How to Master your Social Media Accounts
The worlds current population is 7.8 billion people, with 48% of them having active social media accounts. Social media today is creating a large impact towards how businesses communicate with and recognise their customers. These accounts are an amazing tool to help your business collect and maintain views and gain better brand awareness.
It is recognised that today 50% of people are more likely to buy a product or service from a brand they follow online. Social Media allows for you to build you client relationships with people from across the world that you probably wouldn’t have known existed before.
Whether you’re just starting out your business, or you are looking to brush up on your social media skills, these tips and tricks will help you develop your brand and allow for you to think about where you are, where you want to be, and how you’ll get there
STEP 1: Finding your Platform
There are 10 social networking platforms available to Australis today to help brand their business and build their customer database.
YouTube is one of the biggest and most popular social networks in the world. In actual fact, it is the second biggest website in the world. Which of course means a huge reach to potential clients and unlimited possibilities for increasing awareness of your business. By doing so, you can drive more traffic and engagement, and generate more leads. YouTube is a great way to share and promote video marketing, whether it be a tutorial, product review or an introductory video of yourself to your website.
Instagram is great way for a visual business to reach potential customers. More than 25 million companies worldwide are already using Instagram for their business, and more than 200 million users visit at least one business profile every day. What better way to attract an audience that to share visual imagery of the content, products, atmosphere, community and services available within your business.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest network of professionals. If you’re a freelance marketeer and need to reach new clients, this would be a great place to start. Your page should offer many opportunities for prospective customers to learn more about your brand and the people who work there, as well as engage with relevant content. You can get noticed by posting informative content – that clearly shows just how much you know about the thing that you do.
Facebook has 2.5 billion people every month that utilise this platform to connect with friends and family and to discover things that matter. As no two businesses are alike, making the most of Facebook’s services, such as paid promotions, allow for you to reach those scrolling through their news feeds looking for a common thread to appear.
STEP 2: Setting your Goals
There is only one way which you can properly keep track of the success which your social media content creates, and that is to set goals and measure them.
The one beauty with social media today is that they have done all the hard work for you. You can now get those facts and figures specific to how many people have seen that post, if they then visited your profile, and what impressions it has created on your audience. Being able to really drill down into those details to see who is engaging with your post and get an idea of who your audience is, has created an opportunity which we can be taking for granted.
So how do you then decide on your goals?
If you’re just starting out your business, your main objective is to get your business noticed. Brand awareness could be the goal you are looking for. Make sure that your content clearly expresses who you are, what you do and how you can impact your community. Then measure your awareness by tracking how many people you reach with each post.
If you’re a more established business, your goal might be to deepen the relationships you already have with your community. Creating content that adds value to their lives by inspiring, educating or entertaining them. Then measure your engagement by tracking how many positive comments or reactions that you receive.
STEP 3: Defining your Style Online
Everything you post to social media is an extension of your brand. You want to make sure your content is unmistakably, you! Your fonts, your colours and your imagery are your main tools to utilise.
When potential customers are landing on your profile, particularly when it comes to Instagram, that is a shopfront for your business. When viewing the profile of a business, having full insight to their bio, highlights and posts, how does it make you feel? Is it clean, inspirational, fresh or creative? Is it busy, distractive or cluttered?
As a starting point we recommend to our clients to create a mood board for the kind of imagery and content that they want their clients to perceive when seeing their brand. This mood board might include colour tones, impactful fonts, specific photo filters and targeted phrases and quotes.
We want to make sure there is a consistency that runs through all your designs and posts that you share to your community.
Just remember, having a consistent design doesn’t have to be boring design!
STEP 4: Making a Visual Impact
Every social media channel provides you different ways and tools to help visualise your ideas. Our brains love visuals. In fact, we actually process images 60,000 times faster than words! With this being said, social media platforms now offer us lots of ways which we can transform our messages into engaging and creative content.
Infographics, polls, carousels, boomerangs, live videos and so many more – the possibilities are endless!
When it comes to sharing your latest morning routine? Show a step-by-step guide with a carousel post!
Or if you are trying to decide on the colours for next season’s activewear range? Use an Instagram poll to put the choice in your customer’s hands!
Getting that customer interaction into your brand and business, not only provides insight into the experience of a particular customer, but also adds another data point to your customer base’s satisfaction as a whole.
In the end, having that customer connection that both listens and respects the customer is key to developing a great business culture. The experience you gain when you work with customers is the key to developing and maintaining a successful business.
STEP 5: Colour, Contrast & Clarity
A beautifully designed social media post can help your content stand out from the crowd.
As a business once you’ve got your customer’s attention it is really important to actually communicate the message you’re trying to show, otherwise there’s no value in that post. That’s why clarity is super important.'
Colour is a powerful communication tool and can be used to signal action, influence mood, and even influence physiological reactions.
Bright block colours can stand out against the white pages and grab the customer’s attention. Get creative and have fun with simple colours combos that are the right fit for your brand.
Contrast is created when two very different elements are used together for visual effect. Sometimes, conflict can be a good thing! This helps your designs pop out of the feed and attract your customer’s eye.
Try contrasting lights against darks – and create impact with SCALE and TYPE.
Clarity matters, because your audience needs to understand your message at a glance.
Keeping your words to a minimum, font size to a maximum, and letting the visuals do all the talking, are the first steps to attracting your customers to your posts.
STEP 6: Mastering the Art of Videos
Videos are what we like to call on social media “thumb stopping content”. The movement, the animation and the emotion which is portrayed through one small clip can be why we just can’t look away.
A Fun Fact: Video gets three times as many shares as text and images combined.
There are so many ways today that we can create engaging videos, the approach really depends on the purpose. Telling a story about your ethical supply chain, will be different to promoting a mid-season sale.
A story should be a video that stirs the emotions in people. Whether that’s tears of laughter or sadness – emotions will form connections with your community. One main question we need to ask ourselves is “what do you want your audience to feel?”.
We need to make sure that we are using our time wisely. Those first 3 seconds of any video matter most. That is your opportunity to inspire the audience and to keep them watching on.
These are just a few tips to help boost your video skills; have a clear call to action, offer an incentive, get creative and make it interactive and say “thank you” at the end.
STEP 7: Constraining your Content
If you’re posting content across multiple social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, you’ll need to tailor your content for each as sizing and constraints can effect your images, text and videos. If you want to look like a social media master, you need to make sure your posts are the right size and your text is the right length.
On Twitter you are given 280 characters per tweet, where Instagram, the world is your oyster.
We need to make sure that the words we are using, complement the images you show and are informative to the audience.
When it comes to designing your content and it’s dimensions, this chart is your guru:
The most important tip is to keep important elements away from the edges of the image. This way it won’t be cut off once posted.
STEP 8: Educate, Inspire & Entertain
Standing out on social media is no easy feat. You have to post consistently, but you can’t post the same thing over and over again.
Continually coming up with new ideas for content, that your community will love, takes some serious creativity and the inspiration process is a big part of it.
By following other brands, hashtags or people that are in a similar business category to you and being able to see content that is really appealing, can allow for you to pull some inspiration and ideation from that and apply it to your social media strategy.
At the end of the day, it is about putting yourself outside of the business box and thinking more from a creative perspective and then try to marry the two that you’re going to come up with creative content.
Education is about empowerment. You’re an expert at what you do!
Share what you know with your community – so they can learn from you!
Inspiration is getting creative and sharing new ideas. You could even ask your community for suggestions – they might have some inspiring ideas too!
Don’t be afraid to entertain, be witty or a bit wacky. If it makes you smile, it’ll make your audience smile too.
STEP 9: Planning Ahead
When it comes to social media content, how you plan it is as important as what you post.
Because it’s not enough to just have a social account, you have to keep it active and exciting!
When you are first starting out your business it can be daunting to track your social media every month.
Sometimes it’s hard to think of something unique to post when you wake up every day. That’s why it pays to plan ahead.
Setting yourself up with a monthly calendar and some short-term goals can allow for you to know what you want to achieve in the future and work towards that. Are there any national events or holidays coming up that you can create relevant content for? Add in your business’s birthday and create a promotion for your customers to share your story.
You can create different templates for different content types, and then take these and assign one type to one day of the week. You could have: Meme Monday’s, Quote Tuesday’s and Fun Fact Friday’s.
An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.
STEP 10: Build your Community
Customers are great, but communities are next level!
If you can gain a loyal group of followers who like what you do, they’ll spread the word and do the marketing for you.
Growing a community isn’t easy though! It takes more than followers and likes – it is all about creating that human connection. The way you do that is by including them into the journey of the brand.
You engage with them regularly, if they comment on your photo you respond to them, if they post something and they tag you, you repost it or you talk to them about it, you give them a shout-out. By creating these interactions can make people feel as though your brand appreciates them. Show your community you value them. Take your time to response and don’t be a robot! Remember you’re connecting with real humans.
Before you push send, read your reply aloud. Is it something you’d say to a friend? If not, maybe write it again, until it sounds right.
If you struggle to respond automatically, find a routine that works for you. You could start by dedicating 30 minutes a day – while you’re on the train or drinking your morning coffee.
Your goal is to grow a community, that interacts with you and with one another – that’s what social media’s about.
Here is a little tip: Content that gets people talking will help beat the algorithm and push your posts higher in the scroll.
STEP 11: Creating your Mark
You’ve found your focus, created tons of tailored content, and scheduled it all in. Congratulations!
Now that you’ve put in all that hard work, what next? No one will know it exists, unless you go out and promote it with passion and gratitude.
You’re much better off making them go “oh my god” this product is unbelievable or this experience is so good I want to share it with my friends.
Social media is an important part of the marketing mix, but it shouldn’t work on it’s own!
Think about all the different ways your customers come into contact with your business – both online and offline. Those are all chances for you to make your mark.
These little touches can feel super personal.
The most important thing is to take advantage of every opportunity to reach your customers and make your mark on the world.
All of the above are tips and tricks which can make a huge impact on your brand recognition. If you are looking at hiring a graphic designer or creative agency to help you get your feet off the ground, look for one that can create all the elements you need, look no further than Holly B. Design.
