snappy way to introduce you and your business so use it wisely. Show off your achievements, and personality and tell a small story about what your business is all about to hook the user.

• Stories

SMO can also happen in Instagram stories. Instagram got rid of the very annoying 10,000 followers threshold to ad links in your stories so you can now link away to your website with articles, products or deals. Instagram stories are used by 500 million users every day, and you can create highlights so that your stories can be displayed nicely that are there permanently so new users to your account can see them. You can also track how your stories perform through your insights to see what your followers love!

• Hashtags

Another example for SMO is using hashtags. Hashtags are a wonderful way of optimising your posts to make sure that people who are looking for a certain hashtag, product, service, or topic will find your post and page. You can use up to 30 hashtags but having an average of 11 is the best way to boost reach and engagement.

• Use What’s Trending!

The best part about social media is copying what others have done and using that to your advantage.

• Using trending hashtags and topics that people are interested in
• Using memes and jokes that are currently in the mix

Do you remember the The M&S caterpillar incident. Every business got involved on Twitter which got people talking. This meant that their business personality was growing, and people were noticing.

However, make sure you are being careful and not getting involved in anything to controversial which may affect your business and give it a bad reputation.

• Reels

Due to the increase in popularity of Tik Tok, reels on Instagram have become one of the most popular tools for content and they tend to get the most engagement. They are quickly overtaking static & carousel images, so it’s important to acknowledge recent trends to ensure you are keeping up with the competition.

Summary

Hopefully, this introduction to social media, will give you some ideas for your business, or even help you make a start! Here at Talking Stick we have the best team to help you with your business’s social media status, to help drive great customers and to increase your conversions.

If you’re interested in our help, please don’t hesitate, and contact us and we will be happy to help.