Social media — one of the many things in life that could make or break an individual, organisation or company. Although it’s popular among millennials and people who are keen on keeping up with the latest trends.. companies and businesses seem to have a hard time transitioning from the traditional method of promotion to the more current digital marketing methods, where a huge part maximises the usage of social media postings and social media advertising, to a great extent.
Usually, when it comes to the topic of social media, companies, would generally avoid it citing claims that these platforms would only attract negative attention to the company as well as the fact that it’s difficult to manage and navigate. Now, these issues might be true and valid to some extent but they could be tackled easily with the sheer determination to learn the useful skill of navigating social media with some helpful tips.
On the other hand, some companies, who’ve managed to jump onto the bandwagon and have tried to create a strong social media presence, have ended up in sheer disappointment over the outcome of their efforts. Well, the truth is, social media can be tricky to deal with but with some careful planning and implementation, it would be one of the best tools in an organisation’s marketing arsenal.
To cover the basics, social media indeed does help showcase companies, especially for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in a cheaper and more efficient way. If used in a smart manner, these platforms, with increasing popularity among the masses, might be the only tool an SME would need to further develop and promote its business. There’s no better time to start than now. So, here are a few useful tips that could be used to boost a company’s social media presence.
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3) Follow other Businesses & Social Media Influencers
1) Identifying your Audience
Similar to one’s unique characteristics and features, each business would have some sort of distinctness that sets itself apart from other businesses. Now, as a business owner, or part of the management team, your initial goal would be to find this. From here, you’re going to have to identify the goals for your company, both short-term goals and long-term goals. After that, based on your goals, we would get to the interesting part, which is to identify your target audience and their interests.
This step is crucial to establishing your company’s social media presence. Once you’ve done that, creating a strong social media presence would no longer be a big deal. Identifying your target audience would be the deciding factor for the most part of your social media presence. This includes the aesthetics of your page, the type of content, the jargon used for captions and the method of conveying a specific piece of information.
2) Communication is Key
If there was a singular factor for a business’ downfall, it would be the lack of communication with its customers or clients. In the age of social media, it is expected that everyone responds in a timely manner. Back in the day, when customer service played a prevalent role in answering any queries or concerns, there would be a prompt response to the customers’ questions due to the nature of the conversation — via a simple phone call.
Times have indeed changed and while most businesses rely on more modern solutions such as emails and the messaging services integrated via social media platforms, there seems to be a problem with the promptness of the reply received. Social media has definitely given rise to a laidback approach in dealing with a customer’s concerns and complaints. Oftentimes, the queries of customers, posed via the integrated messaging service on social media applications, would only be handled after weeks of spamming with no replies or responses from anyone within the organisation. This is not acceptable as it only creates frustration and negative reviews by the customers or clients.
The best way to handle this dilemma would be to assign an individual, either a freelancer or a remote customer service employee from the marketing department to handle the queries in a timely manner. This would boost the customer’s trust and confidence towards the company and even if the company’s profile seems unaesthetic, it could somehow end up getting a good social media presence due to an amazing online customer service response rate.
3) Follow other Businesses & Social Media Influencers
Although the concept of following the social media accounts of other businesses, seem to be quite unheard of, this is a crucial step in engaging with your competitors in a healthy manner. This way, you could increase your engagement rate with them hence, increasing any probability of collaborating with them for future projects.
An important group of people to follow on social media would be social media influencers, who might pester the company for PR boxes but would turn out to be an incredible asset to the company once acquainted with them. For starters, upon following them and surveying their target audience, send them a text indicating your interest in setting up a collaboration with them. Start small with a paid promotion and after a few months, if the influencer is deemed useful to the company, consider hiring him or her as a brand ambassador. The key is to seek relationships, not just as followers.
4) Post Regularly
Now, the rule of the thumb is to always churn out content via your company’s social media pages. It could range from photos, random motivational quotes, excerpts of testimonies or even short videos. The possibilities are endless and to establish a good social media presence, and to establish you as a thought-leader. A business must post diverse types of contents on its social media account. This way, it would not look too mundane and a high engagement rate between the business and its followers could be observed.
To diversify your business’ content, the CEO or the Head of Marketing would have to become tech-savvy. This means, being in the loop regarding the latest features of the social media platforms in use by your company. For instance, among the most used features in Instagram, would be Highlights, Reels, Guides and Stories. Apart from posting regularly on your feed, it would be nice to witness some changes by seeing an Instagram Reels on perhaps, the way your products are packaged or produced.
You could even consider posting about mental health tips on your company’s Instagram Stories to show your followers that the company cares about their mental health status. A little care should be taken to avoid posting about controversial issues on your business’s social media accounts, unless it is absolutely necessary.
5) Create Attractive Visuals
Now, many companies overlook this factor in boosting their social media presence. Having an aesthetically pleasing feed is a necessity to ensure that visually, your company’s page is interesting. Having visuals that are inconsistent and does not match with the company’s branding, would eventually confuse your followers and potential customers. This isn’t exactly a tough thing to do because with applications such as Canva, designing minimalistic and aesthetically pleasing posts would no longer be an issue.
However, here’s the catch! Avoid integrating too many colour schemes and font types into your designs. Just stick to a specific colour palette as well as font type and use this across all your social media materials. If possible, hire freelancers or remote employees to design these visuals and channel your permanent workers’ energy towards ensuring that these posts gain the maximum amount of exposure to social media users.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, although boosting and creating a good social media presence might seem like a daunting task, your company would reap the benefits that come along post-establishing it. As a business owner or a leader in your organisation, doing the initial research is vital in ensuring that the visuals on your company’s social media pages aren’t similar to other companies that are manufacturing the same products and that you target your marketing messages to the correct audience.
You must avoid confusing your customers and followers at all costs. The happier your customers are, the more visible your business’ social media accounts would be. In this era of digital marketing, you would need to form more alliances than foes with other organisations in the form of strategic alliances. As you know, even the biggest of brands are doing strategic alliances with other brands as part of their marketing strategies.
