How to improve social media presence at your business

Just 15 years ago, the words social and media were completely independent of each other. Just two happy-go-lucky words going about their business until one day in around 2005 they were smashed together by an American guy named Tom and his website MySpace. Fast forward to today and pretty much everyone you know has a personal account on at least one social media platform. It has become a part of everyday life and a way in which we communicate with each other around the world – not only in a personal level, but also in a business to consumer and business to business level too. Because of this, most modern businesses now understand that they need to have some kind of presence on social media if they want to engage with and market to their audience and potential new customers in a relevant way. But where do you start? Sure, setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter or Instagram account is easy enough, but without some kind of strategy and measurable, attainable goals, you will be doing little more than trying to nail jelly to a wall.

What do you want?

The absolute worst reasons to create a social media presence for your brand are ‘because you think you should’ or ‘my competitors have one’. Think of social media as a relatively new, but no less important branch to your already existing marketing tree. You need to set some realistic goals and targets for what purpose you want social media to serve. It could be about brand awareness, building a community, announcing new products and services, promoting events, increasing traffic to your website, creating leads or just adding value to your existing customers. It really helps to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and the priority of those things before you start. Social media is what it says on the tin: social. It is a direct link to your brand for customers and gives them a way to interact with you in a way they never could before. Because of this, your goal will be transparent. Customers know you have a page to help your business, so you need to be up front with that and make it more about building connections and relationships first and foremost, rather than making it a hard sales pitch…

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