by Mark Wolford

When it comes to social media for business, it’s easy to feel like it would be better to just not even worry about it.

After all, businesses have thrived for thousands of years without it, right?

But the truth is, your customers are on social media every day. In fact, more than 4.6 billion people are active on some sort of social media, which is half the world’s population. And the average person spends more than 2.7 hours on social media per day.

For most, it isn’t a passive experience. Social media is influencing how your target audience spends their time and money. Influence is earned by companies who utilize their presence online to inform, guide, and engage with their customers online. The question is, how should you do that?

Choose Which Platform You Want to Use.

There’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and more. Each platform serves a purpose with specific content styles, audiences, and advertising opportunities.

While some companies choose to simply camp out on one platform, those who are winning use multiple platforms. But they aren’t posting the same thing on each platform. They may use:

• LinkedIn for promoting professional services and product introductions.
• Twitter for company news, industry interactions, and highlights.
• Facebook for product pictures, branded images, and publishing videos.

While these are just a few examples, every company must keep in mind that sound social media strategy involves growing a thriving online presence for a purpose — to help bring in sales and strengthen the brand as a whole.

This is where it becomes vital to put together a variety of content for posting.

Brainstorm a Variety of Content

In order to be effective, each brand has to be intentional in using different types of posts in order to educate and engage with their target audience. Customers are wanting to know about the people involved in your brand, your values, and your milestones.

They also want to know what others have to say after using your product or service, so why not use social media to do that?

If you want to increase your influence online, show people the difference that your product will make in their lives or their company.

Find creative ways to express this through not just your words, but also images and video. Videos work wonders, they increase organic traffic from search engines by 157%. So, if you want to be known, get the camera rolling!

But how will you organize your time to post effectively and consistently?

That brings us to another point, developing a content calendar.

Develop a Content Calendar

A content calendar is a simple tool that serves as the backbone for successful social media execution. It simply involves laying out a calendar for a month and filling out what will be posted on the corresponding days.

• How often will you post?
• What types of content will go with each post? (Image, video, blog, etc.)
• What will be posted on each platform?

A content calendar will help make sure that your page has a variety of posts, instead of the same thing every day.

Through the month, keep track of what is working. Are people responding well to each type of post? Or is your reach and engagements starting to dwindle? And as people respond, your influence will grow and social media will provide more opportunities to attract people toward buying in to your offer.

Employ a Social Media Management Tool

And if you get more social action than you can handle by yourself, you can always utilize an online social media management tool such as Zoho Social or Hootsuite and manage all your social media accounts in one spot.

What to do Next?

So, take some time to evaluate where your company stands online, brainstorm content, and start filling out spaces on that calendar.

Have questions about your social media presence or want help reaching your audience online?

Reach out to us at hello@360mktgllc.com and let’s talk social!