Creating a social media strategy that works for your business

Welcome to our mini series of posts on social media. Part 1 focuses on building a social media strategy, while part 2 looks at maintaining a professional reputation through your online activities.

There are, surely,  few people in the whole world that have not heard of the biggest social media sites, just in case you are ones of those people, the 3 main ones are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, however for creative types such as interior designers and fashion Gurus Pinterest and Instagram are considered essential. It is always worth taking the time to see if there are any industry specific networking sites. If not, you can always create a group on LinkedIn or Facebook for like-minded people.

Most people, however, do not know that there are hundreds of social media sites. The trick is to pick at most 3 or 4 of them and really do them some justice. The main reason for this is you don’t want your presence to look abandoned. Current thinking suggests you should post on Twitter at least 5 times a day in order for it to be effective. If you are managing lots of sites your presence will be spread too thin. You can use automation for publication, however that can be a trojan horse, because you must avoid duplicate content at all costs, so choose a program that still allows you to make posts that are in an appropriate format for their destination. A tweet is different to a Facebook post.

A social media presence is not just about what you post on those sites. If you write informative, interesting blog posts you can establish your authority with online networking groups and build relationships with product leaders in your chosen area. Although you wouldn’t put your 400 word blog post directly on to your social media account, you can use them to let everyone know that it’s there. This will also boost your link profile, which Google uses to apply value to your site, pushing you up the rankings.

Questions you need to answer in order to start your social media campaign:

1.   Who do you want to interact with? If the consumers of your product or service are other businesses then the networks and choice of updates will be different than those you might choose if  you are appealing to the bulk buy, cheap and cheerful market.

2.   Follow industry leaders through their blogs and social networks - offer VALID opinions. Not only should you be writing your own posts but comment, share and retweet on the posts provided by other people.

3.   Be personal -  current evidence shows that it’s not just Google that likes to know that there is a face behind the website. Wherever possible use a personal image for your profile. Speaking of profiles, ensure that your profile on each site is kept up to date.

Join us next time for a brief look at managing your reputation on social media.

In the meantime, if you want to learn more about how your social media strategy can be integrated into your overall marketing strategy then do not hesitate to contact us either by phone on 084 3289 3288 or by email at enquiries@blueboxconsultancy.com we would love to hear from you

If you want to learn more about the people behind Blue Box and the things that we do, then have a browse at our website www.blueboxconsultancy.com

Until the next time...........