How can you grow your social media business? Today from UIE we give you 5 simple steps to get your business off the ground right now.
It is proven that through social networks it is possible, not only to publicize your business activity, but to attract potential customers, know their interests, solve their doubts and problems, improve their shopping experience or monitor trends in the sector.
For these reasons, if you have a business and have not yet implemented a social media strategy, this post is for you!
1. Do your research before you start
Although it is possible to be present in all social networks, unfortunately, maintaining an adequate and intense activity in each of them will consume time and energy.
Unless you hire a network specialist (Community Manager), you will have to dedicate the attention they deserve yourself. If you are starting out and your intention is to grow your business in social networks, it is likely that you still do not have enough resources and you have to get the maximum result by investing as little time as possible.
Thus, the first tasks are to have clearly defined objectives and to have a strategy to achieve them.
However, to establish realistic and appropriate objectives, it is necessary that you know your activity, your sector, your target audience and your competition well. That is, it is important that you have already created a business plan.
A good analysis of these 4 elements will save you a lot of time and effort later. Each of your next steps will be taken thinking about an audience you know and that moves in a context you know.
2. Define social objectives
Once you know who your target audience is and the types of campaigns your competition runs, you’re ready to discern what actions you need to take to optimize your social media presence.
In this aspect we must distinguish between two types of objectives, some general ones that we can define as goals and specific objectives in social networks.
For example, maybe you’ve just started your activity and want to run a visibility and branding campaign. This goal is imprecise, but it can be considered as the goal that will mark your starting point.
As a result, you must decide the social objectives, characterized by being more specific and measurable. For example, “I have to increase my followers by 20% in a quarter”.
It is worth mentioning at this point that the objectives must have a certain degree of flexibility, you may have to adjust them as you test and gain experience in social networks. Try to always have a plus of ambition, but be realistic.
3. Design the strategy and plan the actions
It is clear that the objectives are not met alone, you have to take action. But, before that, it considers that actions cannot be isolated; They have to be coordinated and respond to an overall strategy.
This is when you really wonder how you’re going to grow your social media business. You have to decide aspects such as which platforms you are going to be present on.
Each of the social networks has its own characteristics. For example, LinkedIn is focused on the professional field, while Twitter is a fast, short text network (microblogging) and asymmetric (you do not need the consent of the other person to follow it).
Having a profile in networks and not maintaining it generates a bad image of your brand. In this way, one of the first questions you should ask yourself is: In which networks is my target audience?
In the same way, you have to decide the general communication policies, the content plan, the image you want to show of your business, the tools to use, the budget and resources you have, etc.
Ideally, you should write all these points in one document. You can even define the hashtags for a specific campaign (although this would already be considered as a “tactical plan” and not as the general social media strategy).
4. Listen, communicate, interact
Social media is nothing more than one type of communication. Technology is in the background, the main thing is communication between people and companies.
In this sense, it is useless to design a good strategy and carefully plan tactical actions if you are not in contact with your audience.
Communication also involves conversing with your followers, who in turn represent your current or potential customers. Conversation also involves listening.
Moreover, if you keep an active listening to what users say (both yours and those of the competition) you will have a better knowledge of the publications you should make, the topics that interest them, their doubts and anticipate the problems they have in the sales process.
If you answer the questions they ask you or simply energize conversations and debates, you will indirectly achieve greater engagement (consumer engagement with your brand).
5. Measure results and make necessary adjustments
The last step that will help you grow your social media business is focused on tracking your actions to determine what is working and what you can improve.
There are network analysis tools that allow you to monitor all the appropriate information. All you need to do is decide which key indicators (KPIs) you need to pay attention to to determine if you’re getting closer to the goal and the adjustments you can make if not.
Ideally, you should define the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you will use to measure the results of your campaigns when defining the objectives and social media strategy.
By performing this last step, you ensure that your actions are constantly optimized and you are taking steps in the right direction. If something is not monitored, it cannot be improved.
