Business social media has been used since the very first platform was designed. Business owners have realized the strength in using these mostly free services to advertise their goods or services. Because of many recent events businesses are beginning to rely on using social media more to get their message out. Starting a social media business page is not complicated, but making sure its set up and run correctly can be a little more difficult. We will discuss some of the most common mistakes when it comes to making posts and trying to get your content out to customer’s.
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are free to use for most people that run a private business and have step by step information that helps a new person get all the information they need to be found. This is just the beginning of the social media experience. We will cover the major social media platforms that most business use. We will also cover one of the more commonly asked asked questions; how often should I post on social media?
Facebook in one of the largest platforms and has users all over the world looking for businesses and products. On top of the simple user profile they also offer business pages with a multitude of models that include templates. Once the page is built it is up to you to create posts. Each post should be accompanied with a photo to grab the reader’s eye and should have something to do with the topic being written about. The post should be short enough to read in about 30 seconds or less as most people are scanning their newsfeeds when they see the social media post.
Now here is the hardest part for most business owners, you should only post once per day. This is the hardest thing for business owners to understand when utilizing Facebook. Facebook has an unspoken rule that if you have less than 10k followers one post per day is all you need. If you post more the social media giant may throttle your posts on other people’s newsfeeds and your numbers may actually drop. Stick with one post per day 5 days per week maximum and you will achieve better results.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not have the ability to have a personal account and a business account. In order to set up a business on twitter you will need to set up an entire new account with the business information listed as the user. The method of setting up a new business account is the same as a personal account, but the business is the owner and tweet will appear under the business name.
Posting with Twitter is different for two reasons, one the information you want to get out should be only 70 to 110 characters long for the largest impact with your audience, these findings were determined through a study by track social. The second difference is the strong use of hashtags, each business should create specific hashtags that can be added to the end of your tweet. Although Twitter is a powerful tool its important to understand what will get you the notice you are looking for.
Just like Twitter, Instagram does not allow for one profile to also run a business page. If you have a personal Instagram account you will also need to set up a different account for your business.
Instagram is a unique platform as it is very photograph reliant. People that follow your business on Instagram are looking for eye catching photo’s or graphics so be prepared to show your customer base high quality in order to get them engaged with you.
With Instagram (owned by Facebook) it is also recommended that only only one or up to two posts be made each day. Another great feature with Instagram is the ability to automatically share your Instagram post to Facebook with no additional keystrokes. This can greatly improve productivity and get the message out to more people.
Conclusion
Although there are more social media outlets than have been listed in this article these are the most prevalent on the internet today. Using social media is a powerful tool available to all business owners and their staff. It is important to remember that, in the case of social media, less is more and more can be too much.
Another benefit to having a strong social media presence is the ability to get more customers to your website. If you have low traffic on your website just simply drive them from social media to your site. Here is a previous article we wrote about website traffic.