fbpx

Must have social media tips for businesses

April 10, 2017

instagram-bios-1

If you feel like you have no idea what to do when it comes to social media, or maybe your business is only just beginning to dip its toe into the social waters – here are a few tips to get your social media game ball rolling:

DO A SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT OF YOUR CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE (if you’ve got them of course):

It’s a great idea to have a solid understanding and know exactly where your social media is currently sitting before implementing any strategies.

Social media audits are a great way to see where your business excels, what it lacks and everything in between. It’s also good to get a third party involved with the review process, so drop us a line and we’ll sort you out. We even offer small businesses FREE social audit scorecards.

CREATE A CONTENT MARKETING PLAN:

A social media plan is a summary of everything you plan to action and hope to achieve via the use of your social channels. Creating a social media marketing plan will set your business up for success and will allow you to avoid potential mistakes by having measurable goals and KPI’s in place.

Start by looking at which individual platforms you want to use, and analyse like brands for inspiration. Assess what type of content you want to share, how it will be produced, and a timeline of when things will happen. Ensure you have extremely clear objectives and goals – and most of all, make sure they are measurable. How many clicks do you want to your website? How many new customers do you want? By asking the right questions from the beginning, you’ll ensure you also have the right tracking and measuring tools in place.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS FOR YOUR BUSINESS:

There’s no need to put all your eggs in one basket, but you need to find the right social media platform(s) for your business.

Not all businesses need to be active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Tumblr – it’s about choosing which ones are a) relevant and b) that you have the resources to execute well.

Look at competitor businesses and brands to see what platforms they are using to promote themselves. It’s about assessing which social media platform will best represent your brand to your target audience. For example, if you’ve got a beautiful physical product that looks visually exciting, then Instagram is perfect because it’s an image-based community. If you sell HR services, it might be better to look towards a channel like LinkedIn, where you can reach the right ideal customer. Think about what the day-to-day grind of the social media channel actually looks like and ask yourself if you will have the ongoing content to make it really shine.

IMPLEMENT SCHEDULING TOOLS:

If “social media guru” is not your only role in your business, then scheduling tools will become your saviours! From Schedugram to Hootsuite, there are many out there for you to peruse and trial – we recommend signing up for a few free trials and seeing what works best for you.

Tools such as these will allow you to bulk upload content, write captions and schedule them for a certain date and time. If you’re going to use Facebook, there is no need for a scheduling tool as this functionality has already been built into Facebook natively.

SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING:

If you’ve always gone for more traditional styles of advertising, you should consider giving social media advertising a go. From running major campaigns to simply ‘boosting’ the posts on your existing Facebook or Instagram page, the possibilities of social media advertising are endless.

The great thing about this form of advertising is that you control what you spend and how it gets spent. Facebook offers extensive targeting options and allow you to target based on location, age, gender, interests and so much more. You could be so specific as to target Women aged 18-25 who live in Melbourne and are interested in Skateboarding and your ad would only be shown that exact audience. There is also no real minimum spend – only want to part with $10? That’s OK! Want to ramp things up and spend $1,000? Facebook will help you spend it smart.

If all of this seems a little overwhelming for your small business, then why not get in contact with us and see how we can help you? We are a social media agency based in Melbourne, who specialise in helping small and medium sized businesses in the lifestyle space.

 

Edwina Toohey is a social media coordinator at Milkbar Digital. She’s into eating all the food, Snapchat filters and one day hopes to own a Dachshund. 

No comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe To Blog Posts