If you attended Coffee and Connect in February and heard me ramble on for 12 minutes about the in’s and out’s of social media, you’re probably feeling one of two ways. You are either super inspired and are already implementing some of my tips and tricks, or you might have felt enthusiastic but have since forgotten most of what was said.
And that’s okay! This blog is a good refresher to all the things I spoke about and will give you the opportunity to refer back to all the aspects I covered.
I discussed an FAQ from many of my clients - ‘what should I expect out of social media?’. The answer to that? You shouldn’t expect the world to follow you instantly overnight. The point of social media is to, yes, reach people, but when considering what social media can bring for them, most of my clients tend to fall into one of two categories.
The first is that they are unsure about what social media is supposed to do for them, unsure of their target market and are unrealistic about what they should get out of it. In this case, they really don’t know who they are targeting, or what their audience really wants to hear, and therefore, are targeting too broad. A great way to solve this is by getting to know your audience better, creating a marketing plan and researching your audience’s likes, what they like to look at, read and what other
platforms they are on.
The other type is those who do understand their audience, and what social media can achieve for them, but they still aren’t getting engagement, and don’t have the time to learn about how to boost their engagement.
In this case, they need more tactics, they need to be supercharging their pages, with ads, influencers, competitions and collaborations.
Social media can achieve a lot of things for your business - such as brand awareness and trust, engagement, leads and sales, but do remember that these things take a long time to achieve. It’s important to remember that the higher the value your product or service is, the longer it will take to achieve these objectives. Contrary to popular belief, social media isn’t an instant lead generator. If you remain consistent and on-brand and can maintain strong engagement with your audience, these things will come with good time.
Social media is also great for boosting for SEO, and by just having a presence is excellent for those clients who like to visit your pages before signing up or making a purchase. Nearly all clients will check socials before purchasing, to see what you are sharing and if you are sharing consistently.
It is also important to note that there isn't a magic formula as to what social media platforms you should be on. Ultimately, you shouldn’t just be on Facebook and Instagram because that's your preferred platforms to use. There are a lot of other platforms that work for certain industries, but instead of spending lots of effort on all of them, it’s about finding the platforms that get you the most traction and engagement for your business and the content you share. You can then focus most of your effort on those while having the other platforms tick along with regular posts just in case a customer wants to research you. If you are a creative business, try Pinterest. If you’re a service-based industry providing tips and tricks, try out Youtube. There is no use spending lots of effort on every platform, because, at the end of the day, every platform may not work for you.
In covering my top 3 strategies, I talked about supercharging your pages, with competitions, advertising, collaborations and influencers, and discussed how you must do these with your ideal audience, and their needs and pain points in mind. My hashtag recipe also seemed to be a big point of interest, with it definitely being a tricky strategy to master. In short, your hashtags should be relevant to the number of posts associated with them (you can find the exact numbers in the Member’s portal) and should directly relate to the content itself, your industry, specific niche, and branded hashtags.
And finally, in writing engaging captions, I use a fast 3 step formula to ensure my captions can accumulate more comments and interactions than ever before.
- Starting with your hook, you should draw people into your post, and relate it back to the consumer, not yourself.
- The middle section of your caption can be written in two ways, as a value or storytelling piece. If you want to provide huge amounts of value to your audience, you should share 2-3 tips per post. These help to target the consumer’s pain points and they build trust with your audience.
- The end to your now amazing caption comes with a call to action, in which you tell people what you want them to do. Do you want them to comment? Message? Visit your website? Make that super clear in your call to action. Your call to action shouldn’t be sales-y, but rather a place where you ask people to engage with you.
When thinking about how you can implement these strategies into your own pages, consider first how your brand message and key benefits fit into all of this. Some of these strategies will work better than others, depending on your industry, brand message and the content you wish to share. If you need assistance or advice with any of these points, feel free to contact me for help.
Jess Cook jess@sociallysquared.com.au