Are you ready for a social uprising?
If you’ve been watching your screen time rise faster than an Elon Musk rocket, you might also be wondering why that’s resulted in not much more than a few half-baked TikTok dance routines and a fully formed snack addiction! Well, it’s time to re-evaluate – here’s a few insider tips to make a screen time investment that will reignite your productivity mojo and boost your social game.
A love/hate thing
Love it or hate it, it’s hard to argue that social is likely to be going anywhere soon. In fact, the pandemic has seen a huge rise in the number of users, levels of engagement and the valuation of the major platforms. But social has unquestionably played a vital role in enabling us to connect with friends and family, providing a shoulder when we can all do with some support. It has also brought politics to the forefront in a challenging socio-economic time and continues to be an up to the minute news and entertainment outlet. But how can it work better for you?
It’s a conversation
Having a direct line of communication with a lot of like-minded people can be a powerful tool. Followers could convert to customers, so there is a temptation to treat social channels like a tannoy, but try to think of it as a conversation rather than a broadcast. Typically our clients attract more followers through engagement than content. Taking the time to listen, like and engage with the posts and opinions of others pays dividends in creating meaningful connections and building a friendly following for your business.
Make it meaningful
That said, you do need to show your best side. (No, not your best team selfie angle.)
So post with frequency but post with purpose. Think about who your audience is and what they would find compelling. Make it relevant and make it resonate. Avoid the temptation to add anything to your channels that doesn't cover at least 2 of these four bases. Is it engaging, interesting, insightful or amusing?
Fix up, look sharp
If you have your own business, you’ll want it to look sharper than 007 holding a martini. To help with that you can use nifty content creation tools which will help you unleash the power of your inner design wizard.
Canva gives you freedom to create your own templates and resize images accordingly to each platform. While Hootsuite – a social media queen’s best friend (especially one with a memory of a goldfish) – lets you schedule all of your newly branded content and decide what date, time and platform you will be posting it to. It is really easy to use and lets you view multiple channels at the same time so you don’t have to flick between them all.
Always be:
Sharing content that resonates with your target audience.
Consistent in the tone of messaging – you are establishing the voice of your brand.
Reliable and present – you need to dedicate time and resource when it comes to social media. It’s ‘always on’ and those looking to engage will usually expect a swift response.
Transparent – if things are going great then share it. If things aren’t, then manage it honestly. Positive and open interactions, even around difficult subjects, will lead to peer approval which will reflect well on your business.
One thing leads to another
Assuming you have a website, add links to it within your profile descriptions and bios. Encourage social followers to visit your site by adding links to it within posts. Adding an incentive to visit, be that a free whitepaper download, or a chance to enter a competition, is a great way to increase traffic, which will in turn increase enquiries and potentially convert to sales!
Be yourself
Take the time to understand what your brand represents to you and others and share its personality and purpose. People connect more readily with brands who share similar values, personalities and sense of purpose as them. You can tailor your content to be relevant for each platform – Twitter is more conversational, while Instagram is more image-focused, but whichever channel you’re using, your own brand personality should come through. Being yourself will always trump trying to be down with the kids – sometimes it’s hip to be square!
Pay to play
Once you’re creating great content and contributing to conversations you might feel you want to extend your social reach, by putting your messages in front of people who otherwise wouldn't see your posts. This can be done through paid promotions and boosted posts. And with social, a little investment goes a long way. The major platforms all have inbuilt tools that will let you view how many new people your posts will reach if you’re willing to pump some pennies into promoting them. Insider tip: if you’re looking to grow a following quickly, it’s like a tiny turbo boost button.
Experiment, appraise, adjust
An important part of building and growing a social presence is monitoring it. How can you build success if you don’t really know what is connecting with your audience? Analytics are built into Facebook, Twitter and Instagram making it easy for you to see what content is attracting your audience and which posts are seeing the highest engagement levels.
So there you go – it’s not rocket science – Eat, sleep, appraise, repeat and get ready for social lift off!
