Social media can do wonders for your business development. That being said, planning and creating content, hashtagging and scheduling can be daunting and time consuming. So, here are some social media tips and tricks to help you along!
Why post to social media
First up, you might be wondering why your business should be using social media. Well, by consistently posting quality content, you can increase brand awareness, increase customer engagement, demonstrate your expertise and ultimately increase sales. All of this can be invaluable in contributing to a positive return on investment for your business.
Planning your social media content
So, you’ve decided to use social media to promote your business, but what do you do next?! We recommend planning your social media content in advance to ensure that what you’re posting is worthwhile. Start things off by setting aside a couple of hours each month to plan out your content for the following month.
When planning, one of the first things to consider is how many posts you intend to post each week. This could be anything from one to five times a week, but either way, it’s important that you are posting quality content, consistently, so be realistic about this and stick to a frequency you can sustain long-term! The framework of your social media content will then be any important upcoming dates, so mark these out first - awareness days, holidays and events, if you have a new product or service launching, anniversaries etc. You can then fill the gaps with additional content. Content should have a purpose and be there to inform, entertain and/or educate – so if it’s not doing this then you need to rethink what you’re posting.
Creating content
The saying goes that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ so once you’ve planned your schedule, it’s time to think about the visuals that will accompany your captions. These could be photos, graphics or videos, whatever suits the post and reflects your business best. Canva is a great site that offers free stock videos and images as well as a range of templates and content inspiration. While graphics can be a great way to reinforce your brand (fonts, colours etc), it can be time consuming to create and difficult to do well. High-quality images (taken on an iPhone) can be the best way to create authentic content that engages users. Videos are a great way to increase reach and engagement and if you decide to post videos, we recommend posting in portrait, using trending sounds and choosing a good cover photo so it fits in with your other content. P.S - CapCut is a great free video editing tool you can use on your phone!
Scheduling content
While it might seem easier to just post your content directly to social media as and when, scheduling content in advance will be hugely beneficial and streamline the management of your social media accounts. Not only will it ensure the content you’ve spent time planning and putting together actually goes out, but it will also give you peace of mind and means you don’t have to be thinking about needing to post that day. Use the time you’ve set aside at the end of each month to get all your content scheduled for the following month. Then, if there’s additional content that comes up during the month, you can post that directly to social media.
Most social media platforms allow you to schedule your content directly through the app for free, or there is software like Buffer, Hootsuite and Hubspot. While there can be a cost to these sites, they will not only allow you to schedule all your content across different platforms on different times/days, but they can also provide useful analytics.
Tracking results
Time spent reviewing and interpreting your social media analytics is well worth it. Not only can this help to guide you in creating more engaging content going forward, but it also helps by providing measurable value and worth for the time spent creating social media content. It’s important to know what your goals are though. We advise our clients not to simply look at follower increase (or decrease!) as this is more of a vanity metric. Instead, consider engagement, whether that be likes, shares or comments. Which posts worked well and which were not so good. Is there a reason for this? Is there a better time of day to post? What content has resonated with your audience? Each are important questions to ask yourself, when creating a successful social media campaign.
So there you have it!
We can spend hours talking about social media, and there is loads more we can discuss – from SEO to hashtags – but hopefully this gives you a great starting point! If you find yourself struggling to get it all done, then maybe it’s time to try outsourcing? If that sounds like the answer for you then please get in touch by emailing info@eatpr.co.uk.
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