We’ll answer your questions about using social media to promote your organisation.

How to make social media work for your brand

As a business owner or solopreneur, you are steadily growing your company. Making a name for your brand locally has been achieved through word of mouth recommendations and orders from repeat customers.

While you realise you could reach a wider audience with the help of effective social media, knowing where to start has you delaying this popular marketing channel. Here to help, this blog will explore the who, where, what, how and the when of social media, with a little ‘why’ sprinkled in for good measure.

Ready to up your game? Let’s first begin with a valuable checklist of how to set your account up for success …

Things to do before posting on social media

As with the world of business, thoughtful preparation is needed to make the right first impression with potential customers. You want your social media page or bio to:

• Look professional so it impresses and stimulates new leads.
• Convey what your business offers to anyone unfamiliar with your brand.
• Describe how your products or services can help them live or work better.
• Give your company contact details, including a link to your website.

Actionable tip: Research the maximum character limit for each social media business page/bio before drafting different versions. You will then be able to choose your favourite piece of copy.

Who are you talking to?

The people behind the most effective captions and visual content know who they are talking to. But how do you arrive there if you are not 100 percent clear on this?

Actionable tip: This is why having a customer avatar to hand can steer your messaging and inspire new post ideas. Think about your target customer in glorious technicolour. Are they male or female? Young or old? What generation do they belong to? What are their interests? Do they have a problem that your products or services can help with?

Many marketers give these fictional descriptions names to add depth to the persona. This helps the person writing social media posts to bear them in mind while you or your team are brainstorming new content. Indeed, yours may soon feel like an old friend, offering helpful ways where your brand can solve the customer’s pain points (concerns) or help them achieve a goal.

Where do you need to be on social media?

Now that you have a clear client or customer description to work with, it is time to consider the most suitable social media platforms for your business. Remember that posting regularly on these platforms will consume some of your weekly schedule (if not an employee’s hours). So deciding which social sites to focus on is key to concentrating your resources wisely.

Actionable tip: Most businesses will generally start by being active on one or two platforms to test out their initial ideas. This helps you build your confidence and incorporate ‘posting’ and idea development into your business in a manageable way.

Once you feel this marketing activity is becoming second nature, you can always add additional social media channels into the mix. Just remember to adapt a post to reflect each social platform’s requirements and personality.

Examples of this include:

• Video length limits
• The image dimensions
• The level of formality used
• The word count used by others
• If emojis and hashtags are popular.

Understanding what the majority of people on each site expect can save you months of shouting into the void and help you attract followers. And moving leads through your sales funnel is definitely worth the required research.

What to write about for social media

As you have already given some thought to your ideal reader (aka your target audience) and know where to post your content, now is the time to grab a pen and paper.

Actionable tip: In either case, aim for every post to be either:

• Educational
• Engaging
• Funny.

Try to frequently offer value in some form, and people will start to recognise you as the brand that does x, y and z. Still unsure of what your company or charity can do? We have listed two examples below.

Content pillars

To remain recognisable and curate a consistent feed, you should agree on 3-5 topics that will shape what you post online. These should be relevant to your brand to catch the attention of social media users.

A holiday travel advisor may, for example, write about these topics on their Facebook page:

• Insider tips
• Travel deals
• Their past clients
• Destination trends
• The planning process.

Alternatively, you may find these pillars on a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) school’s Instagram account:

• Success stories
• English language lessons
• Behind-the-scenes tours of the site
• Tourist sites in English-speaking countries
• Learners celebrating their exam passes.

It will then be your mission (should you accept it) to write social media posts around these pillars. Doing this, preferably planned and scheduled in advance, helps to minimise posting panic and fatigue.

How to post and build a successful brand

Develop your brand’s tone of voice

Maintaining a recognised written tone of voice may sound complicated or appear to limit what you can say, but it is an invaluable tool for brand building. Helping your brand stand out can guide you (or an employee) when crafting your messaging. This also guides others if you have decided to be a business that responds to online trends and news via social media.

Consider the following five questions:

• How will your business speak to its audience?
• How formal will your language and approach be?
• Which words will you use, and what will you not say?
• What will be the written mood of your social media content?
• Will any infographics be added to enrich the words you will write?

Establish your brand guidelines

Our brand guidelines summary service allows others to take the reins while you’re scaling. It helps keep things consistent. Or you may hire a professional copywriter who will use this informative document as a brief, rather than use AI.

Actionable tip: Our brand guidelines service has helped many clients stay consistent in terms of their social media output. Imagine being able to share a guide to the fonts, typography, logo families and other design details with all of your team members.

Once others know how you want logos, photography and videography to be used correctly, you can then review your social media analytics regularly to inspire upcoming posts.

When will you see ROI from social media?

While individual businesses will see varied results, SQ Magazine recently revealed that “Brands allocating more than 20% of their marketing budget to social media report a 33% higher ROI compared to those investing less”.

Actionable tip: Rather than go all in on social media, it is prudent to combine your content on these platforms with other marketing channels such as print advertising, cold emailing and attending industry expos. Networking can also help generate new business. View our blog on printed business cards for our thoughts on these tangible resources.

Trust thefingerprint for new business momentum

Looking for on-brand content or high-quality designs fit for today’s social media landscape? Get in touch with us or call 07740 348521 for an informal chat to see how we can help your company thrive.

 

If you found this helpful, then you should also read these articles: Why Loomly is our first choice for social media management, Do websites matter in the age of social media? and Why a brand is important and why it’s not just a logo.