For businesses of any size, social media is a remarkably simple equation. The more you put in, the more you get out. That goes for money, to be sure; paid campaigns from $5 to $50,000 have an appropriate impact based not just on the dollar amount but the effort and thought into what you’re promoting, too. But before you spend big, take care of the basics. Here are three very simple things we always look at when we pick up new clients trying to increase their footprint on social media.
- Find A Goal. The easy habit here is to get stuck on a number of followers, impressions, or reach. Think beyond the numbers; what value does your Twitter feed offer? What does your Facebook page do for your company, and what does it do for your potential customers? Social media isn’t a one-way street. Just like a conversation, it’s a dialogue, and just like in real life, customers don’t respond well to being tuned out. Make a goal for your channels that offers something, instead of simply selling something. Maybe it’s offering information about your manufacturing process, your culture, even industry-wide trends. Introduce your team, events or causes that your business supports, and always connect with your community.
- Find The Right Time. It can be hard enough to make time to post quality content consistently, but even that isn’t always enough. Use analytics to find what’s working best and what you can do better. In the long run, learning what content gets a lot of Likes, Comments, or shares can save you a lot of time and make your organic efforts more effective. Just as important, learning when to post different types of content can help you put click-through content in front of people when they’re most likely to buy. For example, if you find that most people get from Facebook to your site on Thursday evenings, that’s the ideal time to post your next product launch! If you spend ten minutes creating a post and five minutes scheduling it, you should spend at least five minutes analyzing and adjusting based on its performance.
- Find The Right Followers. Sheer volume doesn’t always mean much. Facebook reports having 116 million fake profiles out of nearly 2.4 billion users. Roughly 16% of Twitter profiles are bots, a whopping 48 million of ‘em. And the last we checked, bots don’t typically buy, join, or click through to your site. They just are. A quick scroll through your followers should give you a pretty good idea of just how many are active, real people. Some of our clients get frustrated at having only 500, 1,000, or 3,000 Followers on Twitter or, say, 5,000 Followers on Facebook. Quantity matters, but quality matters more; at the end of the day, would you rather have 1 Follower that actually comes into your coffee shop each week or 100 that live on the other side of the country? For online retailers, how do you put a dollar amount on a user that constantly shares your posts, interacts with your content, and influences others without asking for anything in return? Build your presence, but understand the power in numbers comes from the right numbers.
Social platforms are being vital avenues for advertisers, but they’re crucial for customers, too. The takeaway? Followers want to be a part of something; make your digital presence, a community, not a billboard.
Want to learn more about the MyFace? Contact Cody Sovis and get started on improving your brand’s digital footprint…because we think this world wide web thing is going to be around a while.