Social media can be tricky, especially for business owners. When done correctly, social media can humanize your business, drive traffic, generate leads and customers, increase brand awareness and build relationships. In our digital world, it is crucial for business owners to have a presence on social media with engaging and compelling content.
With over 70% of people who have a positive experience with a business on social media recommending the business to their social circle, it's important to adhere to best practices. Although social media may seem like you can post whatever fits your "feed", there are a handful of key do's and don'ts your business should adhere to in order to put the best digital foot forward.
Don't: Skip the objectives. When establishing a social media strategy it's crucial to define what success looks like for your brand. Define the key objectives your business would like to achieve from social media. These goals should be simple and task-like to start, like getting your profiles set up or completing a competitive analysis. Once you have momentum and have gathered initial insights, you'll be able to set strategic goals like, increase your following by X%.
Don't: Only post occasionally. It's important to create and maintain a consistent posting schedule. Once your social media strategy is off the ground you will want to find a happy medium for business posting and varying the content that you post. Through staying consistent your social media strategy will increase your brand's reach and reputation.
Don't: Post and forget. Analytics, the free tool that comes with social media platforms and provides you with valuable insights on how to optimize your social strategy. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram have in-depth reporting capabilities that can be leveraged to understand the performance of your social content and can assist with enhancing your posting strategy, content, and timing. Don't forget to take advantage of these free tools to level-up your social strategy.
Do: Leverage a variety of platforms. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and this list goes on. In today's world, there are many social media platforms to leverage for your business. It's likely your ideal customer is on more than one social media platform and looks to each platform for a specific type of content. Businesses have the opportunity to leverage many different platforms and tailoring their messaging on each platform. Although there are many platforms, beware, it's better to do a handful of platforms well rather than half-posting all platforms.
Do: Meet your ideal customer where they already are. With many social media platforms it can be difficult to know where to start and how to best target your core market. Think in the mind of your ideal customer and where they would spend most of their time. You sell executive coaching to the C-suite? You might not find your ideal customer scrolling on TikTok every evening, but rather, catching up on the top news on LinkedIn. Through understanding where your prospects spend their time you will maximize the efficiency and reach of your social media posts.
Do: When in doubt, hire a professional. You wouldn't hire a plumber to fix your fridge so why not outsource a professional to manage and create on your social media? By hiring an expert your business can focus on your goals — whether those are brand awareness, lead generation or otherwise. An expert will be able to tailor a social media strategy specific to your goals, and industry while providing expertise to distinguish your brand as a market leader in the social media space.
There you have it, a few of the major do's and don'ts when it comes to social media for your business. Beyond these 6 examples there are many more best practices your business should adhere to based on each specific platform. Through leveraging the power of social media your business has the opportunity to establish great marketing tactics to fit your marketing goals.
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