Social Media is a nebulous world that is hard to broach at times. Succeeding comes down to a few key tactics that are fairly simple. Strategy is essential when establishing a significant footprint in the ever-expanding world of digital networking.
Read on to learn simple, yet effective, strategies for expanding your social media presence, both personal and professional.
Breadth of Profile
An easy way to expand your presence is to establish yourself on multiple social media platforms. A LinkedIn profile is a must for many young professionals, and a great way to preview any potential employees for your business.
Facebook reviews are also growing in importance, rivalling even Google reviews for relevancy. This also makes Facebook pages important for businesses. Additionally, Facebook provides extensive analytics for businesses, so it can give you a lot of important information about your digital footprint.
Facebook also owns Instagram, so it is smart to establish a professional Instagram page and use the analytics there as well. Instagram is an especially effective marketing tool for a younger demographic.
Invest
To succeed at social media, you must actually invest in it. It is not enough to simply establish the pages and hope that they grow themselves.
Businesses, particularly e-businesses, are increasingly turning to digital marketing managers to handle their digital presence. A manager will handle researching and posting to all of your digital platforms for your business.
Investment in social media does not have to be a monetary one, however. If you or your employees invest one to three hours a week in social marketing – both researching and posting – you should be able to have an established presence without hiring a manager.
Plan
Planning is key when it comes to social media. The easiest way to juggle your digital presence with your actual presence is to plan your posts and research at the beginning of the week. This way digital marketing does not impose on the day-to-day operation of your business.
There are websites that exist solely to help business owners and individuals plan out their social media posts. Oftentimes, you can link all of your social media to one place, so you can manage everything through one account. Typically, the websites give you the ability to see how your scheduled posts will all look together, and even provide feedback on when is the best time to post for maximum exposure.
Consistency
When it comes to posting on social media, your platforms need to have both individual and cross-platform consistency.
Consistency will come from investment in social media and planning. Individual platform consistency simply means that posts are happening regularly, and ideally at a similar time and day. Inter-platform consistency simply means that your platforms are on a similar or complementary schedule.
For example, Facebook posts can go up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday while Instagram posts Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. You would not, however, want sudden shifts in the schedule or dissonant schedules. A dissonant schedule might include both Facebook and Instagram posting on Monday, and then nothing until Friday.
Key Takeaways
- Establish yourself across many platforms.
- Devote time and/or money to social media.
- Plan ahead.
- Be consistent across all of your digital presence.