10 tips to make social media work for your business

Social media is the perfect place for marketers and business owner to show themselves to the right audience at the right time. In this blog post, we are going to be looking at 10 tips to make social media work for your business.

Know your audience

To be able to grow your company or business, you need to know who your audience is, as this is key. It is important to do some research and pinpoint exactly who is your target audience, this means getting very particular about name, age, location, interests etc. You should be able to know, looking from your customer’s perspective, what products/services they need, how much they’re willing to spend and how to reach out to these people.

Choose the right platform

Your target audience might not be on every single social media platform so you might not need to be either! You need to show and present yourself to your audience wherever they are, basically being at the right place at the right time.

Not one social media platform is the same, they all have different purposes. For example, Pinterest is mainly image related and fantastic for idea generation which can be used for your brand or business. Although this platform can be used for most businesses, Pinterest is a fantastic platform if your business is in the fashion, interior design and fitness industry. Also, LinkedIn helps you to interact and connect with professionals, so you can share knowledge amongst yourselves.

Interact with your followers

Interacting with your followers can be by replying to a message to responding to their comments on your posts, all in which drives engagement. Put social back in social media! By actually engaging with your audience you will be able to get better results.

Acknowledge your mistakes

You should always try to fix and resolve any social media mistakes. If someone gives you a bad review, find out the reason behind the review and offer a solution to help resolve their dissatisfaction. By doing this, this will help you learn and prevent it from happening again.

Stay active and post regularly

It is important to stay active and update your accounts as regularly as possible to avoid being forgotten by your followers and audience. There are varied facts regarding how many times you should be posting a day per social media platform.

In a post by Buffer, they state that you should post on Twitter 14 times a day and other platforms 1-2 times, meanwhile other sources state to post 2 times a day on each platform. Depending on your content, we feel like posting 2-3 times a day is a perfect amount as you don’t want to be inactive but you don’t want to come across as annoying by over-posting.

Do not ignore negative feedback

Your goal should always be about improving your brand, focusing on the feedback you receive whether positive or negative. Always listen to the feedback given, analyse them and act on it to ensure that you can fix any negative feedback which will help you provide a better customer experience.

Manage declining organic reach

Organic reach is the amount of people who see your social media posts without a paid distribution. When your organic reach declines even the smallest amount, you should think of other ways that you can make your content and posts interesting to your audience.

Change it up by switching to video posts instead of just statuses or add links instead of just image posting. By switching up your content but ensuring the branding is the same (so your audience know that it's still your content), your engagement could increase. For example, if you post written content a majority of the time, switching to a video or going live could potentially increase engagement.

Monitor name mentions

If you’re mentioned in a post or a status, it’s an avenue for engagement.

Be consistent with your branding

You need to make your brand easy to remember. You can achieve this goal by being consistent with your designs, colours and typography. Sticking to your brand guidelines will help your audience recognise your brand instantly.

Build connections with influencers

As a business owner one of your main goals should be to get people to your site via social media or other various platforms. Influencer marketing primarily focuses on a public figure or someone with a big following who are constantly and actively helping to promote the brand and drive the brand’s message. They can accomplish this through various social media platforms, email marketing and through videos on their YouTube channels.