Everyone wants to be present on social media, but not everyone knows how to do so properly. The fact is that setting up a business page or profile and leaving it unattended, without thinking of a strategy or even trying to create relevant posts to reach and engage customers or potential customers, is almost the same as having no social media page at all.
The good news is that developing your business page doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are a few steps you can take to get a headstart and give your social media pages a boost:
In short, tone of voice is the style you adopt to talk with your clients. If your tone of voice isn’t consistent, it can be misleading for your followers, as they ricochet from a super-serious post full of industry jargon to a fun, casual post on your brand’s social media. If you or your communications team (if you have one) haven’t thought about your tone of voice yet, consider stopping for a moment and asking yourself ‘how do I want my brand to be perceived?’, and ‘how does our target audience behave and communicate daily?’. These two simple questions can act as a guide from the very start.
Being answered or ignored on social media can be make-or-break for many Latin American clients. Most people, especially Generations Y and Z, take the behaviour of a brand on social media seriously, so if their questions or criticisms are ignored, they may feel like the brand doesn’t care, and may even search for another option that offers the same products or services but replies faster.
Also, while replying to queries and complaints should take priority, replying to positive comments is good too, as it helps to create the sense of a relationship between a potential customer and your brand. So if you have enough time and staff to deal with every comment and message, use it to benefit your business.
Hashtags are useful tools on social media that allow users to locate what you’ve posted on your business page. However, cramming your posts with hashtags, and especially with hashtags that don’t have anything to do with the subject of the post, can be viewed as spam by social media algorithms (especially on Instagram), which may drastically reduce the reach of your posts.
When using hashtags, try to stick to relevant ones which people actually search for, and are genuinely related to the subject you’re posting about.
Sometimes we want to make an announcement or share additional information with our followers, and a short 3-line post won’t suffice. And that’s OK, if what you are planning to post is truly relevant. You can even use emojis and bullet points to make its length appear more user-friendly.
But if all your social media posts are lengthy, over time your followers will tend to get a little fed up, and will most likely stop engaging or even stop following your business page.
When people use social media, their primary intent is not to read lengthy blocks of text, no matter how useful they may be – instead, the idea is to consume relevant content in the shortest amount of time. If users aren’t in the mood to read long posts, they’ll probably scroll away, which can harm your business page’s engagement levels and decrease the reach of your posts in the long run. So handle your social media posts with care, and avoid unnecessarily long text.
Talking about products and services is necessary, but it isn’t always the most relevant subject for your followers. You want people to engage with the posts on your business page, and the best way to do so is by offering relevant content.
A classic example is to give tips related to your brand and its target audience. A business that sells clothes, for example, can give style tips to its followers, a hair salon can give tips on how to care for dyed hair, and so on. This is a simple way to generate content that will be relevant even to visitors who aren’t looking to buy something at a specific time, but will keep following your business page in order to receive relevant tips. In the future, it’s your brand they’ll remember when thinking of the products or services that you offer.
In many ways, our tips to improve your business page on social media stem from the same basic message: less can be more. You don’t have to think of an extremely complex strategy or write never-ending social media posts to achieve optimal results. In fact, the best steps to improvement are usually the simplest.
This blog post is a part of our 101 series, which brings together quick public relations tips for beginners. Follow us on our social media channels (@sherlockcomms) to be notified every time a new article becomes available.
