Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, sounds familiar? When you step out or even in gatherings, almost everyone is holding their phones and interacting on social media.Social media is the new oil, especially now that people are stuck at home due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Social media has disadvantages but the advantage overweighs the disadvantages; you can use it to push your brand and hereās how.
- Develop a strategy: Before you start anything, develop a social media strategy, have a plan unless, like every other thing that begins without proper planning, this might flop. What is a social media strategy? A social media strategy is a summary of everything you intend to do and hope to achieve via social media. It governs your actions and lets you know if you are making progress or not and to what extent. When drawing up a social media strategy, be specific and realistic because, the more specific your plan is, the more effective it will be. When youāve developed a strategy, you then decide what social media platform to use. The social media platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, Pinterest) chosen should be in line with your strategy.
- Craft creative content: After choosing your preferred social media platform, the next step is to put out content. Your content should be original, creative, relatable and valid. In other words, it should be engaging, it should always leave readers coming back for more. Good content is like a sumptuous meal, it would always make people want to come back. Take your favorite online influencer for instance, there is something that keeps drawing you back to their page. You want to follow them, keep up with them, know their latest updates, that is the power of good and creative content.
- Ā Be engaging: People get bored easily. It is very possible for your content to be amazing and yet, get attention. So what do you do when people donāt give your post attention? you make it alluring. There are different ways to make your posts alluring one of which is storytelling. Everybody likes a good story, children, adults, everybody. You can introduce a little bit of storytelling into your content, the trick is to link the story to your brand this way, your audience is both entertained and informed. Another way is the use of visuals, visuals are usually more attention grasping than mere words, easier to comprehend and hard to forget.
- Consistency: Be consistent. Consistency is like a magnet, it draws traffic. When people begin to notice your social media presence, nothing drives them away faster than inconsistency. Imagine being drawn to a page and the next day you go there, no update, the next week, no update, the next month, no update, you would lose interest! So to retain your audience, you have to constantly put out content but, this is dicey, you donāt want to over-flood your audience with content so like every other thing in life, modesty is key. Put out content consistently but be modest.
- Be Interactive: Nobody likes to be ignored also, nobody likes to be kept waiting for so long. You have to interact with your audience, social media is a two- way thing. You put out content and your content is engaged. Now, when your content is engaged and people begin to show interest, you have to show them that they are not communicating with a robot. How do you do this? Fast replies is one way, when someone makes a comment under your post or make inquiries, make sure you reply as soon as possible, you can put arrangement in place to ensure that no-one is just left hanging because, if itās an habit of your brand to always leave people hanging, people would begin to get discouraged from engaging your content and the more engaging a content is, the more people get to see it and vice versa.
Another way is by putting out content deliberately for your audience. Promotion of services should not be too frequent , put out contents related to your field that can help your audience, for instance life hacks, professional advice e.t.c. Let me paint a picture, Amanda sells skin care products and makes use of her social media accounts to promote sales, on the days she is not promoting sales, she can put out content like, how to clear facial spots, how to cope with oily face, and other related content. Itās beneficial to your audience and also beneficial to you.
Using social media to push your brand gives your brand an added advantage because it would easily draw attention to your brand. If some of your social media audience are not interested in what you offer, a certain percentage of your audience will be, and if they are not interested, a larger percentage will be aware of your services and can easily recommend to others when an opportunity arises. There is always a win when you use social media to push your brand, always a win.