As of September 2016, the total world population is 7.4 billion. There are 2.3 billion active social media users.
But what does this have to do with your business?
Social media marketing is not a particularly new concept – social networking itself has been around for decades, giving businesses the ability to communicate with consumers – but networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram have only recently become much more tailored to businesses. But it can be difficult to manage your social media channels to get the best results for your brand.
How can you use different social media channels to market your business?
Facebook is the king of social media channels. With 1.71 billion users and 500,000 new users added every day (that’s 6 new profiles every second), it is the perfect way to showcase your business. Facebook has a feature called ‘Pages’; which allows you to add a ‘Page’ for your business, product, institution or cause. You should use Facebook to update your audience about your businesses activity. For example, at CDA we recently posted ‘behind the scenes’ images of a photoshoot. This encourages our audience to feel part of our company; and, as Facebook gives users the ability to add comments, they can actually engage with us.
To optimise your Facebook page:
Regularly post updates and images – this ensures your profile is active.
Add content to all of the tabs to the left of the page so users are not met with nothing when they explore your page.
The Key:
The key to Facebook is getting as many likes as possible. The more likes you have, the more people whose news feeds your posts will show up in. Facebook is generally used by most demographics so you can advertise your brand to a wide ranging audience.
Twitter is an excellent platform which lets you to connect with people from all over the globe; without having to ‘add’ them to your networks first. The popular use of hashtags on Twitter means you can index your tweets; allowing them to be found by anybody searching under the same hashtags. This means you can ‘advertise’ your activity to the world by adding relevant hashtags to your post. For example, on CDA’s twitter, we have been updating the Twittersphere about our new website, and indexing these tweets using hashtags that relate to our services/industry – such as #Design and #Agency.
To optimise your Twitter profile:
Tweet frequently, preferably twice a day. Tweet not just about your business, give your profile some personality.
Engage in trending topics to spread your brand to people other than your followers.
The Key:
The key to Twitter is posting regularly to keep your brand at the forefront of your followers’ timelines. With the 140-character limit, you should keep your tweets short and sweet; and you should tweet about current topics – using relevant hashtags to spread your brand to the whole Twittersphere.
Instagram is an image sharing network which may be more applicable to certain businesses over others. As a fairly new concept for businesses, it can be used to gain followers from around the world and generate a buzz about your brand. Similar to Twitter, Instagram uses hashtags and, unless your account is private, anyone from around the world can see your posts.
To optimise your Instagram account:
Use as many hashtags on your images as possible – the maximum is 30 – make them relevant to your industry.
If your business activity is not ‘creative enough’ to photograph, try a different perspective: show followers the people behind the business, post your business lunches or new office supplies.
The Key:
The key to Instagram is hashtagging. The more hashtags you use, the more people who will see your posts, therefore you are more likely to gain likes and spread awareness of your brand. You can google what hashtags are most popular in your industry to achieve the best results.
Google+
Google+ is Google’s own social networking site. Whilst it is much less popular than other social media platforms, your company should have an active Google+ account in order to keep Google happy and appear higher in search results! Happy social networking!
