Social Media Tips for Businesses

Christina Farmer, Communications Coordinator, Provident Bank

While social media is one of the best ways to connect with customers and potential customers, it could be a bit overwhelming to stay active, gain followers, and commit the time to make your page noticeable. While social media should not be expensive for your small business, it could be time consuming. These tips can help you reach new markets in a timely manner. Use these tips to make sure your social media pages are effective and noticeable to clients.

Develop a social media timeline: You don’t want to push out a ton of information at once to your followers. This could be a bit overwhelming and your audience may have a hard time keeping up with your updates. Create a timeline of how and when you want to push out important information about your business.

Know your target audience: By understanding your target market, you can grasp a greater idea of what they are like, what they are interested in, and what they dislike. Then, you’ll be able to reach people just like them. Social media analytics are offered on numerous social media platforms - Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn all have analytics pages. It’s important to understand the analytics for your social pages to further know where your strengths and weaknesses are. There are tons of tools on these platforms to help you understand the analytics of your business. Be sure to check them out!

Know what platforms are best for you and your business: It is important to understand the difference between LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. There are some platforms, like Twitter, where not a lot of words are needed to get your point across, while LinkedIn is used for more of a “making connections” basis. Be aware of who the audiences are on each platform. If you are looking to reach millennials, you may want to focus on Instagram rather than Facebook. Continue to research all of the platforms as they are always evolving and changing.

Build a relationship with your followers. Have fun with social media. Create a contest or giveaway for more interaction. Be sure to research the rules for contests and giveaways before launching one. The last thing you’d want is to launch a contest and then have Facebook delete it for not following the rules. Building a relationship with your following will allow customers to build trust with your business. Social media is supposed to be fun and interactive. Be sure to always answer any comments or messages from followers (positive or negative ones) and address any concerns they may have. This will show you truly care about the business relationship they have with you.

Social media could be a bit overwhelming. There are many tools and resources out there to guide you along the way so you can make the most out of these platforms for your business. Be sure to do your research because the best thing about social media is it’s free! (most of the time)