Building a social presence

Social following when you’re starting out. Be sure to invite friends that are interested in your business and fit your target demographic. The more closely aligned your friends are to your audience, the more likely they will engage and interact with your content.

Try offering exclusive content, promotions or discounts alongside these details. Incentives can be an effective way to encourage people to visit your social profile.

Sharing great content is an effective way to organically grow your social following. When a post resonates with a user, they are more likely to explore your profile to find out more.

Another great way to grow your social media presence is to look at the social media profiles of other relevant businesses, publications or organizations that your audience follow. Through liking and commenting on their posts, you create an opportunity for their followers to notice you. Facebook Groups

How to define your target audience

Age: What age group will your audience most likely be?

Top tip: Millennials (20 – 30-year-olds) will often interact with businesses through social media in a very different way to their parents (40 – 50-year-olds). Millennials are likely to be more active throughout the day on their smartphone, whereas their parents may only access social media once or twice a week and may prefer to use their desktop computer.

Gender: Are they mostly men or women or is there an equal split?

Men and women often have different tastes and preferences, meaning a focus on one over the other could be useful to establish early on.

Location: Does your business rely on customers coming into your store or can they make purchases online? If you rely heavily on them coming to you, make sure you adapt your social media activity to those who are local to you.

For example: It is no use advertising your beauty store in Mumbai to an audience in Bangalore. They are unlikely to visit if it’s too far away!

Language: Which language(s) do they speak?

To improve your reach and engage more customers in a multilingual area, translate your content into the most widely used languages. Think about which language(s) your audience speak and tailor your content to them. While some social channels automatically translate – not all can. To be safe, check twice before posting.

Occupation and income: Are your customers mostly university students, housewives or busy working professionals? You can learn a lot about your audience’s buying behavior by looking at their occupation and income.

Top tip: Working professionals are known to access social media during their commute to and from work. To capture their attention, try to post during the morning or evening.

Marital or family status: Are your customers mostly married? Do they have children, and if so, what age?

Understanding this may reveal some interesting insights into what really moves your audience to take action.

on Twitter. He finds he gets more followers and more dads start bringing their sons with them to have a haircut together.

Keywords :

·         Demographics will help to ensure you target the right type of people (age, gender, location)

·         Psychographics will help to ensure you deliver the right type of content, using the right channels (based on their needs, interests and lifestyle)

Understanding your target audience

Businesses that clearly define their target audience are able to share more meaningful and relevant content with the right people, at the right time. This helps you build a strong connection with potential customers who are likely to think of your business the next time they need the product or service you offer.

Placing your target audience at the core of your decision-making process can inform many elements of your social media marketing strategy, such as:

·       The type of content you post (images, videos and blogs)

·       The way you highlight your business’s unique identity

·       The way you share information about your products and services

·       The best time of day to post

·       The best channels to post on

Keywords

·       A target audience is a group of people most likely to be interested in your product or service.

·       your social media activity: what content to post, when to post it and where to post it

Creating a great business profile

Setup your business profile

Your business’s social profile is the face of your business on social media. It is your digital storefront in the online marketplace. You can create a profile to reflect the nature and personality of your business. Important information to add includes your contact details, address, opening times (if relevant) and an overview of your products and services. On Facebook, a business profile is called a Page.

Why Need Social profile ?

A social profile is a great way to help fulfill your business goals. This could include: growing your customer base, building better customer relationships, promoting your business and growing revenue.

Choose a username

Your username can be the name of your business, or any other unique name related to your products or services.

images to make your profile visually engaging

To create an effective default picture, recommend uploading your business logo or an image that is relevant to your business. This will help you stand out on social media, making you recognizable to both new and existing customers.

Keep your profile up-to-date

It’s important to keep the visual content on your profile up-to-date, too. The images you use show some of your business’s unique selling points and personality. Change these as often as required to reflect your best products or some of the great work you’re doing.

Explore the different social marketing channels

Facebook

To give businesses the power to build community. A Facebook Page can help you connect with people and grow your business.

Strengths

•          It is an active community of people and businesses where users can go to discover new exciting products and services
•          It offers you the opportunity to share information about your business
•          You can use Facebook Messenger to communicate directly with people, using the power of conversation to call on your audience to take action
•          It is a channel which suits many types of content: short and long form text, images and live and pre-prepared videos

Instagram

 A photo-sharing service that lets users share pictures and videos. The Stories feature allows users to upload photos and videos, which expire after 24 hours.

Strengths

•          It is highly visual and popular with people seeking inspiration
•          It allows you to share multiple photos and videos together in a slideshow format called “your story”
•          It supports imagery, video and live video

WhatsApp

 An alternative to SMS texting. WhatsApp supports sending and receiving a variety of media: text, photos, videos, documents, locations, as well as voice and video calls.

Strengths

•          It is hyper-personalized. It offers direct conversations with your customers and others who may be interested in your business.
•          It supports a variety of media, from documents and long-form text to SMS messaging updates, geo-location, photos, voice and video calls
•          It’s used for private conversations. An encrypted messaging service, one-to-one and larger group chats are not publicly visible.

Twitter

Self-described as “what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now” – it is an online news and social networking site that lets user share and interact via posts that are 280 characters or less.

Strengths

•          It is a short text based channel that also support images and video
•          Use Twitter to listen to the relevant conversations that are happening and jump in where you can add value
•          People often talk about the products they use on Twitter, so it’s a natural place to provide customer services

YouTube

 YouTube is a video sharing social network. It allows users to upload, view, rate, share and comment on videos – and subscribe to channels.

Strengths

•          It is a video-based channel that can captivate your audience by effectively showcasing your business’s products and services
•          Reach people searching for videos very similar to what your business offers, right when they’re searching
•          It supports pre-recorded and live-streamed video content

LinkedIn

The world’s largest business network, it connects global professionals and aims to help them be more productive and successful.

Strengths

•          It hosts short- or long-form text, images and video
•          Build and maintain your professional network and find other professionals in the same industry using groups
•          Discover company and industry updates on topics ranging from announcements to product releases