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Navigating into the world of social media for the first time can be difficult. Below is a simple guide for three of the most commonly used social media platforms to help you figure out the best plan for your business.

Facebook

Facebook dominates the social media landscape. With over 2 billion active monthly users no matter what industry you’re in, if you’re not taking advantage of this massive audience you’re missing out.

It’s a great starting point to build your business’s social media presence. Being relatively low maintenance you can start with just posting a few times a week and still get in front of your audience. That being said, the more you post the better, as long as it’s relevant to your viewers. Posting spammy updates will lose you followers and potential revenue.

Facebook also has excellent targeting features allowing you to run ads or boost your post so you can get in front of an audience that will engage with you and be interested in what your business has to offer.

Insights is a great feature thatFacebook business pages have. It gives you data on who is interacting with you page and how well your posts are performing. This is incredibly useful in helping you connect and build relationships with your audience.

Twitter

With 317 million active monthly users Twitter does not match the numbers of Facebook. Although, it can still be a very effective tool for attracting certain audiences. The majority of Twitter users are under 25, so if your target audience is quite young this could be one of the better platforms for you.

Twitter has a character limit and is mainly used to share short text updates, although you can use video, polls, links and images too. Due to this short amount of content it can be quite a lot of maintenance to maintain – you would generally need to post multiple times a day to stay relevant.

You will probably find you do not have enough content to constantly update your Twitter feed. This is fine; sharing content is also a great way to engage with users and share knowledge with them helping you to build your standing as a centre of knowledge in your industry.

Retweets make sharing users content incredibly easy, and interacting with your followers is simple. You can just mention their name in your post and they will be notified, allowing you to easily connect with people. If a user with a lot of followers retweets you, your post could potentially go viral, building your audience even further.

Instagram

Instagram has a high level of engagement. It has 500 million active monthly users of which 75% take action from posts; liking, following or clicking a link.

This platform is very visually orientated. All posts are images or video (no text) although you can add captions. For this reason, if your brand has a nice aesthetic it will excel. Consequently, if you are in the art, travel, food, fashion or similar industries this is a great platform for you.

Instagram is great for building brand recognition and turning passive users into paying customers. By posting aesthetically pleasing images and videos you can see a growth in followers quickly. Although, without being able to put clickable links into your captions and comments you have to be strategic to generate website traffic.

By using relevant hashtags, the search feature makes it easy for your target audience to find you. Making yourself discoverable through the correct hashtags makes it easy for users to like, follow, and engage with your brand. These users may eventually go from followers to paying customers.

 

The next one is not necessarily social media but is an online platform all businesses should be utilising:

Google My Business

A lot of businesses feel they don’t have the time for social media. Well, Google My Business is not something that takes very little time to set up and is very low maintenance to maintain. It’s something every business should have for the following reasons:

  • It allows Google users to easily find information about you business on via search, maps and Google +
  • It gives you control to show your businesses in the best way possible
  • You can upload images of your business, making it easy for people to find you and give you an extra, more personal connection with users
  • You can display vital information about your business such as contact information and your opening hours, making it as easy as possible for users to interact with you.

All social media can be useful to your business if it’s used in the right way. It can help with the disconnect between your customers and your business. By allowing your company to present its personality to users you can change how your customers perceive you. Customers would always rather deal with a person than a faceless corporation.

If you are struggling to keep on top of social media don’t worry – we are here to help. We offer a range of packages that can be tailored for all needs and budget. To find out more get in touch.