Why Your Company Shouldn't Be on Social Media
I have always had the mindset of "If I'm going to spend my time on anything, I'm going to do it with excellence." Now by no means am I saying that I'm perfect or I don't slack off (let's be real, I don't feel like folding laundry with excellence), but my view on doing anything that takes time or money is that it should be done well.
Now you might be wondering what this has to do with why your company shouldn't be on social media. Unless you're going to be focused, creative, relevant and engaging, you shouldn't invest your time and money on using social media for marketing. To make social media work for your company, follow these instructions.
1. BE FOCUSED
What purpose do you want social media to serve for your company? Create goals for each network you plan to use and define your target audiences to help keep your marketing efforts focused. Don't look for an immediate ROI on social media. Instead, look for a return on relationship. Use social media as a tool to strengthen relationships with your followers and customers. Once you define clear, focused goals for social media, you can move forward with a creative strategy to reach these goals.
2. BE CREATIVE
How are you going to reach your goals? What type of content will you share? Will you run campaign ads to promote your products or services? Be creative when answering these questions. Think of your favorite brands that you follow on social media. What do they creatively share on social media that keeps you engaged and interested? There are so many different ways to engage your audience on social media, you just have to be sure you are creating content that is relevant and interesting to your followers. Make sure you are sharing videos, photos, or memes when you post content onto any social network. Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images, according to HubSpot.
3. BE RELEVANT
Make sure the content that you are sharing on social media is of value to your followers. Don't just post a link or a photo without describing what you're sharing – explain what the content is about and why your followers should care. Do you know what they are interested in? Create a list of topics that are relevant to your company's products or services to help you brainstorm content that is relevant to share. For example, say the company I own is a gym. I know my followers are going to be interested in healthy living, clean eating, exercising, stretching, health and wellness, etc. The more relevant your content is for your followers, the more likely they are going to like, comment and share your content and this will increase your engagement on social media.
4. BE ENGAGING
You can learn more about your followers' interests by regularly engaging with them. If they comment on something you share, or write a review about your company, always respond. This shows that your company is interested in a two-way dialogue, not just a one-way conversation where you are doing all the sharing. I get asked a lot by business owners, "Should I respond to negative comments or reviews?" The answer is YES. Here's why you should stay positive when responding to negative reviews.
Another perk about engaging with your followers is you can get a better understanding about what they are interested in learning more about, causes they care about or content they find relevant. If you are hosting an event, you can create an event page on Facebook and you can create polls in the event's discussion. This helped me when I was planning breakout sessions for a recent event – instead of the committee just deciding what attendees wanted to learn about, we just asked them by creating a poll.