Optimizing Social for Business
Social media is a prevalent and highly discussed topic. Many businesses attempt to use social for business, but fall short of their expectations because they don’t develop a strategy. When used correctly, social media channels can boost your visibility and help you generate new leads.
1. Don’t Assume Every Platform is Right for Your Business
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Tumbr, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Google+, Instagram…the list goes on and on. Just because these platforms exist, doesn’t mean you should create your own business account. Always keep your goals in mind and seek only those social channels that allow you to get in front of your target audience. Blindly following trends and participating in any and every platform is not a strategy, it’s a waste of time and resources. Instead, focus on delivering your best on a few social channels.
2. Plan for Customer Care
Whether you realize it or not, creating social accounts opens up a can of customer service worms. Both existing and potential customers have open range to ask questions, provide feedback, or post negative comments. Yes, you should designate a social media moderator and yes, you may choose to hide any negative comments or feedback, but I highly recommend harnessing that opportunity and spinning it into a positive situation. When you answer negative posts and let them know you’d like to correct the issue, that person, as well as other readers ,will appreciate you taking the time to address concerns. It shows that you are committed and dedicated to customer care.
4. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize
Facebook posts allow for added SEO value within the post itself. You can change the image, title, and descriptions associated with your posts, giving you the opportunity to include your brand name and targeted keywords. In the example below, the post is optimized for e-commerce business.
Be sure to include keywords in hashtags (#) where appropriate; hashtags are now supported by most major platofrms. Those are searchable and will help your content be found easily. Also, also include a call-to-action. What do you want your audience to do as a result of seeing your information? Click on a link? Call you?
5. Repurpose Content Whenever Possible
Constantly creating new content is a major challenge for marketers. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. In fact, you can repurpose content from past events, your website, sales presentations, and marketing brochures, just to name a few. You should consider starting a company-wide resource library, where company employees are encouraged to submit content, from news articles to employee pictures. No matter what you distribute online, make sure the content is unique. Vary your post types– text, photos, and videos—to keep your audience interested.
6. Use Automation to Your Advantage
Using platforms such as TweetDeck, Buffer, and Hootsuite help you organize all your various social networks and schedule your posts so you can set it and forget it. Set aside one or two time slots a week for this purpose.
TweetDeck allows you to create alerts for search terms, similar to Google Alerts. This functionality can help you keep a pulse on products, services, potential customers and much more.
7. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Support
If you don’t ask, you won’t receive. Don’t hesitate to ask fans to share your posts and follow you on other social channels if they aren’t already following you. Make it easy by including links to your social pages in your company email signature, website pages, and any digital sales collateral.
Also, let your Facebook fans know that you’d like for their friends to see your information to pop-up in their news feed. When someone likes your page, they can choose whether or not that displays in their news feed their friends, as seen below.
Guest Blog by Carolina Zapata of Webcore Technologies – www.WebcoreTech.com