Consistency is key! If your customers go to your channels and see a huge lapse between posts, they may question your legitimacy.
If your channels are new, consider posting content for a few weeks before sending traffic to your profiles – this will make it look clean and like ‘you’ve been there for a while’.
Know your audience. Post things that will be relevant to those that are your ideal client. Not sure what’s relevant? Trial and error! If you post certain things that tend to get more engagement, chances are you should do more than that. As long as it’s not viral videos about kittens – that trend can stop anytime now… hah!
Post only to channels that make sense for YOUR BUSINESS. Just because everyone says you have to be on a certain social media site doesn’t necessarily make it true. Research where your clients and referral partners hang out online – then post there!
Mix up your content. Use a mix of photos, video, links, and plain text – if you can!
Stalk your competition – seriously! Check out what they are posting. Are people engaging with it?
Content is KING! Make it entertaining and useful where you can. Overly promotional doesn’t get very far in social media land – but posts that bring value and insight to your audience – winner winner chicken dinner!
Try and set a social media plan to avoid getting stressed out. It can take significant time to plan out content weeks or months in advance but it’s worth it! Even having a ‘theme’ will help your creative juices flow.
Consider hiring a freelancer or agency to help if you are overwhelmed. Make sure this one makes absolute sense before you do this. If you need to be on social (you do… trust us… it’s just a matter of how much…), and if it’s eating in to the time that you need to physically run your business, consider hiring a freelancer or agency. Make sure to ask a ton of questions to make sure this agency or individual is the right fit to help you!
Engagement is key… but remember it goes both ways. If people comment on your stuff or message you and you don’t reply – then go back to start, do not pass go, and do not collect $200.
Optimize your profiles and pages. Make sure you update your bios, graphics, links etc to reflect your CURRENT business.
Analyze the data – if you have access to reporting data – review it to see where you can make improvements.
What does success look like to you? A ‘number of followers’ or amount of likes is considered a ‘vanity metric’. These are far less important than actual return on your time investment in to social media. Is it resulting in sales and/or connections with your customers? That’s what you want, if you have no connection but 10,000 followers – the followers dont mean anything!