Sunday, July 1, 2018

Social Media Tips for Business

Businesses of all sizes are realizing the benefits of social media. It is no longer the case that you, your sales people or administrative assistant are the first point of contact between the outside world and your company. That role is now the responsibility of your website and online social media profiles. So use social media wisely...
Publish Relevant Content
Social media is a great inbound marketing tool that can help you generate interest, collect leads and build your email list. Publishing and posting content that is relevant to both your brand and your audience is a way to attract customers who are truly interested in your brand, and the products and services you have to offer. Relevant content adds value to the your message, positions you and your brand as a trusted advisor, and is authentic and believable.

Know Your Audience
To connect with your clients and prospects (your audience), you need to understand what is important to them. It is also important to know the level of knowledge they have about your products and services so you can present the information in the correct vernacular. If your audience is retail or residential based, then use terms that the layperson will understand. However, if you are marketing to people within your industry, you should use industry and technical terms. There is nothing more frustration than to present basic information to a highly knowledgeable audience, or to speak at too high a level to a novice audience.

Look at the Competition
Watching what your competitors are doing is a form of market research. In this case, you’ll be looking at those who share the same target audience as you, and compete in your marketplace. Evaluate their brand, their message, the online websites where they publish and the messaging they promote in their advertising. As your prospects and clients look for a business online like yours, you can be found along with others and not be overlooked.

Choose the Right Platforms
The number of available social media platforms is huge, and starting a social media campaign can seem overwhelming. If you're just starting out with social media, plan to use just 1 or 2 platforms. Start with the social media platforms where you expect your greatest audience to be. As per my prior point, you can use the same platforms that your competition uses.

How Often to Post
How often should you post? That is not an easy question to answer. There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to posting. Posting too infrequently can lead to your business being missed, ignored or simply forgotten. Posting too often can be overwhelming, and cause your audience to lose interest. I believe that you should post as often as your audience will tolerate. However, there's no easy way to know that until you start posting and track the frequency of views over time. You can post daily, weekly or monthly. And, you can have different posting frequencies for different social media platforms.

If you’re going to post every day, keep your posts short and to the point. Also, vary your post types. For example, alternate among text posts, video posts, or image posts so your readers have variety each day. If you decide to post less often than once daily, then variety in post type is less important. Instead, put your effort into creating more robust content and for a variety of topics.

There are also SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits to building up the number of posts on your website and social media sites.  In general, the more pages and posts you have, the greater the chance a reader has to find you through the search engines. While SEO is not quite as simple just this, post frequency and quantity will generally bring you much more web traffic.

Post Consistently
More important than frequency of posting is frequency consistency. That could be from daily to a few times a week to once each month. Once you select a frequency, stick with it. It's OK to set a different posting frequency for different social media platforms. For example, you may chose to tweet daily, post on Facebook weekly and post on your blog monthly. Regular readers of this blog know that I post here monthly. On Twitter (https://twitter.com/davidschuchman), I tweet once or twice each week.


It's clear that many businesses rely on social media to promote their brand, products and services. However, social media marketing is not about volume selling and posting random content. Using social media effectively for business can be a quick, easy and user-friendly way to interact with your target audience. With a little investment in time, your business can be well on its way to developing a strong online presence and following.


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4 comments:

  1. People that do not understand the value of using social media have not arrived to the 21st century yet. And probably they never will. If in doubt about this you should have a chat with a Millennial if they have time. They might be finishing a sentence on their Smartphone.

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    1. Thanks Alex. FYI, my observation about the Millennial generation and social media is that they are very comfortable using and communicating with social media. But, many may not yet have the skills to effectively use social media in business. The take-away is... also speak with business people who use social media.

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  2. Yesterday (7/05/18) I attended a very informative webinar sponsored by the SCORE Association on this topic. "Increase Your Revenue with SEO". Although it is aimed at small business, the 8-step strategy it proposes has value to the job seeker.

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    1. Thanks Bill. For anyone else interested in viewing this webinar, you can register here and watch the recorded video: https://www.score.org/event/increase-your-revenue-with-seo

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