Bringing Your Social Media “A” Game

Social media is becoming increasingly necessary for modern businesses just as it is becoming increasingly complex. While there are so many written and unwritten rules and best practices to observe when it comes to social media, there are also a few essentials for building a better social media presence many small business owners might not know about, like these.

Get the Right Tools for the Job

The goal of working with social media is to work smarter; not harder. That means you sometimes need to invest in the right social media tools to make your social media endeavors pay off with minimal effort. They include things like Hootsuite, TweetDeck, and Canva.

Set Specific Social Media Goals

It makes no sense to engage in social media efforts without having specific goals or outcomes in mind for those efforts. Establish specific goals then create social media campaigns designed to help you accomplish those goals or that mission.

If you’re not sure where to begin when setting goals for your social media actions, consider checking out your competition and trying to understand their goals from their efforts and see where you can make improvements.

Engage, Engage, Engage

The beauty, and sometimes the bane, of social media is that it gives your audience an opportunity to provide direct feedback. Of course, the first step in the process is to engage your audience.

Use funny images, thought-provoking stories, polls, and surveys to invite discourse from your audience and solicit feedback, honest feedback, for your ideas, products, services, etc. In other words, seek to engage your audience on multiple fronts.

Don’t forget that this engagement is a two-way street and that once you open the door to communication with your audience, they will expect to be able to communicate with you as well. Social media serves to remove barriers between businesses and consumers. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though it can be time consuming if you aren’t careful.

Go Local

While Internet sales are great, brick and mortar businesses rely on local commerce to pay the rent. Don’t forget to include local elements, such as a daily rundown of  Lottery results or local weather forecasts to remind people visiting your website that you are part of the community they call home and they can see your products in action if they simply visit your local retail location.

Put these social media ideas to work within your organization today and see how quickly you see “A” game results from your efforts.