Boost Your Business Growth with Social Media

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

Social media is the most widespread form of communication, world-wide.  The power of social media has been proven again and again with the virality of content and products.  Businesses should be capitalizing 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 that in order to create engagement, that will in-turn grow their business, they need great content.  Relevant and valuable content is the key to becoming successful on social media and in social advertising. 

Social Media as a Customer Service Platform 

Your customers will be voicing their opinions, asking questions, leaving reviews and recommendations on your products and services through all social media platforms.  Let’s face it, no one wants to wait on hold for customer service anymore, customers have real-time access to their favorite social media platforms in the palm of their hands and they are using them to connect with your business.  It takes 10 seconds to tweet a complaint and tag the correct handle to voice a concern. The businesses’ responsibility at this point is to ensure that a plan is in place to 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 @mentioning the right people is all you need to get your voice heard. In addition, some companies create a separate customer service Twitter handle to keep their feed from becoming filled with customer issues or questions. Then, when you respond you can take the message private to have a higher character limit so you can get to the bottom of the problem faster and easier. 

Timing is Key

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

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

Social Media Plans and Crisis Plans

Social media can be made a lot easier to manage with a social media management tool, as well as a social content plan.  The social content plan should cover:

• Who will be an author, publisher and an admin - Each role can be in charge of different 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 more light-hearted and fun  that other more traditional outlets, so your tone may be a little lighter than usual. 

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

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

How would you effectively handle a social media crisis?  Developing a company social media crisis plan for your brand is something every business should think about.  If your accounts are set up properly with the correct permissions, there should never be concern for being able to access all the accounts if something were needed to be handled, or permissions were needed to be restricted quickly.  If a rogue post is published, do you have the process in place to handle this?  Even if a post is misspelled, a link is broken or it is simply sent out at the wrong time to the wrong geographical area – do you have access to un-publish or edit from one central place to all platforms?  

Ad Campaigns 

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

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