Social Media Tips Your Business Can’t Afford Not to Follow

When it comes to running a business, one of the greatest tools available is social media. Although there are plenty of great ways you can build your brand without it, social media is free to use, (unless you want to advertise), great for brand building, and it’s even fun.

Just creating and occasionally posting on accounts on a few different platforms isn’t enough, though. If you want social media to work for you, it’s going to take some active effort. But with 3.196 billion users on social media and 76 percent of consumers overall purchasing products they saw in a social media post, it’s definitely worth the effort.

If you’re not seeing the results you want to see or are just getting started and aren’t completely sure the best way to go about making the most of social media, here are 10 tips that your business can’t afford not to follow:

Tip #1: Set Goals and Create a Plan for Each Channel

Each channel is different and needs a different approach. Although you may be able to post the same post on both Facebook and Instagram, you shouldn’t be syndicating your posts across all channels. Likewise, because each channel is unique, your goals on each should be unique too. Whether it be daily, weekly, or monthly, sitting down and setting goals, (such as goals for engagement, conversions, etc.), then making a plan to achieve those goals will help you have better social media success.

Tip #2: Get a Good Social Media Management Tool

It’s important to have top Instagram tools, proven Facebook tools, and reliable Twitter tools, but one of the best tools you’ll ever use is a social media management tool. There are a number of management tools that you can choose from but finding one that will let you create and schedule posts in advance, track engagement, view analytics, and even give you tips for your posts is important if you want to make the most of your social media efforts.

Tip #3: Really Know Your Audience

One of the best Instagram tools you can use is SocialSteeze.net, since it will help you build your audience. In addition to building your audience, though, knowing your audience is extremely important if you want to see results on social media. You should know your audience almost as well as you know yourself, that way you can feel confident that your posts will be relevant and relatable and will really capture their attention, driving engagement and results.

Tip #4: Post on a Regular Basis

Consistency is key when it comes to social media success. Your followers need to be able to rely on you, and if you aren’t posting predictably, they could lose interest or posts could get lost in their feeds. That would mean less visibility, fewer engagements, and fewer conversions. Regular posts help you not only build up reliability but can play into your brand as well.

Tip #5: Include Visual Elements Often

Instagram is one of the most visual social media platforms, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be including visual elements like photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites as well. Visual elements capture the attention of your followers and can even boost engagement, so although you don’t need to include an image with every post, using visual elements as often as possible is a great way to build a great social media presence.

Tip #6: Don’t Post Just Anything—Be Picky

What you put on social media says a lot about your company and helps your followers form an opinion of you. That means that you shouldn’t be posting just anything on your social media accounts—you need to be particular and ensure that what you post is relevant and fits the brand that you’re building. It’s okay to include humor every now and then if you’re generally pretty serious on your page but going completely off topic or posting something off-color when you’re generally very professional won’t do you much good.

Tip #7: Inspire Conversation

Your posts shouldn’t only be about promoting your business or your product—in fact, they don’t have to be about you at all. One of the main goals you should have on social media is to drive engagement. While you can certainly do that with promotional posts, sparking conversation is important, too. When you pose a question or ask for participation, you build up your brand and get people talking which can benefit you in both the short and long-term.

Tip #8: Use Advertising

All of the main social media platforms have advertising programs available, and if you’re not using them already, you should be. Although it may cost you some money, using the advertising programs can help you get in front of your target audience and build your following, drive engagement, and get conversions more quickly and efficiently than you otherwise might have.

Tip #9: Respond to Questions and Comments and Do it Quickly

Social media is a great way to provide customer service since consumers and followers will often engage with brands on different platforms. When you get a question in your inbox or even just a simple comment on a post, responding and doing so quickly will let your followers know that you’re present and that you care. That can also feed into your overall brand and build up the public’s perception of your business.

Tip #10: Always Track and Analyze Your Posts

Some posts perform better than others and while that’s okay, you need to know why if you want to ensure that more of your posts do well than not. There are a number of different ways that you can track and analyze the performance of posts and ads, mainly it’s just important that you do and that you learn what you can so that you can make adjustments and do even better going forward.

What other sure-fire social media tips do you have to share?