How To Make the Most of Your Social Media

Having an organic social media presence has become increasingly crucial in modern marketing strategies. Social media platforms have transformed the way people connect, communicate, and consume information, making them powerful tools for businesses to engage with their target audience and build brand awareness. Here, we’ll discuss the importance of having an organic social media presence and the significance of social media in modern marketing.

Social media has also become an integral part of the customer journey. Consumers often turn to social media platforms to research brands, read reviews, and seek recommendations before making purchasing decisions. Having an active and engaged social media presence allows businesses to influence these conversations, provide relevant information, and address customer concerns, thereby influencing purchasing decisions positively.

Social media platforms constantly introduce new features and updates, offering businesses innovative ways to engage their audience. From live videos and stories to interactive polls and shoppable posts, social media provides dynamic and interactive opportunities for businesses to showcase their products or services, spark conversations, and encourage user-generated content.

How To Build A Better Social Media Presence

One of the key benefits of an organic social media presence is the ability to engage in meaningful conversations and create a community around your brand. It allows businesses to showcase their personality, values, and unique offerings, enabling them to form a genuine connection with their target audience. By actively participating in discussions, responding to comments, and addressing customer enquiries, businesses can build trust, credibility, and a loyal customer base. 

Setting Clear Goals

You need to create objectives for your social media. Are you using it to build brand image, promote products or simply connect with your followers? 

We recommend using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goal framework to identify and define your objectives. Creating SMART goals is the best way to set your objectives for social media success. Your goals will help you craft a roadmap and ensure your strategy is formulated around making an impact of your business. 

Understanding Your Target Audience

When creating your social media pages make sure to do research into your demographics. Understanding who your marketing is makes a great difference in what content you are going to create and who it will resonate with. Tailor your social media approach and your strategy to align with your target audience’s preferences. The key to understanding your customers is via thorough research, for support with getting started why not download our Buyer Persona Template

Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms

There are many platforms to choose from some of the most popular being Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. When choosing the right social platforms for your business, your target audience should essentially guide this decision. By identifying where your users spend their time online, you’ll be better equipped to choose the social channels that will generate the biggest impact.

Facebook

Facebook has the largest user base of all social media platforms. Facebook’s demographic is mainly those of the older segment and usually the age range is between 25- 34 (24.2%) and 34 – 44 (18.9%) which makes up just under half of the user demographic. Facebook is a more informal platform and can generally be used by any industry.

Instagram

Instagram, linked to Facebook, has the second largest user base of social media platforms. Instagram is a photo and video-sharing platform for people to share engaging content with their followers and network. It’s another less formal platform that is great for connecting with followers as well as building personalised relationships.

Twitter

Twitter is a great platform that is currently gaining popularity with updates coming thick and fast as the new owner, Elon Musk, changes around the platform. Twitter is great for quickly sharing updates and sharing pools for users to take part in. It is designed to have feeds under the original comment. This allows other users to leave comments underneath and discuss with each other further generating traffic. It is primarily used for sharing news, current affairs, topical conversations etc and people have the ability to comment back and interact with each other.

Linkedin

LinkedIn is a much more formal, professional-focused platform. It is great for finding job opportunities and posting B2B social media content. It is a networking site for business-minded people or business owners to meet and share thoughts and ideas. It also has a feed feature similar to other platforms where users can reply to each other or comment under posts of their interest.

TikTok 

TikTok is a relevantly new platform which has blown up over the last few years. Previously Musically, TikTok was a short-form video platform for users to share short videos with fans. These could be anything from funny to educational, informative or emotional. It has enabled people to push videos worldwide due to its growing vitality.

Creating Compelling Content

Developing a content strategy is key to succeeding on social media. Create a planner and a schedule for what content you are going to post on which days. There are many tools to help you fill out a schedule for your social posts. Create content that resonates with your audience and can create an emotional feeling such as happiness or enjoyment. Creating shareable content is a great way to post and have followers share these posts with friends who may be influenced to check out your content.

Building an Active and Engaged Community

Encourage interaction between your company and followers or between followers themselves. You can inspire these conversations through thought leader posts such as commenting on trending topics and news. For more information about how to do this, we recommend checking out our guide to growing your social media followers.

Utilising Social Media Advertising

This is where you can use paid ads side by side with your organic content. As we want to have our organic content performing well, we want to generate traffic with the help of paid advertisements. You want to boost traffic from organic searches by people who are naturally interested in what you offer and using paid ads alongside this can help push your content out further than organically posting content. Research the platform, your audience and your analytics and utilise paid aids to benefit your organic strategy.

Engaging with Influencers and Collaborations

Using influencers on social media can boost your brand’s credibility and help expand your reach. Nowadays, influencers often have well-established roots and loyal fan bases. To ensure your collaboration feels genuine and authentic you need to work with influencers who share your values, interests and target demographics. This will enable you to get the most out of your investment.

These influencers can use your product in videos and mention it to their fans to promote your product or service. You may strategically partner with influencers to gain a mutual benefit. For example, you gain reach and have more people wanting and checking out your product and service and in return you pay the influencers or you may offer them your services or product for free etc.

Staying Up-to-Date with Trends and Best Practices

You must stay up to date with social trends on these ever-changing platforms. This is because modern consumers become hyper-focused on one trend but very quickly switch to the next. You have a small window to act and get in front of people if you’re reporting or bandwagoning on trends. Have your own take and speak from the company’s voice to stand out against other creators. Best practices are also always changing as we know and you have to keep up to date with this.

This is called reactive social media marketing, where a brand or business proactively engages with content, viral news or trending topics in real life via social networks.

Managing Online Reputation and Handling Challenges

You must create a strategy for maintaining a positive online reputation. This can be done in many ways but one way to maintain a positive reputation is in how you may deal with complaints or queries. 

You should always deal with negative feedback in a kind and professional way. Remember your tone of voice on social media and try to take the matter out of the public eye. Take the conversation into private direct messages to resolve the issue. Keeping these negative comments out of the public eye is a great way to boost a positive image. 

However, sometimes it’s beneficial to deal with negative feedback publicly as it portrays the brand as reactive and responsible for taking care of the query. Depending on the context and severity of the issue, you should make the decision whether to deal with the dispute publicly or privately. Also making sure the issue is dealt with professionally and efficiently to guarantee customer satisfaction. For more information on this topic check out our blog about social media’s role in customer service.

Monitoring and Measuring Performance

Make sure to regularly track social media analytics and metrics. This can help you to find which posts are excelling and even what times of day your posts do the best. Knowing these metrics can help boost social performance by optimising your content to better align with viewers’ wants and needs. Use these metrics to develop your strategy and then evaluate the effectiveness of your social media efforts over a period of time.

Social Media Marketing at Loop Digital

Here at Loop Digital, we offer affordable social media marketing services for businesses across the UK. Are you interested in kickstarting your social media journey but don’t know where to start? Don’t worry, we’re here to support you. Just get in touch today or book a meeting with a member of our friendly team.