For a lot of business owners, it’s easy to get intimidated and say you don’t “know” social media. But social media is really all about connecting, and while the places where we connect have changed, how and why certainly haven’t. I would argue that feeling a sense of connection is more important now than it’s every been.
You can absolutely how to push the right buttons on any social media platform, it’s really about having confidence in creating that connection with your audience.
Here are my top five tips for making social media easier and more effective:
1. Plan It!
A lot of businesses know the value a great social media presence can have for reach and engagement with their audience, but often that turns into a pressure to post something – anything – every day to keep up. Break the daily pressure cycle by getting a plan in place for at least the week and eventually the month and season. Spend some time with a blank calendar thinking through everything that’s coming up, what and how much you’d like to promote them and how you’d like to cover events/promotions as they happen. Facebook has just rolled out the Content Creator’s Studio that allows you to schedule posts (for free!) to both Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is only available via desktop, but this is a great resource to eliminate that “remembering to post” rush. Check out my step by step guide for using this tool for Facebook on desktop here and Instagram here.
Dedicate time to social media planning and eliminate that daily, last-minute pressure.
2. Create Value
This is one of the hardest tips on social media and even a lot of big brands struggle with it. For every post you create, ask yourself what is the value to the viewer? If you’re creating a video, are you just saying words that could be read on a post? If so, think through what value you could add to make it more interesting for your audience. A good thing to get the creative juices flowing and spend time browsing different hashtags to see what’s a scroll stopper for you and why.
3. Match It Up
There are so many social networks out there and identifying which ones to focus on is a key step. Once you’ve zeroed in on the networks that match where your audience hangs out, make sure you’re also tailoring your content to match the platform. The social media police aren’t going to come to you if you post on Facebook like it’s Twitter, but when your content matches your audience’s expectations for what they like and expect to see on a platform, those pieces are always going to perform better.
Maybe you’ve experienced this on your personal page with someone posting text-only football game updates every 5 minutes to Facebook, when those kind of updates really match the formatting and expectations of Twitter better. This might mean that not everything you post to Facebook goes as is onto Instagram and vice versa. Change up your captions, shoot both stills and videos to change up your content in a small way that meets your audience’s expectations.
4. Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose!
Once you go through the work of creating your content, never let it be a one and done. It’s a useful rule to try to use every piece of content at least twice, but even three times or more. Now repurposing does NOT mean re-posting the exact same piece on the exact same platform. But what this can mean is if you have an event flier for example, coulc you post the event on FAcebook using your flier image as the graphic and then make a video for Facebook using your flier image as the graphic and then follow up with a Facebook video talking about the event flier and use that video as an Instagram story. If you take the time to produce great content, always repurpose and reuse it.
5. Have Fun and Just Be You
This is especially true on video. There’s so much emphasis in social media right now (and rightly so!) on the power of video. A lot of times people get nervous and are concentrating so hard on everything they want to say that the video doesn’t end up highlighting why people watched in the first place — you! so the best advice is to just 100% let your personality shine. Have someone hold up a poster board with your key talking points on it behind the camera (hey, it works for Saturday Night Live!) so you can just relax and have fun up there. At its best, social for business is about connecting you and your customers and clients. So have fun with it and try to enjoy the process!
Any tips I’ve missed, or follow up questions, I’d love to hear in the comments or feel free to drop my an email at carissa at pinkpunchmarketing dot com.
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