In this age of technology, even the smallest of companies need a positive social media presence in order to make the most of their networking potential. Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter are loaded with potential customers. So you need to get to them and hook their attention. Here are some tips on how to build a strong following on social media.
How to Get Started
The first thing to do is, decide exactly what results you want to get from using social media. At this point you need to be precise; reaching out to prospective clients is too vague. You need to pinpoint your needs exactly. For example, is your aim to attract more visitors to your company website, or to get them to buy your products? If you get this figured out from the get-go, you will save yourself a lot of time, effort and money.
Make the Most of Tools
Businesses which have thousands of followers didn’t get them merely by spending hours perusing different social media networks. They utilized some of the best available tools and software designed to help you amass followers. This type of social media tool has two main areas of focus:
- Analytics: these tools help you acquire statistics about your various social media accounts. You can garner statistics which indicate at what times you should be posting, which of your posts get more likes and shares and the type of post that gets the most positive response. All this information will give you great insight to your audience.
- Automation: these tools are essential for saving you time because you can stay active on your social media accounts without actually being physically present. Automation tools allow you to pre-schedule your social media posts to ensure you are posting consistently throughout the week, control the type of content your share, and post content to multiple platforms simultaneously.
Design a Creative Logo
You can get noticed by designing a creative logo to use across all your social media. You don’t have to be a design wizard to do this, you can use logo maker. This free tool will help you design your very own company logo quickly and easily. Your logo is important for social media marketing because your clients will see it on a daily basis. It will help them to form a perception of your business and brand that will stick with them.
Create Your Own Videos
Video marketing should certainly be an addition to your promotional toolbox. Adding product or service videos to your social media networks has been shown to significantly increase conversions. Although video may not be the easiest thing to make, it shows a good return on investments. To make life easier for you, there are plenty of good tools out there to help you achieve your video goals. Nutshell and Magisto are two of the easier to use tools for video making. Post different videos regularly across your social media, this will ensure you engage potential clients. Videos also help you build trust, which of course is essential for attracting new customers.
Get Blogging
Using social media for marketing is all about reaching targeted audiences and blogging can improve your social media presence dramatically. Instead of posting long tests on your Facebook wall, post a link to your blog, you can do this across all your social media networks, even Twitter. This will bring visitors from your social media network to your blog. You will soon become known as an authority in your field throughout your social media connections, which can lead to other opportunities such as interviews or speaking engagements.
Rules of Social Media Marketing
- Be consistent: make posts on a regular basis, don’t just disappear.
- Add value: Don’t just talk about yourself. 20 percent of your posts should be self-promoting. The other 80 percent should be informational.
- Acknowledge people: If someone reaches out to you on social media, always respond to them.
- Be patient: You won’t achieve success from social media marketing overnight, so be patient and don’t expect results too soon otherwise you will become disheartened.
- Reciprocate sharing: If someone shares your posts, return the favor and share something of theirs, this is good social media etiquette.
If you’re not getting the results you’d like from your social media marketing, use some of these strategies to help integrate all the aspects of your business.