It’s a brand new year, which can be very overwhelming and exciting, but mostly the new year brings an immense desire to try new things and improve in various aspects of your life. For business owners, the new year is for setting goals and planning marketing efforts to grow the business. If you plan to strengthen and expand your business this year (and let’s be honest most of us are) then social media definitely needs to be on your business new year’s resolutions. As each year goes by, it has become more imperative for your business to be online. The world has proved to be forever evolving and progressive, thus the only way to remain relevant in society is to transform too. It’s time to leave those outdated marketing techniques in 2021 and boldly tackle something new in 2022! So let’s get into it… how to begin tackling social media for your business, whether you’ve never touched a social media platform before or you regularly update your friends and family with Facebook posts, this guide is for you!!
Firstly it is important to decide what you hope to get out of social media. Read over these goals and decipher which few are of most importance to your business (it could be one or all of them, this is up to you).
- Increase brand/business awareness
- Generate leads and sales
- Grow your brands audience
- Boost engagement with your customers
- Drive traffic to your website
Once you have decided the social media marketing goals you would like to achieve, you must decide who is your target audience. This is important because specific social platforms will be more successful than others at converting business depending on your target demographic. Perhaps you are targeting women shoppers, well women vastly outnumber men on the platform Pinterest which is noted to boast the highest average order value for shoppers. Or maybe your target demographic is established business professionals, well the LinkedIn userbase is well-educated making it a hub for industry specific content (Sprout Social, 2021). There are some platforms that are essential, such as Facebook and Instagram due to their profile features and unmatched audience exposure due to paid advertising.
Once you have decided which platforms will be best for your business, the next step is to create your online accounts! Before creating your profiles ensure you have your business logo, business contact information, a basic or detailed description about your business, and some social media content. There is no need to stress if you don’t have any social media content yet, just ensure you have a brief idea of what you would like to post in the upcoming weeks. Your social media content doesn’t have to be incredible at the beginning, focus on aligning your content with your business values by either informing, educating or entertaining your audience. Once you are familiar with the platforms, you’ll begin to find your voice and work out what works best for you!
If you aren’t already familiar with social media, the terminology and the range of different platforms can seem daunting at first. The easiest way to begin tackling social media for your business is to liaise with a qualified social media marketer. They will teach you how to best use all the platforms, help you plan a social media marketing strategy so that you see results, and essentially take away all the stress by managing your profiles. If you are ready to tackle the online world and put your business on the social media map in 2022, then get in touch with Deb at the Social Media Angel who would love to help you throughout the entire process.
