By Christina Love
Starting a small business online often revolves around social media. There are many avenues to explore as you enter the world of social media from a business perspective. It all depends on exactly what you want to achieve from your venture and the audience that you wish to target. We have constructed a simple guide of four steps towards creating a perfect social media presence for your business.
Step 1 – Name and Brand
Choose a business name which is available to use on social media. It is best that you can use the same one for all of your accounts as this increases visibility and the chance of returning customers finding you on various sites.
Brand your social media accounts. Choose three to five brand colours and stick with them, have a style of image that you use or filter. Have backgrounds that interlink with each other in your images. Keep it professional looking and styled so that your audience knows it is you right away when they find the page.
Ensure that you create a business card that has all of your contact information on it. From your website, telephone number and business name, to QR codes and your business logo. Have links to your social media accounts on your business card to increase findability when you hand them out to potential customers, whether in the real world or digital. We have found you a great free business card creator that you can use at https://businesscards.co.
Remember to sign up for business accounts on social media sites if you think this is needed for your venture. Facebook Business Suite can be a great start to this. Some things take a little fiddling with and can be more work than it is worth at the beginning so we will leave it up to you to decide when you want to go full business.
Step 2 – Link and Post
Link all of your social sites wherever you can, so that your audience can travel through them freely. Keep links to them on your website and add the link to your website on your social media.
Remember your brand voice in the content you post and market it towards the target audience that is available on that specific social site. Keep posting every day at peak times, whether it is blogging, images, infographics or competitions. Keep up with all of the latest trends and hashtags and use them for your business’ benefit.
You can join sites like Hootsuite, which enable you to create content ahead of time and schedule posts. This saves business owners a lot of time as you can set aside one or two days a month to create content and schedule it without having to continually update your social media.
Step 3 – Stay Active
Stay active with your posts but also with your interactions and messages. If a customer sends you a question via messenger, they want a response as soon as possible. The longer that you take to respond, the more time they have to select a different business to go with.
Interactions on your pages are also key to promoting your posts and gaining more visibility. Reply to every interaction and be interested in your customers. The more you do this, the more of a relationship you will build with them and this is more than likely to translate to sales much of the time.
Step 4 – Marketing and Promotions
Ensure that you are promoting your posts and selling yourself if you have the budget to do it. Even spending a little on this per month can drastically improve sales. Give your business a big jump start by investing a little at the beginning and you might find you double your followers and friends within no time.
Enjoy your business social media and remember that your audience and those that follow you are what will translate to sales to keep them happy and feeling good about your business at all times!