Whether you like it or not, social media is everywhere. It’s part of our everyday lives, both privately and publicly, and for many businesses, it’s an integral and cost-effective marketing tool.

With platforms constantly changing the way we consume our content, business owners and marketers must in turn evolve to keep up with the way they communicate with their prospects and customers.

However, when you’re dealing with an audience with a voracious appetite, plus the added headache of ever-changing algorithms, new features and new platforms, knowing where to start is enough to keep anyone awake at night.
To help give you some clarity, here are our 5 top tips:

1. Get the platform right – there’s a lot of them we know, but that doesn’t mean that each one is suitable for your brand or business. Don’t get caught up on the latest fad, no matter how much momentum it gets. Your social media posts are there to deliver a message that means something to your customers and reflects your core brand ethos – plus the services you offer. So, no matter how tempting it is to prance around lip-syncing to the latest TOWIE argument on TikTok, give it some proper thought beforehand as to whether the platform is really suitable for you.

2. Quality over quantity– yes, consistency in posting is really key but try and have a well thought through schedule to keep things effective as a priority. Firing off last-minute posts at will creates mistakes, encourages ill-judgement and causes confusion for your followers. Post with purpose and make sure your posts are working hard for both you and your audience, you’ll soon find you get a lot more return on your efforts when you do.

3. Engagement over followers – more often than not, a page with a lot of followers but only a few posts mean one thing and one thing only: fake followers. Whether bought or not, spam and bot accounts don’t do anyone any good, no matter how many of them you have. Your only way towards social media success is having a long-term strategy that provides valuable, useful content for your followers. Because there’s nothing those clever little bots like more than to trip up all those faux likes, automated posts and spammers, leaving you void of real interaction and genuine engagement.

4. Be consistent – there’s loads of research out there that’ll tell you the best time to post, when, how often and on which platform – but for many people that can often be unrealistic to sustain. Ideally, you should aim to be active in some form every day, however, if you can’t manage that due to all the other pressures of life and work, that’s really ok. As long as you are consistent and authentic in your approach, then missing a few days shouldn’t impact your results too negatively.

5. Show your face – ultimately, people like doing business with people, and more importantly, people they like. Customers like to actually see the face behind the business from time to time, so like it or not, if you want to enhance your social media marketing game, you need to take a turn in front of the camera some of the time too. What are you waiting for? Get practising those ‘candid’ shots now.

Obviously, there’re so much to an effective social media marketing strategy, but the points above are a great place to start. If you’d like to know more or find out how we might be able to help, get in touch today – we’d love to hear from you!