We all do it. We surf Facebook mindlessly to see who is posting about life milestones, apply multiple filters to our photos before we add them to Instagram in the hope of receiving optimal likes, and jump onto Twitter to voice our disapproval of social or political changes or to make a customer complaint.
As business owners, we recognize this and know that social media is paramount in the lives of our current and prospective clients. It is one of the first marketing tools to provide a low-pressure and amiable way to get in touch with current and potential customers directly. The question to business owners is what is a good strategy to keep social media social, here are 10 easy tips for them to consider.
What you may have come to realize, though, is how much work it takes to maintain an effective social media presence. Our biggest piece of advice for you is to stick to the obvious: be social on social media.
According to We are Social Media (WeRSM), there are ten top reasons that individuals use social media.
- To stay in touch with what friends are doing
- To stay up-to-date with news and current events
- To fill up spare time
- To find funny or entertaining content
- To share opinions
- To share photos or videos with others
- Because friends are already on them
- General networking with other people
- To meet new people
- To share details of our everyday life
Guess what’s not on the list: to buy products and services.
In 2014 Facebook introduced a new algorithm so that posts that include promoted products and services will not be shown to a Facebook user unless a company pays for an ad. Facebook did this to protect users from constant promotions and advertisements in their Newsfeeds.
Our job at Tomo360 as social media managers is to bring your social media pages to life with the brand of your company by satisfying the ten motivators above. In doing so, we educate your followers about your company through what we post, the pages we like, and how we engage with them. The goal is that your followers will build a relationship with your company through organic engagement and will, therefore, be drawn toward your company and what it offers.
Your current and prospective customers are just like you; human. Humans are social beings and research proves that social media influences purchasing decisions through relationship building. Save your followers from the endless self-promotion and be social. Engage with your followers (and no, we don’t mean by setting up automatic responses), share personal insight from you and your team, and show your followers (instead of telling them) why they should get behind what you’re selling.