What Makes A Great Social Media Strategy For Businesses?

What Makes A Great Social Media Strategy For Businesses?

When you start up a new business, it can feel like there’s far too much to remember and that you’ll never get on top of everything you need to do in order to put things into motion.

There’s your business plan, of course, as well as the legal side of things, which can often provide numerous headaches. Oh, and you’d better make sure your sourcing pipeline is solid, as well as your customer support division and endless other considerations.

Of course, everything you do when you’re in the process of starting a new business is critical, and nowhere is that more true than in the world of social media strategy. 

Every great business needs a social media strategy in place in order to succeed, but knowing exactly how to put such a plan into practice is another thing entirely. Here are some of the things that make a great business social media strategy!

 

Diversifying platforms

Pouring all of your social media resources into one single platform is never a good idea. You need to make sure that you’re signing up to everything you possibly can and creating a holistic posting strategy that works across all of these platforms.

Amassing followers and likes on these platforms can be difficult; apps like TikTok, for instance, are notoriously difficult to break into. If you’re looking for a way to build a presence without having to sweat it out, then try this out and you won’t regret it!

 

Using a single voice

It’s not usually a good idea to allow multiple people to manage your social media accounts, although, of course, you may reach the point when this is an inevitability due to the size of your business.

If a single person acts as your social media manager, it means that all of your social media communications will use a similar register, and it will also have the added benefit of that person understanding your brand identity thoroughly, meaning they’re less likely to say something off-message.

 

Posting to a schedule

Setting up a social media schedule can alleviate a lot of the pain and annoyance of using lots of different social media platforms, and there are plenty of services out there that will unify all of the different platforms so you can do just that.

You should, of course, be sure to tailor the content you’re posting to each platform to the extent that you can; for instance, it’s not possible to post still images to TikTok, and posting text is possible on Twitter but not technically on Instagram. Making sure content is specific to each platform will help you to appear savvy and in control.

 

Using social media for customer support as well

Depending on the size of your business, it may actually be a good idea to set up a specific social media profile that deals with support or customer service. This will give customers and clients a chance to discuss things with you directly.

Having your customer support presence cross over onto social media will also give the impression that your company is friendly and approachable, which could help to defuse some of the more potentially problematic encounters that you may have if there’s an issue with one of your products or services. Speaking of which…

 

Defusing controversies with honesty

Sometimes, businesses run into social media controversies. It happens; perhaps a social media manager says something that’s a little too off-colour, or an unfortunate tweet is sent that capitalises on current events in an unacceptable manner.

Whatever happens during the course of your business’ interactions with social media, it’s important to jump on the issue immediately and to be as honest as possible in defusing the problem. Don’t try to lie or obfuscate your way out of it, and most importantly, make sure that any apology you offer is genuine rather than a “non-apology”.

 

Being an early adopter

The earlier you jump on new and unproven social networks, the more you can establish a solid base for yourself before the platform potentially becomes overrun and it becomes a lot more difficult to stand out in the crowd.

Of course, not every social media platform is going to be a hit, but if your social media manager is worth their salt, they’ll be able to identify some of the up-and-coming apps that it might be important to establish a presence on. Whenever you see an app climbing in the charts and getting buzz from the media, that’s a good sign that it’s time to sign up.

 

Being funny, but not trying too hard

When you’re a business or a brand, social media can sometimes seem like an insurmountable problem. If you’re too focused on memes and casual interactions, it seems like you’re trying too hard, but if you stay away from that kind of content, you’re boring.

The fact is that striking the perfect balance between these two extremes is exactly what you should be trying to do as a business owner on social media. Be funny, and don’t be afraid to let your fun side show, but don’t forget that you are posting as a brand, and if you come across as too friendly, you might alienate your audience through inauthenticity.

 

Not over-promoting

This is more of a “do not” than a “do”, but one of the worst things you can do as a brand is to over-promote your products. Your social media should be a mixture of promotion and interaction with your audience.

It’s okay to draw people’s attention to a product or service that you’ve recently released, or to remind people of it if you haven’t done so in a while, but constantly tweeting about the same thing will make you look like a corporate robot account rather than an organisation of real human beings.