Social media is a great way to grow your business and boost traffic to your website but not all social media sites work for every business. When selecting the right social media sites your business should sign up for, it’s important to have a few things in mind.
Jessica Watson, MyCity4Her Graphic Design Enterprise Expert and creator of JWatson Creative, shares a few tips on the big question she receives a lot from business owners: “What social media accounts should I sign up for?”
“The answer is never “all of them,” in fact, more often than not, we recommend signing up for 2 accounts (maybe 3 tops),” Jessica says. She says she recommends this for the following three reasons:
TIME: Any social media account is going to require time and thought. If you don’t have a person or a firm solely dedicated to providing consistent updates, strategy, and tools for measuring effectiveness, realistically you won’t have time to tend to multiple accounts.
CUSTOMERS: Some of your clients/customers/end-users aren’t active on all of the social media accounts. So if you’re trying to sign up for all of them just for kicks, you’re missing your mark. Some up front research or simple investigating on where your clients spend their time is important.
STRATEGY: Having a solid plan for executing your social media is like having fuel for your car. Without it, you’re not going anywhere, and you’re not going to see the results you’re looking for. As many of us know from blogging and any experience with doing updates, it takes time to determine what your messaging is and the best way to send it out. There are so many factors that come into play (how often to post, what content to share, etc).
“We always recommend hiring a professional to help with your social media plan of action” Watson continues. “Even a couple hours of a consultant’s time to provide insight would put you further down the road than having a completely blank slate.”
If you are venturing out solo for social media, Jessica’s best advice would be:
- Figure out who your customers are and where they spend their time.
- Determine your GOALS of what you want to have happen as a result of your social media efforts.
- Come up with a strategy for the content you’ll be posting online.
- Having valuable content is key. If you want genuine followers, have something genuine (useful, fun, informative, etc) to say.
- Plan your content out ahead and use an application such as HootSuite to pre-time your posts so you’re not always attached to your computer.
- Be sure to still have some live quality time of engaging with those who are connected to you.