Getting started on social media - 9 top tips

Social media is a powerful platform that can help you build brand awareness and generate leads. It’s also one of the most effective tools to help you maintain and build relationships with your customers.

Nowadays, consumers live on social media. In fact in the UK in 2019, it was reported that people spend nearly 2 full hours every day on social platforms (1 hour 50 to be precise). Over the past decade, social media has quickly become one of the most important aspects of digital marketing.

However, the world of social media can be daunting.

Many small businesses shy away from social media because they don’t know where to start or think there’s a high cost involved. Luckily for, us it’s completely free! This means you aren’t limited and have the same opportunity as every other brand, including your competition.

So what is the key to success on social? It’s all about creating, executing and monitoring your social media marketing strategy. This may not mean much to you now, but continue reading and you’ll set yourself up for success.

Below are our top tips to help you create a strategy and succeed:

1. Define your goals – first of all it’s important to identify what you want social media to help your business achieve. Examples of goals are to increase awareness amongst your audience or generate new business sales/enquiries. Also think about how you can measure these to make sure what you're doing works and you're not wasting your time.

2. Identify your target audience – identifying your customers and understanding who they are is an essential aspect of marketing. Think about their interests, their online activity (when they go online and why) and how they use social media. It’s important to always have this information in mind, particularly when planning your content. Most importantly you need to identify your niche and resonate with them - by concentrating on your niche you can focus on those that are most important to what you are offering and have better engagement.

3. Decide which platforms are right for you – recent statistics show that there are over 75 live social media platforms. It’s not an effective use of your time or money to manage an account on every network. Instead, you should consider the platforms which allow you to engage with your target audience the best. As a starting point, we recommend launching two or three platforms and once these are more established, then look at expanding onto other networks if it will help you achieve your goal(s).

4. Keep personal and business accounts separate – your family might enjoy receiving updates of your child/pet however clients probably don’t, and vice versa. Keep your accounts separate to avoid your customers becoming less engaged with you.

5. Choose suitable account names – when choosing your account names, consider how easy the handle (account name) is for your customers to find. Make sure the name is clearly associated with your brand and even consider the spelling. If your spelling is unusual will it restrict who can find your account?

6. Conduct competitor analysis – keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing on social media is a great way to identify what does and doesn’t go down well with your audience. It can also help you highlight any gaps in your own strategy or give you inspiration.

7. Find inspiration from other accounts that you admire – this is a great way to find inspiration and use as a benchmark. Look at what accounts you engage with regularly personally and if you can, find out what accounts your audience admire.

8. Consistently share a range of content – whilst it might be important to share your products/services/brand, don’t make this all you post about. Share anything your audience will be interested in. In marketing it’s called the 80-20 rule – use 80% of your content to inform, educate or entertain your audience, and the other 20% to promote your product/service/brand. No one likes a robot, be human and post great content.

Check out our Storytelling Masterclass for inspiration.

9. And finally, be yourself – make sure your content shows off your personality, after all, you is what makes your brand/business unique!

If you follow all of our advice, it will take your social media strategy to the next level!

Develop your skills

If you want to learn more about social media marketing:

• we have a range of hints and tips videos, recorded webinars and live webinars

• check out Google's range of Digital Garage online courses - a set of excellent short videos that cover the basics of digital marketing and are completely free. Upon completion of the full set, you'll also receive a nice certificate!

• alternatively, if you're short on time, check out this tutorial on YouTube - How to start social media marketing (4 essential tips for beginners).

Get in touch

Please get in touch if you would want to find out about our services and how we can help your organization grow.