Social Media 101: Meet Your Audience Online
It seems like these days everyone is addicted to their phone. In fact, the average person spends 3 hours a day scrolling through their social media. As a business, it’s necessary to be on social. Social networks help your brand connect to your customers. It’s a way of advertising that can increase brand awareness through a more personalized experience. More direct communication with your customers helps you stay top of mind which will generate leads and boost sales. It also gives you the opportunity to increase web traffic. But, perhaps the best thing about social is that it’s free to use.
Image: Alexander Shatov
Facebook Fundamentals
For most businesses, Facebook is the best place to begin your social media journey. Having a Facebook page allows customers to like and follow your business so they can stay updated with your brand. Besides posting updates, Facebook is a great tool for organizing your company’s about info, especially if you don’t already have a website or have your google my business set up. Along with the basics like hours, phone number and address, Facebook has areas where you can add your brand’s mission and products and services. Don’t forget to upload a profile picture and a cover photo for your business as well. Your profile picture should be your brand’s logo while the cover photo could be anything from a picture of your products or imagery that reflects your services.
When you set up your Facebook page, make sure to create a page for your brand, not a profile. A profile is a personal page created for individual use while a page is meant for businesses. Creating a profile for your company instead of a page can have negative side effects. Facebook will remove any profile that was not created for individual use and you will lose all of your posts and followers. Having a page also allows you to look at insights, or analytics. Here, you can see data on likes, follows, and engagement on page posts. Engagement includes any action a user takes on your post. This includes like, shares, comments, clicks and reach.
Although creating a Facebook page and making posts is free, you also have the option to boost posts. A boosted post is simply a paid ad. These help you reach a larger audience because the posts will show in the news feeds of people who don’t already like or follow your page. This could lead to more page likes and boost future engagement on regular posts.
Image: Alexander Shatov
Introduction to Instagram
Another important platform is Instagram. Instagram should not be treated like Facebook, although content can certainly overlap. Instagram is much more focused on visuals than Facebook. It also allows for a more playful tone. While Instagram can be used for promotional purposes, it is best used for brand awareness, so the best practice is to stick to creating posts that reflect the personality of your brand. If you want to promote a product or service through Instagram, it’s best to use imagery that reflects the experience of using the product or receiving the service over simply using a graphic with promotional pricing. This is important for another reason too. When users visit your page, it’s more difficult to tell how old a particular post is. Putting pricing into the graphic could lead customers to believe an old promotion is still running and they will be disappointed when they reach out to you and find out that’s not the case.
When setting up your account, choose a username that is easy to remember and relevant to your brand. Usernames should not be too long. But don’t worry, there is another area on your profile to put your business’s full name. Instagram has an option to convert your profile to a business profile. This is important to do because it allows you to put more information into the “About” section like clickable phone number and location buttons. You’ll also have access to insights. Like Facebook, business profiles on Instagram are able to boost posts.
Image: Alexander Shatov
Take It to Twitter
Twitter is a place where you can really set yourself apart from the competition. This is where you’ll want to showcase how you are an expert in your industry. Where Facebook is informative and Instagram is captivating, Twitter is pedagogical. This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it though. Your brand’s voice should still shine through, and you can populate your feed with great content.
First, make sure your profile is completely set up. Your username should be the same as your username on Instagram. If it’s not available, try to make it as similar as possible so customers can easily find you across platforms. Upload a profile picture and cover photo, add your brand’s name, location and website and write a brief biography. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, posting frequency on Twitter should be high. Feel free to post as many tweets as you want in a day, although you’ll want to post at least three tweets. If you’re having trouble coming up with three posts a day, it’s actually an okay practice to post something you’ve already tweeted a second or even a third time. When drafting a post, remember you can only send a tweet with a maximum of 280 characters. Anything longer than that will be rejected by Twitter.
Twitter is also a great place for damage control. Here, you can monitor what people are saying about your brand and are able to respond. Always make sure responses to customer complaints are in your brand’s voice, and if you think you’ll need a longer conversation with a particular customer or need to discuss private information to process their complaint, move the conversation to a direct message.
You are able to run ads on Twitter, although they have a more complicated process for creating them than Facebook and Instagram do. As a beginner, stick to posting regular tweets until you feel comfortable with the platform. Then, you can move on to creating paid content.
Image: Alexander Shatov
YouTube Is Yours
Before you begin creating your YouTube channel, you need to ask why you are making it. You’ll want to consider what makes you different from other channels in your industry that already exist. It may be easy to define your goal by asking, “What problem are we trying to solve?” Some common goals include brand awareness, increase website traffic, sell more products and educate the audience.
It’s okay if you think you have more than one goal. Actually, having more than one can be beneficial. If your main goal is to sell products, viewers will probably get bored of seeing continuous product promotion. Adding in some educational content or even purely entertaining content will give your audience something to look forward to.
When creating your goals, think about who your audience is. Many demographics enjoy viewing different types of content. Age, gender, location and special interests all affect what kind of content a consumer wants to see.
Next, you need to figure out who your competition is. Here, when we say competitors, we don’t really mean brands you compete against in real life. Your competition includes them, but it also includes the leaders in the industry. Analyzing the channels of your competitors can help you define your goals. Look at the highest viewed videos to see what kind of content people who are interested in your industry enjoy. Look at how often they post and how often they interact with viewers. The initial goals you set for your brand’s channel should reflect these industry standards.
After you’ve set up an account and defined your goals, it’s time to brand your channel. You should create a cohesive look and feel to your channel. Your profile picture, cover photo, channel and video descriptions, trailers and thumbnails all need to be branded. Use your brand’s logo, colors and voice to customize these items. From there, you can start creating content.
One More Thing
It’s really important to remember that this is social media. That means you need to do more than just create content. You need to respond to comments, questions and reviews from your audience. When your customers know you are listening to them, they will engage more with your content. If you leave questions and reviews unanswered, your customers will feel like you don’t really care about them and it could lose you business. Also, people who are just learning about your company through social media will see the unanswered questions and think that their experience with your business will reflect that lack of communication.
All in all, social media a great tool for promoting your business. You can leverage social to build brand awareness, engage with current and potential customers and sell more of your products and services. Take what you’ve learned here to create your own social media profiles and start creating engaging content across valuable digital real estate.