By now it’s no surprise that social media is a key player in small business marketing plans. Having a social account is an easy way to reach a large audience of current and potential customers, highlight your brand’s personality, and build trust with your customers. To learn more about why social media is essential for your business, see our previous blog post here.
Since you now know how crucial it is to have a presence on social, here are 3 actionable tips to help you get started right away.
1. Do Your Hashtag Research
Hashtags are how your content will get discovered online. Therefore, it is important to do your research ahead of time and create a list of hashtags that you want to use on your posts. When online users search these hashtags, your content will become visible to them, and you’ll get your content and page in front of the right audience.
Be sure to use both general hashtags about your industry, as well as specific ones for your niche. You should also create a branded hashtag that you can use specifically for your business (hint: put the branded hashtag in your profile bio so that your followers can find it easily).
When first starting out, you may need to use more hashtags so that you can grow your audience and be seen. After you have a large enough following, you may find that you can cut down the number of hashtags you use per post.
2. Start Planning Your Content in Batches
Now comes the tricky part- creating the actual content that will be posted on your feed. Your content should be engaging and helpful to your customers with a mix of educational and entertaining. For example, on Monday you might share a link to your latest blog post; Tuesday you can share an infographic relevant to your product or industry; and Friday you can share something lighthearted and humorous that showcases your brand’s personality.
Gather or create at least a week’s worth of content ahead of time. Then, batch schedule your content. Some social media platforms (such as Facebook) have the native ability to schedule. For others, like Instagram, you may need to use a third-party app to schedule your posts ahead of time (Later, HubSpot, and Sprout Social are a few tools that come with Instagram scheduling). Scheduling ahead will free up your time during the week to take care of other important tasks- just be sure to check back daily and respond to any comments or messages in real-time.
3. Invite Your Current Customers to Like Your New Page
You’ve done the hard work to get your pages up and running, so now you can begin building an audience. A good place to start is with the audience you already have. Send an email to your current customers letting them know that you have a new Facebook account to follow, and to like your page. If you have your own personal social media accounts, you can invite people on your friends list to like your new pages as well.
If you want to learn more about getting started with social media, contact us at Empowered Pulse. We’re happy to help!