Getting started with social media (the what, how and why)

What do you publish?

Many of us jump into social media and do a lot of chest pounding. Of course, we’re interesting right? While this used to be the thing in the era of traditional marketing, the rules are a little different now: engagement, trust and good content will get you where you want to go. While some of your updates can be promotional, don’t forget to engage. Here are a few tips to consider when getting started with social media:

Relevant content

Your followers and people who like your stuff probably share interests with you. It’s a good idea to share content relevant to your business and that also aligns with the interests of your audience and makes their lives easier. Sometimes relevant trends and posts inspire the best updates.

Your take

Not every update has to come from thin air. You can move forward content that already exists and look at it from a new perspective. This can consist of starting new conversations or adding on to existing ones by looking for topics that are interesting and relevant to your brand and adding your take.

Feel good stuff

Social media was built on feel good stuff. These days you want to be careful with overly promotional Facebook content. So providing a look at the great things about your company, or the company you work for, like sharing things you’re doing within the community for example, helps to build relationships and encourage brand trust.

We’re hiring

While expensive print ads or spammy craigslist listings used to work for hiring, social media is a great, every flowing pool of people to get new talent from when your company is hiring.  While Facebook will still consider this promotional content, you can use a Facebook or Twitter ads to promote your hiring ads.

How do you share it?

Engagement

There are two types of social engagement. The first type is simply responding. This means responding to responses, inquiries and feedback – even the negative ones. The second type is more active and results from a content strategy. This type of engagement involves listening, monitoring, evaluating, and of course engaging.

Stay visible

How often should you update your social media profiles? We here this often and our response is typically “depends on your brand and on your tribe”. You’ll want to consider your type of business, it’s personality, the character of your fans or followers and how interesting or relevant your content is. It also depends on the social media platform. For example, with the steady stream of content on Twitter, tweets don’t last as long as Facebook posts. So on Twitter you’ll likely post more often to stay visible. Formulate a content strategy, test it, revise as necessary, and move forward.

Reach out

If you’ve earned fans or followers and built a solid trust-based relationship, you can ask for help through surveys or shares. Keep in mind though, not much is done for free. Your tribe may expect to be compensated for their efforts. For this reason, competitions and challenges with prizes or incentives are often a good way to go. You might identify rewards or incentives that align with your brand, not only making things fun but also reinforcing your brand’s mojo. There are companies like Bigdoor who can help you provide engaging experiences while rewarding customers for their loyalty.

What works

When clients ask us how many social networks they should be on, we still visit the ‘where is your tribe’ question. Being on every social network for the sake of being on them is a strategy that may not work too well, as you’d likely end up having lots of accounts to manage with minimal activity across them. Different social sites have different methods of engagement, different users and appeal to different folks. Find out where you people are and start there.

Wherever you go there you are

Whichever social networks you decide to go with, ensure your content is linked well from your website or blog, and across each profile. This will help your content be more easily found and shared. Also try and keep your social profile names as consistent as possible. This will help keep a clear inbound link strategy and keyword strategy back to your website.

Respond wisely

I can’t stress enough how important it is to monitor your social accounts and that your response is timely. There are several listening and brand monitoring tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. You can also setup Google Trends alerts so you don’t miss an opportunity to jump in. Listening doesn’t just involve monitoring your brand mentions and responses to your content. Rather it also means listening to your industry. What’s going on, what’s changing and what’s relevant right now?

Know your audience

Once you’ve found your style, you want to be sure to know who you’re talking to you and talk appropriately. Everything from the social platform to the tone, voice and type of content you’re publishing, is driven by knowing your audience.

Be real

Even at this point in the social media era, we still catch brands being overly corporate and promotional. Be careful to avoid opaque content styles that people can’t see through. Transparency works well on social media, especially when you’re talking about building relationships.

Find your style and stick with it

There is a lot that goes into the building of your brand. It’s not only the visual elements but also what it promises to fulfill, the value it provides, and an emblem for its goodwill. When we complete a logo design for one of our clients, we provide a brand guidelines document with it. The same goes for social media. We provide a social media design guide that dictates the treatment of the brand and also how it translates across different color spaces and social profiles.

Don’t stop there

Everything is connected, now more than ever. Account switching is now even available to make things more convenient. Make sure you integrate your campaigns and goings ons across all of your profiles to amplify your message and increase your reach. We’re in a time of many cross channel marketing tools such as Google’s display network, Lightbox ads and the ability to maximize visibility with mobile, search and Google+.

The takehome

Social media is an extension of your brand. It allows people to take the what’s next step into learning more or connecting with you elsewhere. Depending upon how you execute, social media can provide opportunity, and also risk. You want experiences to be authentic, cohesive and consistent with the brand. It should be fun, but as with anything requiring investment, it should provide results.

Have fun out there and let us know if we can help. – Savy