Social Media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest typically started off as tools for personal interaction, but have been expanding out to become great for business promotion and marketing.
The Social Network system is continually growing and changing and it is important to stay on top of how to use it to the benefit of your business. In 2014 ensure your business is effectively presenting itself on appropriate Social Networks with the below tips.
1. Keep Posts Relevant to the Business
Leave the personal status updates to personal accounts. “Took me 3 hours to find parking – don’t you love Christmas!” is not necissarily a post that will engage your customer base (Industry dependant obviously) Start posting more relevant information to your business / industry, and from a point of view appropriate to potential customers. Make it about your business, not about you. Post inspiration, industry news, relevant links and interesting facts that can be insightful for those likely to read them.
2. Be Visual
We are always encouraging you to make your website visual, with nice big imagery. Do the same with your Facebook posts. Edit pictures to include your business logo / promo text. The effectiveness of visual posts can be seen through Pinterests breakaway success, which is almost exclusively pictures. Try to put your website link in posts so that if others share the post a quick link to your website is always visible.
3. Pay Attention to Analytics
Alot of social platforms now provide insights / analytics on how business pages perform. Review these regularly to see what posts work and what don’t. Can you identify specific demographics that visit your page? Or optimal times to make posts to get the widest reach? You can learn alot from these analytics and use them to optimize your social pages performance.
4. Connect with your audience before trying to sell to them
Engage with your social followers in a social manner. Don’t put on the hard sale right away, instead share interesting industry material, or some status updates on changes in the business or what the team have been up to.
Be subtle and suggest promotions that the business is running rather than outright posting prices. If you fill your social page with an abundance of sales pitches, people will loose interest and stop following you. Help readers find a none price reason to invest their interest in your business.
