10 Ways to be effective on social media
Social media has become the go-to digital channel for businesses, companies and organisations to reach and connect with their target audience who spend billions of minutes across various social media platforms. Research shows that social networking is now the number one activity on the Internet, having taken over from pornography and accounting for the amount of time spent on them.
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Currently, Facebook has over 1.86 billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs), Instagram with over 600 MAUs and WhatsApp with over 1.2 billion MAUs consuming various content. This fast growing number of MAUs virtually puts unprepared businesses in complex dark tunnels, making it difficult to use social media effectively.
However, businesses must appreciate the demanding task of social media marketing in order to tackle it effectively to achieve better returns on their investments.
1. Understand the Concept of social media: You need to understand the concept of social media, the functional building blocks and types of the platforms in order to be effective. Users of the platform communicate with one another. Businesses connect with their target audience, market their products and services and build brand reputation there. So you must have reasons (objectives) before you use social media.
2. Know your market segment: You cannot target everyone with your product or services. Know the customer segment you are targeting, your target market and industry/sector. Identify the other businesses who will compete with you within that segment. This guides you in positioning your brand/product and selecting the tone to use for your content development and communication.
3. Profile your customers: You have to profile your target customers to know them by their locations, occupations, income levels, technology savvy, lifestyles, interests and social life. It helps you to select the right social media platform, choose the best content themes, design promotions, run campaigns and know your budget. Not knowing the profile of your customers result in achieving poor returns or targeting wrongly.
4. Select the right social media platforms: You will know the social media platforms to use after you profile your target audience. Based on your interactions with them, you will know the platforms they spend their time to interact with their community of friends and fans. Choose the platforms that deliver the highest number of quality audience. Publicise your social media accounts in your communication and brand materials (letterheads, email signatures, call cards, flyers, banners, t-shirts, billboards, etc.) to get your existing customers to join your page.
5. Develop quality content: On social media, your content is your voice. It expresses your messages. The quality of your content affects the clarity of your message. Select thematic areas based on the interests of your target audience as well as your products/services.
If you sell shoes to business executives, you to have to select themes such as shoes, types of business shoes, fashion, grooming, dressing, lacing/polishing of shoes, shopping for shoes, colour matching, business wardrobe, and other themes. Position these themes in contexts such as business leadership, looking good, executive look, fashionable and other contexts which connect with the audience. Use holidays, celebrated days and company activities as some of the themes and contexts as well.
Choose the themes to treat in text, picture, audio or video format. The power of themes lies in the content format you choose to treat them. For example, showing “how to lace a shoe” will be simpler to understand in video format than writing in text format. Your message must have a structure: a headline to grab attention or prompt people to click, a body copy/text to explain your headline or benefits and a call-to-action to interact the audience to take an action (register, buy, call or shop).
Lastly, get a professional creative designer to develop your content. Your writings must be grammatically correct and easy to understand. Pictures and graphics must be sharp and not blurred. Videos must be not ghostly. Your sound must be clear and without noise.
6. Broadcast your content: After content development, you must develop a content schedule/calendar to broadcast your content. Follow your calendar to publish your content to the social media channels at the right time. You will be required to quickly design content to post in order to join relevant trending conversation on some platforms. Ensure that your content is ready, approved and available for broadcasting according to the schedule.
7. Engage your audience: Be ready to interact with the target audience after you broadcast your content. They will comment, share, make inquiries and give feedback. I advise you to have a Conversation Bible (as I call it). This entails your company information, products and services information, campaigns, promotions, and inquiries. You can add/use existing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to develop your Conversation Bible. Have the right information ready to interact and engage your audience. It works!
8. Run promotions and campaigns: Frequently run promotions to offer your social media audience discounts, deals, loyalty benefits and freebies. It helps to drive and direct attention to your social media accounts. Your audience will show appreciation by spending time on your page as well as inviting their friends to join your accounts and sharing your content with them.
9. Have a budget: Social media marketing requires budget for effective management. You must pay for social media strategy, content development, promotions/campaigns, reporting software, devices and gadgets, internet connection, social media team and other unexpected items. Have a budget for your social media marketing.
10. Measure your results or returns: You must measure your efforts and investments to know if you are achieving your set objectives. Calls and purchases from the social media audience must be documented and separated from walk-ins. Social Media results can be the growth of your audience, the intensity of your engagements, participation in promotions, increase in sales and profits, as well as brand awareness.