How to get ahead on social media

Many businesses worry about getting started or being prolific on social media, for fear of making mistakes or wasting time. The truth is It’s easy to mess up on social media, especially if your business is fairly new or inexperienced on social platforms. The struggle to get started and generate engagement is real. Yet, without having an active presence on social media you could be missing out on a huge direct audience opportunity.

Here are some great tips on how you and your business can get ahead in the social sphere.

What are the main purposes/benefits of using each social media platform?

Twitter – tap into real-time conversations and engage directly with thought leaders in your space

LinkedIn – share your own opinions and content with professionals and businesses in your network

Instagram –use visuals and videos to share your message – if you can get comfortable being in your content you could see great success

Facebook – the most popular social media platform with the largest number of monthly active users

How do you promote your business on social media?

Start by thinking about what type of format you’d like to push out, rather than what platforms to be on. If your strength is creating playable content – audio and video, think about how to create snippets of your work to distribute on social media platforms, then dress them up appropriately for each platform.

You can do the same thing with articles and written content – chop your content up into digestible pieces, figure out which platform is best to surface that content and then sell it appropriately for each platform.

How do you build a brand via social media?

Don’t be afraid to use yourself as the face of your business. Personal branding is a sure-fire way to get users to engage with your business. It’s much easier to connect with a face and a personality than to an anonymous business entity. You can use yourself to promote your business, service or products and it’s an excellent way to create content easily.

Where do your strengths lie? You might be great at writing tweets that get people thinking, or perhaps you’re able to design great graphics that get your message across. Whether you’re verbal or artistic, think about ways you can turn what you do into shareable content for social media.

How to build social media content effortlessly

Where do you begin with creating content? It can be really difficult to get going but think about your business and it’s main selling point. What makes your business unique and why should a consumer engage with your brand? Break everything down into a steady stream of information you’d like to push out to people, but always ask yourself ‘what does my consumer need?’ and that should help shape your messaging into something useful for them. Think advice, information and inspiration, as solid ways to encourage engagement with your community.

How do you find an audience on social media?

There are so many social media platforms it can be a bit overwhelming to know where to start. But if you know what type of audience you’re looking for (the consumers of your business) it makes it much easier to find out which platforms they are using. Get involved with communities, events, forums both inside and outside of social media.

How do you organise content and know when to post?

A great way of delivering your content strategy, and knowing what and when to post, is to set up a content calendar. Scheduling tools like sshare already have content calendars within their platforms where you can create, schedule and post content to multiple social media platforms at once. 

The timings of your post may also depend on the industry you work in and the habits of your audience. It’s a good idea to try and understand your target audience behaviour so you can schedule your posts to go out when you know they’re most active online.

How do you stay consistent online?

Narrow down your brand identity into a handful of categories, then make sure every time you’re posting on social media your content fits into the remit of one of your brand categories. Everything you do should be linked in some way – so if one of your brand identity categories is business advice, create and distribute content that people interested in running a business will want to engage with.

Using a content calendar also helps you to maintain a consistent presence on social media. You’ll know in advance what content you’re putting out and if you use a scheduling tool you can plan your content ahead of time and schedule it to be published automatically.

What not to do on social media

Do not try and be something you’re not. Similarly, avoid getting involved with or pushing out content that is off brand. What you put out on the internet is permanent and can’t be erased. When you post on social media you are giving people an impression of your brand. Understand who your audience is and find out what it is that they expect and want to see from you.

Don’t overlook data! Monitoring what works well and what doesn’t is an easy way to generate more content ideas and boost your engagement.

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