It’s amazing to think about when social media networks first started and how far these platforms have developed these last few years.
And now over ten years later and moving into a new decade, social media is a major component to our lives. That of course presents positives and negatives to our society. But we won’t dive into that debate for this article.
However, for businesses and professional individuals, social media has many benefits when used correctly. Below I’ll cover some social media tips for businesses to step up their social strategy.
Social Media Statistics
Before we get into the social media tips, I thought I’d start this off with some data. After all, maybe you need some convincing (or your organization does) as to the value and relevance of social media to your company.
But there should be no doubt how large these networks have become. Check out some of these interesting data points:
- Today, 7 in 10 Americans use social media, compared with only 5% in 2005.
- Close to half the world’s population (3.03 billion people) are on some type of social media. (Statusbrew)
- There are more than 650 million LinkedIn user accounts in over 200 countries. (LinkedIn)
- Facebook had over 2.45 billion monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2019 (Statista)
- Twitter boasts 330 million monthly active users (as of 2019 Q1).
These are only a snippet of the social media data out there, but it helps to understand the massive size of these social networks. Now, let’s get into some social media tips!
Social Media Tips For Businesses
Whether your company is new or has been established for quite some time, social media is important for pretty much most areas, like:
- Generating leads
- Growing brand reach
- Driving more engagement
- Increasing sales
- Recruiting top talent
- Building employer brand
And it’s not limited to B2B or B2C, nor are any industries or company sizes excluded.
If you want to reach more people and build a recognizable brand, social media platforms are a must in your marketing strategy.
In order to make the most of your efforts for your company, here are the social media tips businesses must consider.
Create a social strategy for each platform
Before randomly creating or posting content to your company social profiles, you’ll need to build a strategy for each. Yes, you read that right!
Each platform offers different techniques and what audiences may want to consume at a given platform. Posting the exact same way on every channel probably won’t yield you many solid or improved results.
Does your organization need to be on every social platform out there? Maybe not, but some of the common ones pending your industry would be:
Each strategy does not need to be a massive playbook either. Instead start asking some important questions like:
- Why are we using this platform?
- Who are we trying to reach and who will we reach?
- What post types work best on this platform?
- How are my posts unique to this platform?
- How much time should we invest in this platform
Maybe you know these answers already, but formulate these into a simple plan and re-evaluate as needed throughout the year.
Be creative with what your are posting
I was tempted to omit this section, but on second thought realized its importance while I was preparing to write this column. You would think that businesses would think more creatively when it comes to social media posting.
Yet, I cannot tell you the number of organizations I came across recently that all rely on generic stock photos and rote copywriting.
Apparently, a lot of effort (and money) is invested in being invisible! Not what you or your organization wants to do however.
Certainly, a well-known business might get away with this for a time, but this is not how to win at social media.
The simplest social media tips for businesses is to get creative and mix up content. Even if you are using a social scheduling tool, you can add more flair to the copy and be more engaging.
Your company profiles should be mixing up content. Include items like videos, images, text only posts, and articles that offer more than the title of the post.
Get creative with how you can be more engaging, interesting, and yet provide value to attract more people towards your brand.
Figure out what resonates with your audiences, but also how to ensure they keep coming back for more.
When it comes to creating unique brand content, we often joke here at EveryoneSocial that it’s a careful balance between being intelligible and unexpected (and no matter what: valuable).
Time to enable employees on social media
Many people scoffed at the idea of social media in the workplace. And others saw the idea of employee advocacy as a trend in the early days.
But years later, activating employees and encouraging them to share on social media has big benefits for your organization.
And whether your company realized it or not, employees were already posting on social about their company
98% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50% are already posting about their company. (Weber Shandwick).
I won’t go in-depth here because employee advocacy is a huge topic. But these stats are important to know when building a social media strategy:
- Leads developed through employee social marketing convert 7x more frequently than other leads. (Marketing Advisory Network)
- Employees of socially engaged companies are more likely to stay at their company, feel optimistic about their company’s future and believe their company is more competitive. (Prophet)
- When companies use social media internally, messages become content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35%, the time employees spend searching for company information. (McKinsey)
Brands like Adobe, T-Mobile, Dell, and many others have been doing this for a few years. And many others are now realizing how important employee-voice is online.
If you want to learn more about enabling employees on social media, you can download our guide to building an employee advocacy program.
Leave the sales-heavy copy back in the previous decade
If your company profiles read like a used car salesman’s pitch, it’s time to retire that approach indefinitely. In fact, that should have been done years ago, but making this change now will benefit you in the long-term.
While it’s true that many audiences are researching products and services on social media, your company’s social posts should not sound like a sales-robot pitching constantly.
Instead, you want to take a more meaningful approach to build relationships with your audiences. Educate them about your industry and certain topics, they will trust and respect your knowledge more.
And it’s why many people are active on social media (besides being entertained and connected to friends or family) is to be part of a community.
Your social posts can still guide people to your product or services, without being that pushy salesman. But you’ll attract more business when people trust you and find value in what your company is doing.
Partner with influencers and thoughts leaders
For the consumer or B2C industry, influencer marketing has exploded over the last few years. This basically entails hiring celebrities or social media personalities with high levels of follower or engagement.
But this has expanded beyond just B2C to the B2B world. Yet, besides activating employees, connecting with B2B influencers and thought leaders can ramp up your social reach.
These industry leaders can help your brand reach entirely new audiences, add more expertise to your topics, and build new conversations around your content and brand.
Get them involved in your content, social media videos, or any other way to harness their efforts.
Many brands also use their employee advocacy program to include both employees and industry thought leaders to help bring awareness.
Always monitor new strategies & trends
As you build your messaging and targeting for social platforms, your work is not quite done. Social media continues to evolve and so do the audiences on this networks.
This means you and your company have to stay on the cusp of new strategies and trends.
Does this mean you have to implement every new tactic? Of course not, but you need to monitor and understand what’s going on in the world of social media.
But if something is aligning with your brand and audience, then it’s a good idea to begin implementing and monitor those results.
However, I do caution you: do not blindly copy competitors or trends just because it generates engagement for them or others.
Even if you have similar audiences, it doesn’t mean that your competition efforts match your messaging and audience.
It’s a quick way to alienate your audiences and lose your own creative sense as you play the game of “following others.”
Final Thoughts
Social media marketing can be hard work and it goes beyond just casually posting links occasionally if you want to build meaningful connections.
And the above social media tips for businesses should help you get a head start in this new decade.
Additionally, there are certainly more things you can be doing to ensure you are on the right path. However, items like monitoring results, filling out your profile, etc. are all common at this point.
Hopefully the above social media marketing tips will help you start crushing your social goals for your organization.
