How To Use Social Media Smarter

Are you using social media for your business but unsure how effective your strategy is? Are you ready to refocus your time and energy on social media for 2016?  This post will give you four tips on How To Use Social Media Smarter to give you a better understanding of how you currently approach social media for your business and perhaps improve your strategy and execution in a smarter way.

Unless you have someone dedicated to managing your social media on behalf of your business you know how much time and effort goes into producing and promoting fresh content in the right way. Its hard to be everywhere on social media and do it well on a consistent basis. So taking the time to research where your target customers or readers are spending their time online and what kind of content engages them (and doesn't) is the key to a successful content strategy. 

You can do this is a few ways and here are four tips can get your started: 

1. Use Metrics As Your Guide 

Look at your website's Google Analytics to understand where your referral traffic is coming from, this can be surprising if for example you are spending a chunk of time crafting five tweets a day but the majority of your traffic comes from Facebook. Using the data as your guide can take the emotion out of the decision and help you rethink whether you are focusing your time and effort in the right places. 

2. Re-consider Your Goals On Social Media 

The start of a new year is the perfect time to re-examining your purpose(s) for using social media as a business to make sure it is in line with your business and sales goals. Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself: 

1. Do you want to direct people to specific pages on your e-commerce shop to increase sales? If so, perhaps promoted pins on Pinterest or targeted Facebook ads would be a good investment.
2. Do you want to develop cross-promotional partnerships with other lifestyle brands and blogs? If so, should you be carving out time to network with creative entrepreneurs on Instagram with a view to collaborate with them in the future. 
3. Do you want to promote my expertise in a business environment? If so you may want to consider blogging on Linkedin Pulse to reach more industry leaders as well as your own Linkedin connections. 

 

3. Make Content Relevant To Your Audience 

When we work with clients on The Brand Plan we always ask them what brands or online influencers do you admire and why? The reason is because it important to be aware of other brands in your industry that are doing it well and examine why it works. Identifying brand mentors and reverse engineering their approach to the way they market themselves can keep you as a brand or a business owner inspired to be produce relevant content that engages with your specific audience.

If fellow creative entrepreneurs follow you on Instagram to find out more about how you run your creative business, what brands you work with and what industry events you attend, then they may be less interested in what your daughter wore to preschool that day. That type of content is probably best suitable for a personal Instagram account for friends and family to enjoy.

Developing engaging content with a recognizable look and voice comes with time so monitoring what works and tweaking what doesn't work will help you understand your audience better and help you create content that is relevant and inspiring to them
 

4. Avoid Missed Opportunities from Bad Execution 

Creating great content takes time and resources so try not to waste your social promotion opportunity with bad execution. Without thoughtful promotion, content creation can be a waste of time and leads to a chain reaction of missed opportunities. 

For example, if you post an upcoming workshop on your Facebook business page without tagging the workshop's facilitator, you're missing out on two major opportunities.  Number one is that perspective attendees can't click on the facilitator's Facebook profile to find out more about who they are and what they do. Without being able to research more about the presenter, potential attendees might not have enough information to convince them to invest their money in attending the workshop. Also, a second missed opportunity is cross promotion. By not tagging the facilitator, they have no way of knowing they've have been mentioned on your page and therefore won't share it with their network. Often times social networks will rewarded engagement by sharing with even more potential attendees, and cross promoting is a great way to increase the number of views that your social posts receives. 

We help businesses and personal brands think through their content strategy by creating a custom Blog & Social Content Plan for them. We can also execute the plan by becoming an extra pair of hands on their team as their Blog & Social Editor to help develop their online voice, keep content and messaging on brand while giving them peace of mind that the blog and their social media is being managed by an expert who make the most out of each post!

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