Making Social Media Work for You - Part 2
Welcome back to our discussion of how to devise a social media strategy that works for you and your business. We've looked at the usage statistics and behaviour of social media users, now we're getting down to the nitty gritty.
Across all the major platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn) the predominant age group is 25-34 years old, but there is a growing number of people older than that using these channels so don't be too swayed by trying to appeal to a certain age group – if your content is good it will appeal to your customers of any age and you'll hit the golden target of getting your content shared. Be aware that your content needs to be original or at least fully credited – using photos and copy that you've taken from other sources may backfire, either by social media users picking up on this copying, or by the owners of that content noticing.
Creating content needn't be a chore. You can use freelancers to create graphics and video and copywriters to create short posts and longer blog articles you can link to. There may even be someone on your payroll who has these skills so don't let the issue of content creation become a stumbling block. Ideally you will post content once a day, or once every two days. Each industry and demographic has their own appetite so this is just a guideline.
The key to making social media work for you is to know what you want to achieve from it. We've covered the background of who uses social media, why and when they do so, but why are you using it? Do you want to grow your brand awareness? Do you want to create and curate a community around your particular product, or around a theme from your industry? Do you want to use it primarily to drive short term sales or to grow a database you can use for marketing activities in the future? The answers to these questions will inform the type of content you create, whether you use the inbuilt advertising platform or sponsored content posts, whether you engage influencers to post for you and many more questions.
These answers will also give you something tangible to measure against. If you focused on growing your email list, then your progress on growth here will show you how well social media is working for you and it's the same for any other metric you choose to measure.
If you haven't already got your teeth into social media there's no time like the present, and if you already use it, there's always a benefit in auditing how well it's working for you, and whether you can make it work harder. The team at Parua are happy to help you on your journey, whatever stage you are at.
