Social media is a powerful marketing tool which can help you build your brand, share your expertise, and connect with your customers – and it can also be harnessed with a low budget and just a little time investment. In this blog, Little Cricket’s content creator and marketing executive, Eleri Williams, highlights 10 social media tips for beginners to help you start levelling up your social strategy.
1. Create an engaging profile
Your profile page is often the first place potential clients land after seeing your content, so the page needs to be a hub that represents your brand – this means you need to fully fill out your profile. Having engaging copy in your bio that reflects your company’s mission is a sure-fire way to ensure visitors understand exactly what your company does and how it can help them. On most platforms, there’s a dedicated space for your website URL, to ensure your socials direct traffic straight to your website.
Images are also important and can act as a visual marker to recognise your brand. Make sure you’re utilising on-brand banners, icons, and social graphics so that potential customers know they’re in the right place.
2. Outline your goals
Social media seems straightforward, and it can be tempting to jump in without a plan. But the same way you prepare other parts of your marketing plan, like advertising and content strategy, it’s important to set goals and intentions before you start posting.
Do you want to build an engaged community, or simply drive traffic to your site? Are you trying to grow your brand’s visibility, or increase sales of a product or service? Understanding the answers to these questions – and more broadly what you want to achieve by using social media – can help ensure you’re prioritising the right aspects of your business, and puts you in good stead to set goals that benefit your company.
3. Plan ahead
Creating a social media calendar can seem like a daunting task, but once you’ve outlined what posts you need to create and why, pre-planning content will actually save you time. Planning ahead means you're not left scrambling at the last minute to come up with ideas whilst other deadlines are looming.
It can also help you make sure you create content that will achieve the goal you set out with. When you’re not under a time crunch, you have more leeway to involve other key players and really tailor your content to your goals and ambitions. The content is more likely to be well thought out and relevant to your audience.
Each social platform is different, so it's important to take time to create a specific strategy for every platform you're using. There are plenty of handy tools like Hootsuite, Later, and Sprout Social that can help you schedule and plan – you can even use a basic calendar outline in Excel! Regardless, having a plan in place means you will always have content, but can still be reactive and adapt your plan as necessary.
4. Be consistent
Social media can be fast paced – on Twitter you may need to be active multiple times a day. However, on Instagram and LinkedIn, you can get away with posting less frequently, as content can stick around on people’s timelines for days, or even weeks. It’s important to understand the algorithms of each site and ensure you’re posting frequently enough for your messages to have an impact, without flooding people’s feeds.
It's also vital to use a consistent tone of voice, language, and writing style that your audience will recognise. This can be tricky in larger teams where multiple people have access to your feeds, so ensure you set guidelines so that everyone understands exactly how to represent your brand.
5. Tailor your content to your audience
It’s important to keep in mind what your audience wants to see. Providing quality content to your audience can help build brand awareness and make you a reliable source of information. Writing about and sharing topics your audience are interested in means you will be top of mind when they are looking for the solution that your company can offer. And remember, think about what people see in your posts before they click ‘read more’ – is it content that’s enticing enough for your audience to click through?
Tailoring your content also means maintaining balance – make sure you’re staying varied and keeping people interested. You can post about products, what your team is getting up to, and even content that’s not about your company, as long as it’s interesting to your audience! Sharing relevant content from partners and getting involved in trending topics and popular hashtags within your niche is a great way to inform your audience and stay timely and relevant.
6. Use images and visuals
People have short attention spans, especially when they’re taking a break to scroll social media, why is why imagery is key to grab people’s attention. Social media can be a crowded space, so using pictures is a great way to stand out.
Keep your audience in mind, and select images which you know will entice them and make them want to read more. One way to ensure your visuals are more appealing is to comply with the correct size guidelines, as each timeline displays images differently. A quick Google search can save you the pain of having an image you’ve worked on for hours being unceremoniously chopped in half on the Twitter timeline.
If you’re not a graphic design maestro, don’t worry – apps like Canva are free to use and can help you create stunning, professional looking graphics whatever your skill level. It’s also a great software to use to start establishing how you want your social templates to look – this is a good place to utilise your brand colours to ensure you’re reinforcing your visual identity, creating brand awareness.
7. Interact with your audience
It’s vital to respond to likes and comments on your socials – it shows your audience that you’re present, engaged, and care about what is being said. Engagement helps you retain your follower count, boosts SEO, and with platforms like LinkedIn, it can also help you show up on a new audience’s timeline.
But it’s not just about being reactive, it’s also about following other companies, organisations, and influencers and interacting with them! If you think something is relevant to a client or someone you want to engage with, tag them. More interaction means more visibility – and it also helps you build relationships and increase your reach. However, you still need to be careful with how you interact! Don’t be too forceful or salesy too quickly (if at all), build a relationship first and ensure your followers feel they’re interacting with something genuine.
8. Repurpose existing content
Planning ahead is key and having a steady stream of content is great for your presence, however, not everything you post needs to be brand new. Repurposing and updating old content is a great strategy to ensure you get the most out of your work – and you already know your audience is interested! A single blog can become an infographic, a video, a webinar topic, or 10 social posts. Take a point you’ve made in an article and deep dive into the details – it helps reinforce your messaging. Plus, sharing old content can give your SEO a nice boost, and can also help you reach audiences you missed the first time.
9. Try different techniques
Are you posting and posting the same type of content with the same results? Why not try something new? A video post or an infographic might be just the thing to reengage your audience.
Be brave and try different post types – a picture of your team, a new piece of content you’ve created, or an interesting article that your audience might like. Experiment with posting at different times and see if your audience engage more at a certain time of day. It’s all about finding out what works for your brand!
10. Make sure you report and reflect on your posts
It’s vital to ensure you check in with your analytics, as this data can give you a deeper understanding of your audience and how they’re engaging with your content. You should quickly pick up trends that you can then use to inform your future plans. You can also see the impacts of your social efforts – is it increasing your web traffic? Leading to more conversions? Making sure you’re reporting and reflecting on the right information can help you build a more effective strategy which centres around your audience – and it can help you better understand what your customers are looking for.
Time to get started!
Social media requires a time investment, but it’s also a free marketing tool! It moves quickly, so stay on-message and try new things, but don’t dwell on things that don’t work. You can be experimental and innovative, and if it doesn’t work, tomorrow is a new day.
Remember not to expect too much too soon – don’t implement all ten tips all at once, try one or two and see what happens. As long as you’re always improving, and staying true to your brand – the followers, interaction, and engagement is sure to follow.
Get in touch to find out more about how Little Cricket can help improve your social strategy or deliver your next show-stopping social media campaign.