4 Updates You Need to Make for Your Businesses Social Media

1. Understand your audience. 

This point should not be overlooked, Social media accounts for multiple platforms, forums and websites which all individually have their pros and cons for your business and what you're trying to sell. Billions of users engage and interact across these platforms which allows it to be a perfect place to market your products. 

Managing multiple social media platforms for even a large company can be very difficult and overwhelming with delicate resources. Therefore, attempt to focus on only the most important platforms that allow your business to interact with your target audience. Understanding your industry and specific nature of your business will have a big impact on where you will find your audience for example, visually attractive, high-quality goods should be mainly focused on Instagram and Pinterest as these are image sharing services. If word of mouth is essential for your business (which it is for most brands) then twitter and facebook are probably right for you as they allow photos and statuses to be easily shared or retweeted. Lastly for a more professional audience then linked in is probably better for you. 

Never limit yourself to one social media platform however figuring out which platform you receive the most attention is very important. You will be able to maximise your efficiency and results. 

Finally, the use of hashtags expands your social media to wider audiences, customers and a loyal following base. But selecting the best hashtags is the most important. 

Firstly, you need to experiment for yourself and see which hashtags are searched for the most, these are the trending hashtags and as long as they’ve got some kind of link to your product it should work and gradually increase your social media reach. Fashion brands have common links whether your selling mens urban clothing or shoes for women . E.g. #fashion, #womensclothing #style #beauty #photography #blogger #model. Try and put as many as you can and the ones that suit you the most for most effective results.

2. Communication. 

When using social media, instead of talking at your audience, you need to communicate with your audience, you need to engage with your audience in order to get customers to talk about you. Without communicating with your audience, it removes all personal engagement with the customers and you may as well be a machine as all you do is talk at the audience. 

Time is essential, when businesses respond directly and quickly to complaints or compliments via social media through comments or private message, customers love it and it makes people feel reassured when then purchase your product. Just dedicate a few more resources and time towards it. Often negative comments can sometimes be 

A blessing in disguise as you have a full opportunity to present your good customer service. However there are particular tips to keep in mind when dealing with a negative review:

• Timing, your customer will expect a fast response, this is a window of opportunity to show how good your customer service is.

• Never ignore it.

• No matter how irritating or rude the review may be, always remain professional, take full responsibility for the error and never get defensive. Uses phrases like “I'm so sorry to hear that”, “i'm sure we will solve this”.

• Be authentic and personal and tactfully portray a positive image of your brand. 

• Never get drawn into an online battle, take it away from the public eye. 

Other than that when dealing with customers, remain positive with a happy-to-help attitude and Always remain professional. 

Lastly, you always need to be active, it may seem obvious however very few things move faster than social media. Ergo, you need to ensure you are posting frequently and consistently in order to gain a loyal following. Otherwise, if your social media posting becomes lax, you can lose followers quickly and are less likely to attract new ones. Social media marketing is not a part-time commitment, it can often have worse effects on the business. 

3. Quality. 

The quality of your posts is extremely important on social media.

On visual platforms such as instagram, high quality images are necessary to gain followers and likes. Think about how your going to take a picture and colour-coordinate throughout your account so it looks aesthetically pleasing, pick a theme and stick to it. Add user generated content throughout which could include anything from colourful quotes or realistic designs; for clothing this could be images of your clothing being used in realistic situations or on realistic body types. 

If your planning on using video marketing, the initial quality of your video also needs to be effective, the most watched videos over various platforms are between 30s-90s so attempt to keep them short and straight to the point. Consequently, in order to make it watchable, use good lighting, good sound quality and camera stability are so important.

On other platforms such as facebook and twitter, you need to be so careful as posts can quickly be manipulated and an innocent post may seem to be controversial and small mistakes will be shared and pointed out very quickly. 

Before your posts are released to the public eye you need to ensure that you are appealing to a diverse nature of people, you need to make sure your post is written correctly with all the correct grammar and punctuation and no mistakes, avoid any phrases that may seem controversial and avoid swearing. Even some of the largest businesses make these mistakes and there's an opportunity to lose a huge following because of it. 

Attempt to cater your posts to your audience, make them personal and diverse. For example if you’re promoting clothing, ensure that it is presented on a variety of people to receive the best response from the public. 

Success is presented through passion, if your audience feels you are passionate about what your doing then your more likely to create better and more memorable content generating a loyal following base. You really need to have the drive to succeed and be interested in every single post you are writing about, give your audience a background story “I’ve been waiting six months to release this and I am so excited” or “we have spent two years creating this” it allows the customer to feel personally connected to your brand. 

A final way to enhance personal connections is through competitions, giving away a product for free is great for customers to feel connected to your brand, however you need to ensure it is carried out correctly, the quality of the product your giving away needs to be perfect and you need to ensure you keep everyone updated on the countdown and winner of your competition. It’s also a great way to gain an increase in followers.

4. New content. 

People will generally get bored of your page if there is similar content being posted all the time. So put extra time into new product launches and attempt to bring lots of attention onto this. Don't shy away from paid advertisement as this can be a great way to show off new content. 

Whether your selling brand such as be yourself clothing or wallpaper for kitchens, paid advertisement can really enhance your following and reach wider and targeted audiences. 

Now on most platforms, there are opportunities for audiences to interact with your posts via voting, asking questions and taking quizzes. This does not only allow them to interact with your brand, but you can also find out what the public want and so you can cater your future posts to what they want. For example as a makeup artist you could ask whether they want to see a full glam look or a pride look. You can also take suggestions so you can come up with some original ideas for what the customers want to see. 

Lastly, you could collaborate with insta-famous influencers in order to release new combined ranges and increase your following base. For example EmRata and Nasty Gal clothing or Pete Wicks and Deliveroo.