Social media management can feel like a dark art at times. Some posts will go viral and pick up traffic for weeks, or in some cases, even months to come – other times it’s almost impossible to recreate the same levels of engagement. The time of day, hashtags, and content themes can all influence the overall performance and reach. If you are trying to organically build an effective and wide-reaching social network for your business, it can all take time and perseverance. However, if you follow the tips outlined below, you will be able to start growing your social media channels. 

Know your target audience

Before you post anything online, you need to understand your target audience and how best to communicate with them. If your products or services targets young adults, then you wouldn’t focus on creating your strategy on LinkedIn – if you are targeting the investor community, you wouldn’t be posting solely on TikTok. Knowing your target market and which social channel they’re most active on, is key not only for your productivity but also for your return on investment. 

Understand your brand guidelines

As you start to plan out your campaign, it’s important to understand your brand style and tone of voice. These will help you determine and establish a reference for all future content. Brand guidelines can help you create the social copy and the overall style and design of assets. Be sure to create various draft copies with different styles before sign-off, allowing for a wider variety of creative freedom. 

Be consistent and be regular

Once you understand your brand guidelines and have created and agreed on a style, you’re ready to begin posting online. Posting online is a big deal, as you expose your brand to the wider market. From this, you can build momentum, which should be part of a sound strategy. To keep this momentum, it is important to post frequently and regularly and within the key activity hours for your target audience in the appropriate time zone. Keep in mind that not every post will get 1000+ likes, some may not even get one. At the beginning of a campaign, this is normal and shouldn’t dishearten you. As long as you have interesting and engaging content, people will start to interact with your posts – you just need to be consistent and regular. 

Share your stories

Sharing your success stories is always something to shout about. Did you reach 1000 followers or sell your 100th product? Either way, this is a huge milestone and should be celebrated on your social channels but it needs to be done in such a way that it can make you stand out – showing off your brand’s personality and human side, rather than its corporate side. Your target audience will find it much easier to connect with a person compared to a corporate entity. 

Be respectful

Sometimes things go wrong. Maybe a customer has had a bad experience with some poor customer service, or their package got lost in the post – often they will take to social media to find a resolution. Make sure you take your time to reply to their comments and concerns, as it’s your reputation on the line. A bad review could set you back and damage your brand image – best advice, where possible, take the conversation into a private direct message or even offline in person.  

Use the right hashtags

Using the right hashtags is important. Not only do they help you categorise and target key segment markets, but they can also help with brand reach through exposure within trends. Selecting the most popular hashtags applicable to your brand can really help you tap into the most active segments – building up your social channel’s followings, exposing your company and products to more people. 

By taking small steps, it is possible to help grow your social media channels and your business alongside – it will just take some time and dedication, but it’s not as difficult as it sounds. 

If you need help taking your brand to the next level, visit www.redmarlin.co.uk or call 01926832395.