Tweeted, Shared, Liked, LinkedIn? These are just some of the things that happen on a day-to-day basis if you’re a business owner on social media. However, being on social media is more than just about posting a few tweets, blogging on your Facebook page, and uploading pictures onto Instagram. Businesses know this, and the majority are making the most of social media to carry out marketing on a global platform. The reason they have become good at this is because they have taken the time to review how they manage social media.
Defining the Social Media Role
Many companies have a social media manager who works in tandem with the marketing department (depending on the size of the business, they could be the marketing department). Their role involves finding or creating interesting content and using a range of methods to share that content, keeping up to speed with the production team, getting a presence on social media, and ensuring that they create a dialogue with the customer base.
Focus on the Impact
There are five things that your business could do better on social media if you focus on what impact you want to see and what audience you want to reach.
1. Setting out Your Goals and Objectives
You probably have a business plan that sets out the relevant KPI’s using SMART action planning, so make sure you have a clearly defined social media plan and strategy. Focus on what your end goal is because every time you carry out an action using social media, this should be related to increasing your overall presence and marketing the brand.
With every article you post, every blog you upload, every retweet or Instagram photo posted, you should be able to quantify why you are doing this and what impact it has on the business. If you can’t then it is because you are part of the 85% of businesses who cannot quantify this impact. Conversely there are 15% who do, so you need to be part of that statistic.
The KPI’s or measurements you should be using to evaluate the effectiveness of your social media presence include:
Size of network, number of followers and fans
Visitors landing on the homepage and the source of their journey
The amount of comments posted
The quality of comments posted
So if one of your objectives is to increase the number of online conversations through social media, you can use a tool like Google Analytics to track the conversations through the various platforms.
2. Twitter Is Not the Only Route
Keeping an eye on what is said about you on Twitter is barely touching the tip of the online conversation iceberg. You need to be checking a number of platforms when carrying out a search, as you could be missing a whole conversation going on where a disgruntled customer is making their feelings known.
Get your social media team to run checks using your brand name but also the names of your services or products (particularly when you are running a current campaign), using the correct spelling of the name and incorporating a few variations.
This is where you can pick up on complaints or issues and then address them. Not only are you demonstrating to the customer your awareness of their online presence, but also more importantly, you want to actively engage with them and put right what is wrong.
3. Strike up a Dialogue with Potential Customers
This is where you should be reaching out to potential customers that you are not aware of. In order to do this you (or your social media manager) should be factoring in 10-15 minutes of each day to reach out to this untapped market.
It has never been easier to do this via social media because you spend time replying to comments on your Facebook/LinkedIn/webpage. You can share their relevant content or post questions, upload a podcast, and generally engage and show your interest in people who may not have bought from you but who have engaged online. Check out the popular hashtags and the keywords that are related to your business or industry sector. Become involved in an online dialogue and include the links that bring the people onto your home page.
4. Use More Images
A picture is definitely worth a thousand words, and there are ways in which you can use images to make more of your business. Check out your competition to see what they are using on their social media platforms. Invest in a professional photographer if you are updating your Instagram/Pinterest page or creating a new online brochure. Carry out a social media audit on your content to ensure your content is recent and relevant, and that material posted is up to date with the relevant infographics.
Consider setting up a vlogging account linked to an upcoming marketing campaign. Create a Youtube account with a relevant channel name linked to the brand. Make about 8-10 videos and ensure it looks professional, and then post one daily. If you post one in response to a well-known video (this is where your creativeness as a social media manager comes in) then you will get just less than a quarter of the views of the original video.
5. Consistency in Branding Your Social Media
This seems an obvious statement to make but it is a common mistake made by a number of companies. Your website homepage might have a uniform approach to your branding but this is not necessarily followed through across all other online presence. Decide on your branding guidelines, your logo, pantone numbers for colour, straplines, etc. and stick to them. Make sure the perception of the business’s identity is uniform across all social media channels (as well as the offline information, i.e. brochures, advertisements, etc.) This way, you will create awareness and build brand loyalty, and when it comes time to refresh the brand, ensure you do this across all channels as well.
Every business is on social media these days, but only a small percentage of businesses are doing it really well. Make sure you are part of that elite group – start with these 5 things and you’ll be surprised where clever social media marketing can take you.
Dave Thomas is the Agency Director at Dirty Chook, a full service media, advertising and digital communications agency based in Brisbane, Australia. He is passionate about digital strategy, both from an advertising and business operations perspective, and loves the challenge of finding the right balance between embracing the latest technologies and meeting the traditional requests of clients.
