Social media can be harder than you think – at least if you’re doing it the right way. It takes a lot of time and effort to develop a strong and consistent social media strategy when there are other aspects of your business that need your attention.
Introduction
The truth is that your current and potential customers are spending a significant amount of time online – watching, learning, sharing, purchasing, and working. As a result, there has been a shift from traditional in-store selling to digital marketing. With so many active users on social media, take advantage of this opportunity to reach new customers and increase brand awareness.
Trust
Leverage the power of social media to establish yourself as a trusted brand. Creating a consistent and cohesive presence on social media across platforms builds trust with potential customers.
1. Implement Consistent Branding
Check the profile pictures on your social media accounts. Are there any unclear images? If you’re a designer and web developer, and you don’t have clear and appropriately sized images on your social media accounts, what do you think potential customers will assume about the quality of your work? Consider your social media accounts as a first impression.
You will also want to ensure that you are using branding elements consistently across channels, as consistency means reliability in the eyes of potential customers. Make sure to format your logo the same way, use the same color schemes, and if you can, try to use the optimal image size when posting on each platform. If your feed contains many images of different sizes and qualities, it may come off as a bit disorganized and messy – and you don’t want that to reflect on your company.
2. Craft Your Profile Description Carefully
Don’t underestimate the importance of the profile section in your account. In any type of description or bio, you’ll want to quickly and accurately describe who you are and what you do. The character count here will be limited, so be careful in your word choice. Do some SEO research using a tool like SEMrush, and see if you can implement any high-search volume keywords in your description that are relevant to your business. Don’t sacrifice relevance for search volume.
The Out of The Sandbox template development team is a great example of this. They tell us the industry they operate in, mention that they specifically work on Shopify templates, and that they are an award-winning company dedicated to quality – attributes likely to attract customers.
3. Showcase Reviews
Imagine you are in downtown looking for a place to have lunch, trying to decide between two restaurants. You notice one restaurant is bustling with many people sitting outside, while the other restaurant appears empty. Which one are you more likely to choose?
Many might assume that the busy restaurant must have great food, while the other might not. Although this may not be the actual reality, social proof has a significant impact on consumer decisions.
If you have positive customer reviews on your Facebook page, this is an excellent form of social proof. When it comes to a potential customer choosing your business over another, you’ll want to have great reviews that offer more details than just a star rating, to convince them that you are the better choice.
Community and Conversations
Be active on social media to tap into expert communities in your industry, share tips, and connect with customers. Spending some time listening and engaging with your community will give you insights and help you build valuable relationships with customers and other experts in your field.
4.
Use Social Media Listening Tools
Listen to conversations. Use social media as a way to keep track of what your competitors are doing and to stay more connected with your customers.
A great way to do this is to create Twitter lists or follow relevant hashtags. You can create lists for competitors or accounts that inspire you, or for your most important customers to see what they are currently doing and what matters to them.
Following important people and topics in your industry can spark new online business ideas or highlight areas that need improvement. You can use social media listening tools like Sprout Social, Keyhole, and Buzzlogix to help you track the keywords you’ve identified when they are mentioned online.
Social media is also a platform that many people turn to for support. Public support requests can be beneficial for your company and serve as a source of positive public relations when handled appropriately. Take advantage of this opportunity and respond to inquiries from potential customers, as well as questions and concerns from current customers in a friendly and timely manner.
Content
Create a social presence to showcase your brand through content. Share informative content that reflects your brand’s personality and your company’s capabilities.
6. Share Work Samples
Use your social media platforms to showcase what you can do! If you’re working on a project with impressive customizations or have rebranded a client’s identity, let the virtual world know and showcase examples of client work that demonstrate your skillset and capabilities.
7. Be Creative with Your Content
You work in a creative industry, so take advantage of that. Use custom graphics, animations, and video to capture people’s attention and encourage them to engage with your content.
8. Tag External Content
Come across an interesting article relevant to your industry? Leave a comment and tag the companies involved.
When you give other companies recognition and tag them in content that isn’t your own, more people will see the post you’re sharing, which can lead to more people following your account. Recognition of others’ work can encourage those companies to tag you in their content, or to give you a kind word on social media, which is particularly nice if they have a large following. In other words, be kind to your network and they will be kind to you.
Conversions
Use social media as a way to increase your online conversions. Create social media content that links back to your SEO-rich pages to increase the number of leads you receive.
9. Invest in Social Media Ads
With the increase in users and their engagement, social media advertising spending in the U.S. is projected to surpass television ad spending for the first time ever, expected to reach $35.98 billion globally by 2017.
However, you don’t need a massive budget to see results from Facebook and Instagram ads – the two platforms I recommend advertising on, as they are experiencing tremendous growth and consume a significant share of the average person’s time on social media.
Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, setting up ads on both platforms is streamlined, making it easy for you to decide whether you want to run ads on both. The ad setup is user-friendly, and Facebook provides a wealth of resources to help you create the most effective ads possible.
10. Increase Traffic by Sharing Original Content
One of the most effective ways to increase organic traffic to your site and generate leads is to create and share original content that is indexed on your site. You can do this by starting a blog.
With
Having a blog on your website, each article you publish is a page that gets indexed and is an opportunity for you to rank in search engines like Google. Other examples of original content include podcasts and webinars, which you can easily incorporate into your blog articles.
It can be difficult and time-consuming to gather content for social sharing regularly. The more original content you produce, the more opportunities you have to share more on social media, ensuring that you maintain a consistent social presence and stay top-of-mind. By regularly sharing your original content on social media, you leverage and increase traffic to your SEO pages, helping you rank in search engines.
11. Create Fun Contests
Contests can be a fun way to engage your followers and encourage people to interact with your brand. Contest formats can include: “Like to Win” contest – the winner is chosen randomly from those who like a specific post. “Comment” contest – the winner is chosen randomly from those who comment (for example, “Share your favorite design tool in the comments for a chance to win a prize”).
The issue with this type of contest is that it doesn’t require followers to submit any information. However, other contests require more information from participants, which can be added to your customer channel.
Cake and Arrow recently held a contest that required participants’ contact information and used social media to promote it. Celebrating a year of partnership with Shopify Plus, Cake & Arrow offered a free website design on their platform.
The winner receives: a free custom website design. Migration from Magento or BigCommerce to Shopify Plus. A free Shopify Plus license for six months.
Those wishing to participate had to provide their name and email and explain why they wanted to redesign their website. Registering for this contest means obtaining a new customer (the winner) and providing a list of potential customers that Cake & Arrow can contact later.
Wishpond has some ideas and tips for creating social media contests.
Do you have any social media tips we haven’t mentioned? Let us know in the comments section below!
Source: https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/actionable-social-media-tips
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