How To Get The Most Out Of Social Media!

The aim of social media is to facilitate brand awareness and develop your brand's personality. To do this you need to enter into meaningful conversations with your would-be customers, but before you can hold meaningful conversations you need to produce content that engages your followers. This article provides you with 10 tips that will allow you to get the most out of your social media investment.

Know your audience

Don't join a network just because your competitors are on it or because it's being touted as the next big thing. User demographics differ depending on the social network. Choose social media based on your targeted audience, the wider market you operate in and your specific service/product offering.

Quality, not quantity

Don't bombard your followers with marketing messages! The quickest way to lose followers and avoid attracting new ones, is to relentlessly post over and over again. A well crafted marketing message will have more impact as a result.

Social Personality

Social media is the ideal space in which to develop your brand by giving it personality. Don't be afraid of having a human face; this will help followers relate to your brand and helps to build not only trust, but an emotional connection to your brand.

Be Outstanding

Social Media provides you with a unique way in which to interact with your customers. Demonstrate outstanding customer service on social media and it only impacts the person you are dealing direct with, but all those exposed. Being helpful actively proves you look after your customers which improves trust and aids positive brand perception.

Be Consistent

It can be tempting to spread the workload by providing multiple employees with admin status across your various social media platforms, but be careful. The tone of your communication needs to be consistent, as does the personality you convey - so ensure you stick to a similar communication style when posting.

Be Interesting

Posting a variety of different content helps to keep things fresh. Keep your posts largely on topic, but don't be scared about being topical. Sure, followers have an interest in your brand but the same type of messaging can get old real quick. Topical conversation, pictures and videos add interest and drive engagement.

Get people involved

Creating talking points and get people to interact with you by asking questions, letting them submit content, encouraging knowledge and opinion sharing and running polls and competitions.

Monitor and respond

Once you setup your social media profiles, you then need to monitor them, daily. Customer service questions left unanswered or worse, complaints, make you look inattentive and unprofessional and will damage people's perception of your brand. Keep on top of things and monitor and respond as often as possible.

Mix it up!

Don't treat social media as a separate activity. Social media is most effective when integrated into your marketing mix, used just like any other strategic marketing tool. You tell customers about your website right? Tell them about your social media profiles too! Tweet pictures from Pinterest, post your YouTube videos on Facebook. Use your current successful marketing platforms to gain traction to build social media followers.

Be realistic

Social media is unlikely to bring you massive direct increase in sales and it won't suddenly result in better conversion rates or more inquiries. You can however foster loyal, happy customers who will keep shopping with you and evangelize about your brand, raising your brand's profile and reputation.