Millions of people are using social media to contact others, share information, post daily life, etc. For business, social media can be a huge opportunity, as people might share product information, ask for advice, etc.

Why should you choose social media platform?

This is a great channel to grow your audience, and engage with them.

• Able to interact with your customers directly
• Keep updating the latest product information
• The way to grow your network quickly
• Build trust with your audiences, as a real person is more trustable than a model in the ads.
• Figure out what your potential customers’ likes

Which social media platform you should choose?

Big social platforms

There are several big social media platforms that have huge audiences like Facebook has more than 1 billion active users in the world.

These big platforms are the perfect place to find more customers, as all the people are there. We list several of the most popular social media platforms in the world, that’s where customers are.

• Facebook page
• YouTube channel
• Pinterest account
• Twitter handle
• Google+ page
• LinkedIn company page

Smaller niche social platforms

Although you’re able to find new potential customers on big platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, there are also smaller, more niche networks that you can leverage to find the specific audiences or customers.

For example, if you want to find hotel or travel reviews, a lot of people go to TripAdvisor, and if you want to market in the travel industry, this platform you probably should consider. Even the audience on TripAdvisor is much smaller than Facebook, but the audience is exactly the kinds of people you’re looking for.

The purpose of social platforms

You should spend some time understanding the people on the social platforms before you post anything. Do some research, that’ll help you to decide what kind of content you should post.

There are several types of social networks:

• Personal networks, like Facebook, are where you keep in touch with your family and friends.

When you post information on this kind of platform, your tone should be light, interesting, and useful. If so, there is a big chance that your audiences will share your post on their networks.

• Content sharing networks, like Instagram, are where you share photos, so you should share some good quality images of your product or service here.
• Professional networks, like LinkedIn, are where you find jobs or hire someone. You need to be professional on this kind of network. Also, If you are a business that sells to other businesses, you should keep all your content professional.

How to manage your social media account?

Create your profile, you need to tell your followers or audiences who you are, where you are, how to contact you, what you can provide to them, or what kind of problems you can solve, etc.

Share content, you can start to share some useful information that is related to your business. If you’re selling iPhone cases, then share some tips on what to do if you drop your phone in the water.

Make friends, keep in mind, the people on social media are human beings, the last thing you want to do is drop information, instead you should talk to them like friends, let them trust you.

How to start social media?

If you’re new to this platform, start with your existing customers, display the social media icon everywhere on your website. Remind them to “Follow us“, or even offer a members-only discount if they follow you on social media.

You can also make some interesting content, like contests, special events, entertaining content, or even face-to-face meet-ups.

Make a social media plan

As you can imagine, social media marketing is a long-term strategy, you’ll need to invest a lot of time and energy in it.

It’s not easy to keep everything up to date and interact with your audiences constantly.

As you know, the most important thing about social marketing is constant, followers will leave if your account is silent for too long.

Making a plan for the next 6 to 12 months will make all this work much easier.

Your plan should contain below elements:

What, When, Where, Why, Who

• What you should post?
• When do you post?
• Where you should post? which platform?
• Why do you post?
• Who is doing the work?

What you should post on social media?

You need to understand your audiences, what they are interested in, that’s exactly what you should post.

When does it make sense to post?

If you’re a travel blogger, it’ll make sense if you share ski tips in winter, surfing content in summer, right?

Where you should post?

As we mentioned, the goals of social media are different.

For example, if you want to share some travel photos, then you should pick sites like Instagram or Pinterest.

If you want to promote some travel offers you might share that on Facebook.

Why are you posting?

Make sure you know why you’re sharing, and how these posts can help you achieve your business goals?

The post for brand awareness and engagement with your existing fans should be different.

Who is doing the work?

Write down who’s responsible for what in your plan on paper.

Leverage social media management tools

There are some useful social media management tools that can make your work much easier.

• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• Everypost

You can simply create copies and images in advance, and set up a date, choose the social platforms, collaborate with your co-workers, etc. then the management tools will do the rest for you automatically.

Besides, you can use these tools to check all the feedback across different platforms.

Let’s sum up, what you need to do is:

1. create a social media plan
2. create profiles on the social media sites
3. set up a social media management tool
4. Prepare posts in advance that will be automatically posted

Paid social media campaign

Building up your presence on social networks is usually a long-term process. But what if you want to have quick results, then social media ads could be another option.

With paid advertising, you are able to reach very specific audiences.

As when you sign up on Facebook, you probably fill in the form including gender, location, name, email, etc. Besides, Facebook knows what you like and keeps sending similar content. That’s how social platforms know you very well.

For example, you want to promote a hotel for families, then you can choose to target the audiences, aged about 30 to 40, have children, or even post their family trip before, and then you can send very specific messages to them. That will also help you to reduce advertising costs since your audience is most likely to be interested in what you share.

This is a full list of the most popular paid social media platforms:

• Facebook campaign
• Promoted Tweet

Tracking social media campaigns

The tools we mentioned like Hootsuite, Everypost, not only can send posts across multiple social platforms, but also provide data that you can use to learn the performance of your account, and the trend on social networks.

By looking at the data and reports, you can learn about who your connections are, how they behave, and how they consume or interact with the content you’re providing.

Besides, the report about your competitors, certain themes is talked about will be also useful for making your own social media plan.

Google Analytics

If you want to know what’s happening after someone decides to click on a link you shared or a piece of content you posted and ends up on your website, Google Analytics could be an option.

Google Analytics can tell you how many visitors are coming from social channels to websites, and when they arrive on your website, what’s their behavior, eg: Purchase a product, submit a form, etc. That’s how you understand the quality of audiences from social channels.

You are even able to see things like which kinds of content from which networks tend to get people to visit your website, engage further with your pages, and eventually convert to your business goals.

Something to avoid on social marketing

The core of social media is communication, so the way to talk to your audience should be like a conversion, not try hard to sell things to them. Otherwise, you’ll bore your followers fast.

What you need to do is provide a good experience and keep attention, as your followers are already interested in what you’re doing, that’s why they follow you in the first place.

Building on that, you should listen to your customers, regularly check their comments, answer their questions. Even a negative comment could be a chance to show you how you care for your customers, try to help them.

Only focus on the social platforms that matter most and branch out as it makes sense and as you can handle it, otherwise, you’ll get overwhelmed to handle all the sites.

Don’t send 10 posts in 3 days, then keep silent for another 10 days. Consistent is very important on social media, let your audience know that they’ll receive something new regularly, instead of wondering if anything’s stirring over there.

Don’t just post things that you like, using analytics tools to find out how your social media efforts are contributing to your bottom line, and learn which are more valuable than others.