Is your business in a social media rut? Are you struggling to reach the audiences you desperately need?
Don’t despair. You’re not alone — and you’re certainly not the first.
Businesses looking to break out of a social media rut do need to get serious about social media. But they don’t have to follow a cookie-cutter approach to building a multifaceted and robust social media presence. What works for your company, after all, might not work for your competitor’s.
So, how should you get to work improving your social media presence? Consider these six strategies, remembering always that your business is unique — these are options, not directives.
1. Experiment With Different Types of Content
First, experiment with different types of social content: short text posts, memes, gifs, studio-quality photos and videos, longform LinkedIn posts, and so on. You know better than anyone what’s likely to resonate with your audience — or will, once you’ve done your research.
2. Lay Out a Message That’s Consistent With Your Brand
Whatever form it takes, make sure your social media messaging is consistent with your brand. This arts and technology school is a great example: its LinkedIn content is immediately recognizable as its own, boosting its credibility.
3. Formalize Your Social Media Content Calendar
Effective social media use is not catch-as-catch-can. If you haven’t already done so, lay out and stick to a social media calendar that tells you when, where, and how to post across your social ecosystem. If you’re struggling to stay organized with your off-the-shelf calendar app, consider a social media organizing solution or project management tool.
4. Use Analytics to Determine What’s Working and What Isn’t
Familiarize yourself with each social media platform’s analytics tools, and actually use them to determine what’s working and what isn’t. Adjust your plans accordingly; the types of posts that work best may not be those you’re expecting to take off.
5. Engage With Your Audience on a Substantive Basis
Ask questions of your audience, and respond when they ask questions of you. Two-way engagement is absolutely crucial to your organization’s credibility.
6. Know Where the Line Is Drawn (And Stay on the Right Side)
Finally, know where to draw the line. This threshold is different for every brand — if you’ve built an edgy, irreverent image, you can get away with more than a family-friendly competitor. But there’s always a line, somewhere; understand the implications of crossing it and take steps to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Get Serious About Social
If you’re able to deploy these six strategies to improve your company’s social media presence, you’ll be well on your way to social media success. However, you won’t be at the end of the road. Maintaining a robust, productive social media presence requires ongoing attention and effort; this isn’t a set-it-and-forget it situation.
The volume of resources that you’re able to devote to your social media efforts depends, of course, on the extent of those resources and the demands competing for your attention. Cultivating a first-rate social media operation is a worthy goal, of course, but it’s not the only priority your business needs to have — nor, in the early going, the most important. More important than getting the social media game right, right now, is keeping things in perspective.
