Does Your Business’ Social Media Have A Point?

Social media is an important tool for businesses. Used correctly, it can be a fantastic platform to help you communicate with customers and clients, and can also be a free way to advertise your products and services.

But are you using your social media platforms correctly? Having a social media presence is important, but without the right strategy, is there any point?

Make sure that what you have to say is worth saying by learning how to craft the right social media strategy. The following advice can help make sure your social media has something to say to help you make the most of your efforts.

Why have a social media strategy?

Many businesses understand that they need to have a social media presence, but without a digital expert in the ranks, you could find yourself lacking direction and posting messages for the sake of posting, instead of having a clear thought process behind them.

An effective social media strategy will define how your company will use social media and set out its aims. It can help you set targets and make a plan for how much to post and when. It will also help you to understand your audience better and ensure that you’re communicating with them in a way that they understand and will respond to.

Take a look at some proven social media strategies to help you create your own and give your social media presence the direction it needs.

How to make sure your social media has a point

With millions of people using social media at any one time, you need to find a way to get their attention. Simply posting messages that lack a clear meaning or intent will simply get lost among the other chatter taking place.

Knowing what to post about is half the battle. Some ideas for content you can create include:

• Information about your products and services
• Talking about subjects related to your industry
• Finding out what the ‘hot topics’ are and relating them back to your business
• Video content and graphics that help communicate in a meaningful way
• Ask and answer questions that are important to your customers

To get the most from your social media, you need to make sure that everything you post has a purpose. It should inform and engage and potentially lead the reader elsewhere – such as to your website. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll almost have a formula for creating content that provides the best results for your business.

Make the most of visual elements

In the beginning, social media was mainly about the copy and focusing on crafting the perfect posts to resonate with your audience. Today, social media is much more visual, with businesses using photos, graphics and video to connect with an audience that now responds better to this visual content.

There are different ways to use visuals to transform your social media that will help give your followers more of what they want. People want to be either educated, entertained or informed and finding ways of achieving this through visuals will make sure your social media has the desired impact.

Visuals are particularly important for Instagram, which is now becoming one of the most popular social media websites. Understanding what you need to succeed on Instagram is important, and will help ensure you’ve got a strong content strategy for a platform that is becoming harder to crack.

Monitoring your impact

To help establish whether or not your social media is having an impact, you need to start analyzing it. Using data analytics tools will help you to see the reach and influence your social media is having, and whether or not you’re hitting your target audience.

There are several data analytics tools to choose from, so you should research products that can deliver exactly what your business needs. From Hadoop vs Mapreduce to simple Google Analytics, there are different ways you can measure your impact against your objectives and identify what works and what doesn’t. Setting KPIs and objectives for your social media campaigns will make them more effective, while monitoring the impact will help each campaign to be better than the last.

With the right social media strategy, you can help your business to fulfil its objectives and get the best results. Using social media throughout your promotion and marketing strategy will help you reach a wide audience and generate further interest in your business. Having some direction is important, and once you start tracking your progress, you’ll have a much clearer idea of the impact you’re having, and what you need to do to improve. Transform your social media strategy today and see the difference it will make to your business.