This is a guest post with some tips and pointers on managing and writing for your social business profiles.
Everyone has differing opinions on the best way to use social media platforms of course.
However I think this post gives some solid advice you’d be wise to consider implementing, if you don’t already.
Now for the uber cool part. This post comes courtesy of Liberty- Belle Howard! (NOT kidding, that’s totally her name. Fracken. Awesome.)
Feel free to tell her hello in the comments below or share your own SM tips. (As in social media nerd, NOT what YOU were just thinkin’!) 😉
We all know how social media works for us personally; occasional Tweets about our weekend plans or what we fancy for lunch, the odd status update declaring how our hangover is killing us and a few pictures of the night before that we can’t really remember – and probably spend the day de-tagging.
But these are obviously not the kind of updates that your business profile should be releasing.
Social Media as a Key Marketing Tool
Your social media profiles are brilliant marketing tools to promote events, offers and give exclusive discounts to followers, so they need to be used wisely and taken seriously.
We have all heard of global companies getting social media wrong by offending people, using inappropriate events as a way to market products or using trending topics to their own advantage, but these are quite obviously not the best ways of going about it.
Are You Up to Date?
Firstly, it’s important to make sure that you are up to date with all the latest social media sites and have accounts on the ones most relevant to your business and target audience.
Pinterest is becoming more and more popular and any business that doesn’t have an account would be advised to get one – providing that the demographic using the site already (in this case, women ages 25-41) corresponds with your target audience.
By starting a profile whilst a site is still growing in popularity, you’ll have an established profile as more people join the site – making you more likely to gain followers.
Don’t Bother with Unnecessary Nonsense
When it comes to writing on your platforms the key is to be brief and to the point. When followers are going through their news feed they don’t want to be bombarded with an essay. Some platforms require short comments, such as Twitter – with the maximum amount of characters permitted being 140.
A good tip is to write for Twitter and then use the same post for your other accounts such as Facebook; this will stop you waffling unnecessarily.
Of course, if you do have something long to say and it is of value to your followers, go ahead – but long, rambling updates about nothing will not be useful to you as a business
What Do You Offer Your Followers?
A great tool for engaging with your followers on social media sites is to launch a competition or offer – for example, a 10% discount for liking a status or some other incentive that is exclusive to your following.
This will incentivise people to use your products or services, and if they’re happy with this, they’ll tell others and become repeat customers – which is, of course, the main aim of marketing.
What Approach Should You Take?
The tone of your posts should be kept relaxed and conversational. Social media users don’t want to be hit by advertising jargon whilst using their personal accounts.
Use social media as a way to communicate and talk to your followers; start conversations about topics that are related to your business – but that you think will interest and engage your followers. If they feel you’re just pushing products at them they will soon stop following you.
Don’t Get Boring
Lastly and possibly most importantly, don’t allow your Tweets or status updates to become predictable. Churning out the same information on a weekly basis will irritate your groups and make them more likely to simply stop “like”(ing) you.
Social media platforms are a way to showcase how diverse and interesting a brand you are, so don’t waste the opportunity. Social media is a simple, cost effective and fun way to engage with your customers and should be an essential part of any business’s marketing strategy.
The most important thing to consider when writing for and managing social media profiles for a business is what kind of business accounts are you interested in enough to follow yourself?
And what are your most popular competitors doing?
Don’t be afraid to replicate their strategies; they’re obviously working.
Yo! If you totally, um like LOVED this post… like it’d be TOTALLY cool if you could share it ‘n stuff. Like… TOTALLY. (::Stage whispers loudly:: Oh and those share buttons off to the left will help you do it!)
