Heading into 2021, social media has become increasingly more important for business marketing to both consumers and other businesses.
Using social media to build a brand and generate some sales, may seem daunting. But there are steps you can follow to improve your success. I will be explaining all this in our 11 tips for social media, that you can’t live without!
- Post Often and Consistently
Make sure that if you are going to post content, that it is done consistently and to a content plan. Ensure your content plan is done by a content schedule where each day of the week is broken up into topics to discuss for that day (see point 5 below for more).
- Make sure you understand that your social media is not just about content only.
Make sure you know that your social media strategy should be incorporated with building databases, leads and sales!
- Learn how to create databases off the back of your social media accounts.
With social media, especially platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it is important that you learn how to create databases off the backend of your social media accounts. If you are unsure as to how, make sure that you book in a session with us so we can teach you.
- With any content, ensure you have a clear strategy that aligns with delivering value, inspiration or relevance to your audience.
To create engagement, you must have created some value for your audience. You also must have created some inspiration or relevance for your audience. It is important to note that if you are not receiving engagement, one of these things are out!
- Incorporate a content calendar with your content, which will allow you to execute your content strategy.
As mentioned in point one, it is important to have a content strategy and content calendar in place.
For example, Monday could be ‘Branding’ where you talk about your brand, Tuesday could be ‘Business Benefits’, Wednesday could be ‘Education’. This will allow you to create a consistent content and it easier to follow posting schedule.
- Understand that if you haven’t been receiving engagement, your brand value is not high enough.
Most people attempting social media marketing are often confused as to why no one is engaging with their brand online. To begin you need some brand value first. This is the first step to getting more engagement. The biggest companies in the world have strong brand value principles (look at Coca Cola or Nike). Off this they receive a ton of engagement. So it is important to understand that you must first build brand value. This takes time and patience. If you want more information on Brand Building, please visit our article on ‘How to build brand value’ by going here: attentionexperts.com/how-to-build-brand-value/
- Know that if you haven’t been receiving sales or enquiries from your social media, your engagement isn’t high enough.
Understand that sales and enquiries from social media won’t come overnight. You need engagement to be able to have someone want to buy from you. So know how to lift your engagement. This is mentioned in point 4 above.
- Don’t always promote your services, you need to add a lot of value first.
Always selling your services is extremely boring and comes across as self-serving to your audience. Ensure you are genuinely adding value to the marketplace and to the audience you are communicating to. Create brand awareness through offering value, such as: If you are selling candles, talk about different candle scents and what aromas you can get from these to change moods. etc. Do not promote your candles in your post or article, just talk about the value of candles. From there, you can lead your audience to trust your brand, and feeling comfortable to buying from you.
- Understand that social media marketing, requires patience and consistency.
The average company takes about 9 months to deliver a return from social media. Understand it takes patience and time. You need to first build brand value, then build enough engagement with enough touch-points. This will allow you to create a brand that is strong enough to invite sales, leads or enquiries.
- Listen to your audience and build a community around them.
Listen to your audience, understand their comments and messages. Build a community around your audience to then understand their needs. This is all important to then delivering the content that they want.
- Try to incorporate other avenues of communication through social media, other than just your Facebook page. Add a Facebook group to create community with your brand being a central focus.
Creating other avenues than just a Facebook page will see your brand reach more and receive more engagement. Start Facebook groups, Instagram pages, LinkedIn Pages, start forum messaging and so on. This will all create a great campaign for you to focus on moving forward with many dimensions in it.
If you need help around this and putting an effective social media communication strategy together, please let me know. Attention Experts, the social media agency I founded, is now Australia’s number one rated social media agency on Facebook. Please get in touch at (02) 8069 9796 – or book an appointment – I’d love to hear from you!
