Social media has taken the business world by storm. More than ever, businesses are making themselves known to their customers through this channel.
At this point, being present online is table stakes for consumers. If you are not visible online, you don’t exist. There is more you can do beyond your website that will put your business in front of the right audiences to increase leads.
With the power of social media, your business can get a deeper understanding of who your customers are, where they spend their time, and how they speak. You can facilitate the two-way conversation that builds stronger relationships with your audience and bring that customer from awareness of your brand to purchase and beyond.
At a recent Tech Effect Tuesdays virtual networking meet-up, Nyima Gyalmo of the Social Sherpa, shared with the attendees the 4 steps to getting started with social media. This post brings together her presentation as well as the original article the talk was based on. You can find her original article here.
Step 1: Research
Gather information about your customers, your industry, and your competitors.
Identify your customer avatar (persona), find out who they are, what they value, and their behaviours. Once you have this information, you can tailor your messaging to them and speak to them through the right channels.
Choose the channels where your ideal customers spend their time most frequently. You don’t have to be on every social network, you can choose which ones to focus on based on this research.
Also take a look at what your competitors are doing. What is working for them? What are they missing? Fill in those gaps and learn from what is and is not working.
Step 2: Define
Step back and think about your business objective; why are you going online? What is your goal and how do you see social media helping you achieve that goal?
Is it brand awareness, clickthroughs to your website, subscriptions? Define what you are trying to achieve with social media. This will also help you to determine if your social media efforts have been successful.
Step 3: Curate
Content marketing is where you can qualify customers. Content marketing also is perfect if you have a small budget.
If you know who your target audience is, you can pull them in and qualify them with high quality content that is relevant for pulling them down the path to purchase.
Consistency is key for social media. The algorithms on each social network reward users who spend more time on their platforms. The more you post and interact with other users, the more likely you are to achieve those goals you just set.
Remember: Social media is about being social. We don’t want to be famous, we want to be connected with the people we can help.
Step 4: Measure
Social media is a data collecting beast. You can measure almost everything a user does when interacting with your business online. With all the available data out there, try not to get too lost. Only measure the key metrics that will tell you if your efforts have been successful.
If you want more engagement, don’t track followers. Choose the metrics based on your goals so you don’t get overwhelmed by the sea of data and end up not knowing if what you are doing is actually working.
Nyima suggests trying anything on social media for at least 3 months before you give up on it. See what is working, what isn’t, then pivot, and diversify your content and keep going!
There you have it! Four simple steps for getting started with social media. Research, define, curate, and measure. If you are feeling overwhelmed, just keep going back to those goals. What are you trying to achieve? What is going to get you there? Identify what is working so far and go from there. If the 10 year olds on TikTok can do it, you can too!