You know you need to be doing social media for your business but you’re not sure where to start. Before launching yourself out there, take some time to draw up a strategy and really think about what you want to say. Here are some tips to start you off:
Who’s Your Audience?
Understand your marketplace.
Engage new clients.
Find potential prospects.
Interact on a human level.
Keep a sense of humour and a grip on reality - will it make sense?
What Will it Cost?
It will cost you in staff time and hours, which equals money.
It is highly unlikely to will be able to directly attribute revenue to it.
You will need to use advertising on Facebook and Twitter and subscriptions to tools such as Hootsuite.
Where possible assign different team members to monitor, Tweet/post and respond.
How Much Time?
Are you an instant responder? If not set up an automated reply for out of hours messages.
Use scheduling tools for weekends.
Set up alerts for when your brand is mentioned.
Maintain objectivity.
Know Your Subject
Make your account worth following with:
news
links
comment
insight
Be an expert and place a value on you.
But expect only 10-15% of your Tweets to be read and 20-25% on Facebook, ie- out of 100 followers only 15 are likely to see your post.
Know Who You Are
Be a human, establish a tone as part of your strategy.
It’s better to be a person and not a business: people have personality, businesses do not.
Corporate messages are boring. Eg- don’t post ‘’buy tickets for xxx’’ instead focus on what is interesting eg- ‘’there will be fire eaters at xxx’’
And finally, some motivational tips:
Don’t Be Afraid
It’s ok to take risks.
Everyone makes mistakes.
Time passes quickly, most mistakes are forgotten.
Be A Sharer
Have fun.
Be interesting: have a story, personality and meaning.
But keep in mind your target audience and subject.
Do Not Direct Sell
It costs your followers time.
Typically social media is used in leisure time so no one wants a hard sell.
Think differently:
turn it into a ‘special offer for you’.
post about exciting or interesting elements.
Don’t Entertain Trolls
Never engage with them publicly.
Take it off line and contact them personally.
Unless you are James Blunt (see his Twitter account for proof)
First published on www.sinclaireknightmarketing.com