1 Know your target audience

Know who your ideal customer is and where they are likely to be on social media. Decide on the type of content that will engage your target audience. Understand what they are searching for, what they need and what is keeping them awake at night!

Make sure you blend in on each platform

Facebook – is ideal for catching up with friends and family, unwinding, looking up hobbies, interests.

Twitter – is perfect for snappy information, people want to know about what’s happening, celebrity gossip, customer service, breaking news

Pinterest – is more visual, so think ‘images’; wedding planning, party, shopping, fashion, hobbies inspiration

Linkedin – the top social media platform for business and professionals

Instagram – things that happen on the go! Catching up with friends, sharing ‘up to the minute’ information. Works well for visual brands too.

 

2 Decide on your strategy

Decide what you actually want to get out of your social media efforts – Sales? Engagement? Providing customer service? Keeping in touch with other businesses?

Decide where your customers are – there is no point being on Facebook if your ideal customer is not there! You may still decide to go with Facebook, because you want to and because ‘others do it too’, but understand that your engagement level is not going to be very high and will probably not be from your ideal customers.

Choose 2-3 networks and do them well! There is no point being on 10 different social media networks and only posting on each a couple of times a month, because you don’t have the time.

Create a content plan – decide how often you’ll post on each media platform, write it in your diary and stick to it. Be consistent.

3 Engagement & relationship

Social media platforms are like a big party – listen, nod, make polite conversation, answer back and enjoy your time there. If you just barge in shouting about your new business offering, you will be probably ignored and people won’t listen to you. The trick is to blend in!

Tell your story – don’t try to just sell, because that’s not going to get you anywhere. Join in with conversations, start a conversation and just have a chat.

Don’t post too often. If you post too often people will get numb and switch off.

Don’t post just in ‘one go’ – you might have 10 minutes free and want to blitz your Twitter account, but your customers will get fed up with having their Twitter stream clogged up with just your posts and re-tweets. Tip: look to use a scheduling platform like Tweetdeck to spread & schedule your updates to make them look more natural.

Don’t ignore your followers, likers etc. They are your potential customers – if somebody takes the time to tweet or message you, reply to them and send an answer back.

 

Interact with others – nobody is going to listen to you, if you just shout all the time or if you do not pay attention to others.

Selling & Promoting – keep the ratio balanced with other types of posts or tweets. For example, look to post at least 3 general posts for every sale/promotion one.

Use the hashtag # with care. Don’t overuse it on Twitter. By the way, the hashtag doesn’t really work well on Facebook.

Follow or like people back (but only if you genuinely want to).

Visuals are big – use photos, memes, infographic and videos to tell your story. People get easily bored reading, but a great picture is going to make them smile and remember you and your business.

Become an expert in your field. Show that you really know your stuff and people will come back for more. Don’t be scared of sharing your indirect competitor’s posts on your timeline. This won’t necessarily mean that your potential customers will go to your competitors; your potential customers will know next time, they don’t have to go anywhere else for that piece of information, they can just come to you!

 

4 Be consistent with your branding

Make sure that your branding is clear across all of your social media platforms. Incorporate the same colours as you have on your logo and website. You don’t want people guessing whether they are in the right place or not.

Complete your profile as much as you can. Post a question to start a conversation. For example, on Twitter: “Baker, cake maker and cat lover. Ask me anything about baking cakes!” The chances are that this will prompt people into immediately sending you questions and comments about their favourite cakes or any questions they might have about cats! Why does this approach help you? It is a great way to start a relationship and build a connection, even if it is with someone who is not your ideal customer, as they may end up recommending you to their friends.

Make sure your website link is in all your profiles. Be creative about how you describe your business and use all the available space (characters you have) for your description

Update Profiles, website links, dates, events etc on regular basis too.

Separate Business from Personal (with regards to your profile or account)

5 Drive traffic back to your website

Include social media share buttons on your website – it is best to include them on each page and block post. Make it easy for your readers to share your content on their social media network.

Include social media links, but don’t lose your customers. Be careful where you add your buttons and what type you use. If people are just about to buy, you don’t want them distracted by your twitter feed. Make sure that all social media links open in a new window. Why? If people do get distracted by clicking your profile and then reading all about their friend’s latest nail varnish colour – at least your website page still stays open for them to return to later!

6 Mailing List

Social media is great, but it can also be fickle. It changes all the time and, even if we think that Facebook and Twitter are here to stay, they may go out of business tomorrow.

What does this mean for you? Well, social media is great for engagement and customer service, but you have no control over what happens on there. Facebook can shut down your page tomorrow, without any warning, so take control now!

To minimise the damage this may do to your business, make sure that all your social media effort feed into your mailing list.

Have a sign up box on your website and integrate it with your social media profiles. This is the only way you can continue a relationship you’ve started with your potential customers over on social media, but now you have the safety of doing it through your mailing lists and/or newsletter.

7 Keep it professional

 

Don’t ever talk negatively about your customers, other businesses or argue on social media. It’s pointless and you never know who will read it – even when it disappears from the news feed (as it’s still there and can come up on searches).

If you do get a complaint on social media (justified or not) take it away from the public eye straightaway. Don’t delete the post, but message the person directly and deal with it through e-mail or phone.

Show your personality, but keep things within boundaries – half-naked pictures of you getting drunk on a night out are probably best kept for your private social network.

8 Don’t cut corners!

If you are using automatic scheduling, be careful which software you use. People are smart – if the bottom of your post says ‘via Hootsuite’ they know you are not actually there and won’t bother to respond.

When scheduling future posts and tweets – schedule through Facebook’s own scheduling tool and Tweetdeck, as both are free and nobody can tell that they are actually scheduled updates.

Don’t automatically link your Facebook to Twitter etc. Don’t be fooled into thinking this will save you time. Twitter and Facebook cater for completely different types of person and neither will take too kindly to you trying to cross share your messages.

Don’t use black hat tactics (e.g. buying in ‘likes’ or followers, using personal profiles on FB as your business page and buying links etc.), they only get you so far and you might even get banned.

Be consistent. Don’t just start your social media accounts and then just leave them. Make sure you dedicate some time every week (or day) to update, schedule and generally build your social media status.

9 Be a bit of a smarty pants!

Keep everything organised – use categories and lists in Twitter. Make sure they are set to ‘private’ unless you actually want people to find out all your secrets!

You don’t have to follow somebody on Twitter to see their updates in your Twitter feed. Just add them to your lists. That way you know what’s happening and you can keep your ‘follow’ click for somebody else.

Set up a Google + page for your business. Google+ is still tricky to use as a true social media platform, as most people merrily ignore it – but it’s the only social media network that will give you a ‘follow link’ to your website and you will feature more highly on search engines with a Google+ profile.

Research your competitors – find out who they follow and who follows them. If somebody follows your competitors, the chances are that they will follow you too!

Re-cycle your content! If you write a blog, make sure you share it on all your social medial platforms – but space it out for maximum coverage. There is nothing wrong with sharing your ‘archive’ blog posts on Twitter

10 Resources

Tweetdeck

This is a simple way of making your Twitter stream more organised. Once you start following more than 50 people, you really need to streamline who you actually take notice of. Sort out your favourite people into lists and then organise them in Tweetdeck. You will probably never go back to your ‘home feed’ ever again!

Tweetdeck also allows you to schedule posts and is completely free.

Buffer

Buffer allows you to schedule posts for the main social media platforms. It does save time; but use sparingly, as people will know that you have scheduled your posts.

Mailchimp

Allows you to put together email newsletters and mailing campaigns, collect e-mail addresses and also provides you with comprehensive data analysis. Easy to set up and integrate into your website.

Best for beginners, as it’s free for up to 2000 subscribers.

 

 

Tweepi

Is your Twitter account getting crowded? This little tool with allow you to ‘flush’ those people that don’t follow you back or people who are no longer active on Twitter. Free to use.

PicMonkey

Great picture editor – allows you to edit, put together collages (has a template for Facebook), add text, overlays and loads more. Easy to use and the basic features are free.