How to promote your business on social media
by Yellow
You’ve set up your business and you’re finally starting to see the fruit of all those sleepless nights. It’s now time to put your business out there and tell the world about what you’re doing. Ok, maybe not the entire world! All you really need is to get the message across to the people who matter - your audience.
So, how do you go about promoting your business on social media? Here are the key steps you need to follow to ensure you get your message out there - on the right platforms and to the right people.
Choose the right platform
The very first step is to figure out where your audience spends their time - and be present on that platform. In general, Facebook and Instagram are amongst the most common social media platforms used by the Maltese public with LinkedIn being the favourite amongst the business community. So if for example, you are a B2B brand, you want to ensure you’re present on LinkedIn.
In an ideal world you are present on multiple platforms if they are relevant to your business. This is where you need to be honest about how much time and manpower you can dedicate to handling social media accounts. It’s better to pick one and do it well.
Bonus tip: Social media platforms are not a replacement for an updated website. Your website is the “home” of your brand, where you have complete control over the message you deliver and the story you tell. Social media will help direct people to your website and work to support that message.
Fill out your profile
Once you’ve decided on the social media platform/s, you want to ensure that you use that platform to the max to reap all the benefits. Profiles rank highly in search engine results when people search for your name, so you want to ensure all your details are correct and updated. Think of it this way - the profile will often be the first encounter that someone has with your brand - and you want to give a good first impression.
Plan your content
Now that you’re on social media, you need to ensure you have something interesting and relevant to tell your audience. This is the toughest part of the job. Apart from planning what you say in your posts, you need to devise a content marketing plan that will help you keep up the momentum.
Dedicating a few days to coming up with a sustainable content plan will ensure you’re not scrambling to create last-minute posts that end up being low in quality. If you plan on being present on multiple channels, ensure that they are all covered in your content calendar.
Bonus tip: Assign one person to monitor the implementation of your content calendar. If no one takes ownership, chances are everyone will assume someone else is handling it - and no one will.
Different network, different approach
As tempting as it may be, it is not advisable to use the same copy for every network. Why? The audiences are different and your messages need to be tailored to your audience, remember? Generally speaking, you should be fine with using the same photos or videos, but it will pay you to tweak the words to better suit the platform you’re using.
Have a checklist
Social media is, by definition, a social process. So once your posts are out there people are going to be engaging, commenting and asking questions. In other words, publishing a post is not the end of the process. There’s more to do and follow up on.
By creating a checklist, which can be included in your calendar, you will ensure that you tick all the right boxes. You may, for example, have daily tasks on your checklist that include replying to social media messages. You could also have tasks that are weekly, like revising analytics and encouraging sharing amongst employees. More complex exercises, like auditing your strategy, could be monthly tasks. However you plan it, just make sure you stick to the plan.
Create target ads
Gone are the days when people published posts and let things happen organically. Organic reach does not have the reach it once had. More and more businesses are opting for paid advertising to push their posts towards the right eyeballs. Social media advertising allows you to target audiences on specific platforms through their demographics. If done right, this works really well.
The first step is to ensure you have a clear campaign objective that can include increasing traffic, upping brand visibility, increasing engagement, lead generation or increasing sales. You also need to decide on your advertising strategy - how “promotional” will your content be - as well as matters such as budgets.
Get discovered on Yellow
In order to get the full online experience as a business based in the Maltese islands, you ought to be visibly prominent on the Yellow website. With thousands using the site for their daily consumer needs, being listed on Yellow can help your business immediately gain a larger digital audience, whilst attracting more potential customers to the products or services that you have to offer.
Social media is a complex topic that’s always evolving. Reach out for help by contacting any of the social media marketing experts and marketing consultants listed on Yellow.
Discover social. Discover local. Visit www.yellow.com.mt!