4 quick tips for using social media for your business

Looking at the state of social media today

We notice many businesses that are trying to use social media, be it Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. I’m super happy to see people try their luck on social media, but the main error everybody’s making is thinking that having a page is enough.

So what is it that makes a social media page successful? What are the magical secrets that you need to learn in order to actually gain something from social media? And what the f@#k does ROI mean?!?

One step at a time

Yes, I know it’s all quite overwhelming, all the technical terms, all the social media platforms, the hashtags, the weird symbols…
What I will try to do here in this post is give you a quick overview so that in the next one’s you’ll feel more comfortable and understand more while reading.
Remember, I am almost always available for quick questions and explanations, so don’t hesitate to use that little chat window in the lower left corner!
It’s slowing the web site’s loading time, so might as well use it, right? 😉

Social-what now?

Social media is exactly what it sounds like. While we all grew up in an era where TV, radio and printed media were invented or developing, we are currently living in a decade where a new type of media is sprouting and gaining incredible strength: social media. The one where people can actually respond to your posts and ads, where they can express gratitude, displeasement or just give you a like.

So what’s really important is that you monitor, respond and react according to this feedback. Social media is not an ad board, nor a TV commercial. One of the biggest tips you hear all the time is that you should adapt your efforts according to what your followers want.
So, now you might ask

“But how do I know what followers want?”

The response is so stupidly obvious you’re gonna facepalm yourself till next wednesday:

Just ask them!

One of the new features on Twitter, for examples, is native polls. They have actually just enabled additional answers (up to 4), so you should be able to create more informative polls.

You could use this to make sure people like what you’re doing or would prefer another route. You could let them vote for your next product or campaign.

The important thing is that you respect your followers and actually listen to them, after all, they’re the ones you have to thank for your business!

Now what?

Ok, so now that we got the concept of this new media type, let’s get a little more technical.

Social media efforts are nothing if not a result of posts, tweets, status updates, blabs, videos and blog posts.

All those are your way of reaching out, and a super-important next step is to measure the results of those efforts.
Almost all social media platforms now have integrated anaytics where you can read those numbers, graphs and measurements you should analyse and react to.

Even though I’m not going to get into each channel in particular in this here blog post, I promise I will dedicate a post for each one, because they’re all important and even the smallest business should know how to at least look at them.

Just to get you started

I’ll talk about reach for a couple of rows, just to get you going:
Reach basically means that your post was featured in someone’s feed. This does not mean that they have interacted, read or clicked on it.

“So how does this help me?”

This number will help you understand whether the post was deemed “show worthy” by the platform it was posted on, and therefore shown to people. The more interactions it has, the more people it’s gonna be shown to.

Here we’re going into another very important concept and keyword:

Quality content

Posting kitties falling from tables and chipmunks eating carrots can gain likes but will not help you to get your message across.
Every business has a world, a niche or a main target it’s trying to reach out to. Try to share content that could actually interest your followers and show them you know what you’re talking about.

This goes both for blog posts as well as other platforms, since they both help with SEO and brand awareness.

Summing up

This post was meant to be just an introduction to some terms and important notions to get you started.

I’m going to expand on all of those and others in the next blog posts, trying to remain on a non-professional level so you won’t feel like you’re drowning in a sea of technical terms and keywords, making you feel left out.

So, the important take-aways from this posts are:

1. Social media is bi-directional
2. Your followers are human beings and can be contacted as well!
3. Make sure your efforts are hitting the mark by monitoring and analysing.
4. Your posts should be curated and well thought of. Quality content is king.

 

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