Boost Your Business Growth with Social Media

Do you find it difficult to effectively manage, analyzeand grow your social media – at scale? 

Social media is the most widespread form ofcommunication, world-wide.  The power ofsocial media has been proven again and again with the virality of content andproducts.  Businesses should becapitalizing on social media as a low cost marketing channel, but if you aren’t– now is the time to start!  

Effective social media marketers know thatin order to create engagement, that will in-turn grow their business, they needgreat content.  Relevant and valuable contentis the key to becoming successful on social media and in social advertising. 

SocialMedia as a Customer Service Platform 

Your customers will be voicing theiropinions, asking questions, leaving reviews and recommendations on yourproducts and services through all social media platforms.  Let’s face it, no one wants to wait on holdfor customer service anymore, customers have real-time access to their favoritesocial media platforms in the palm of their hands and they are using them toconnect with your business.  It takes 10seconds to tweet a complaint and tag the correct handle to voice a concern. Thebusinesses’ responsibility at this point is to ensure that a plan is in placeto handle all customer service requests, and respond quickly! 

Twitter is the platform of choice to voice concern,complain or praise! Typing out a message in 140 characters or less and @mentioningthe right people is all you need to get your voice heard. In addition, somecompanies create a separate customer service Twitter handle to keep their feedfrom becoming filled with customer issues or questions. Then, when you respond youcan take the message private to have a higher character limit so you can get tothe bottom of the problem faster and easier. 

Timingis Key

Social media is also all about timelinessand relevancy when posting content and updates.Understanding the latest trends on social media will help keep your contentrelevant and your audience engaged.Social media is always and ever changing, creating a need to understandthe latest trends and topics.  Somethingthat is news today, can be gone tomorrow and no longer relevant to youraudience. 

Choosing the right social media platforms willsave you time and effort, that could be better spent creating great content forthe channels where your audience is most active.  Do some research and find where your audienceis, and start there! Is your customer base very active on Facebook? Kick-off aFacebook Ad campaign and target that audience to increase your visibility. 

SocialMedia Plans and Crisis Plans

Social media can be made a lot easier tomanage with a social media management tool, as well as a social contentplan.  The social content plan shouldcover:

• Who will be an author, publisher and an admin - Each role can be in charge ofdifferent areas such as content creation, responding to notifications,publishing and promoting…or a combination of these items.

• The voice and tone of the brand - This can be business,professional, relaxed or fun – all up to how you want to portray your business.  Keep in mind that social media tends to be morelight-hearted and fun  that other more traditional outlets, so your tone may bea little lighter than usual. 

• The types of content to be shared - This should include how oftenyou plan to post third party content, your own content and promotions.

This could be incorporated into one job, ormultiple people depending on the size and structure of your business.  Overall, the plan is designed to maximizevisibility and control over your social media accounts, create brandconsistency and avoid any problems that may occur with issues on social mediathat could escalate to a crisis without proper management. 

How would you effectively handle a socialmedia crisis?  Developing a companysocial media crisis plan for your brand is something every business shouldthink about.  If your accounts are set upproperly with the correct permissions, there should never be concern for beingable to access all the accounts if something were needed to be handled, orpermissions were needed to be restricted quickly.  If a rogue post is published, do you have theprocess in place to handle this?  Even ifa post is misspelled, a link is broken or it is simply sent out at the wrongtime to the wrong geographical area – do you have access to un-publish or editfrom one central place to all platforms?  

AdCampaigns 

Ad campaigns on social media are easy tocreate, monitor and can be tailored to every budget! Social media ads allow youto set a designated budget while forecasting the results you will see with thatallotted budget. These types of ads can be strategically targeted and ensureyou are reaching the right audience.  Everyoneis already on social media, including your competitors, why not present yourbusiness message in front of them?   

Effectively growing your business on socialmedia can take time, but with the right steps in place– you can grow youronline presence! Most likely, yourbusiness is already being talked about on social media, now it’s time to join the conversation.