Social Media 101
It seems that everyone is on social media nowadays. It is virtually unavoidable no matter your business type. However, for many business owners, the world of social media can be a bit confusing. You may think that they are all the same or that one strategy will cover all of your platforms, but that just isn't going to work well. Each of the platforms has its own special set of rules or norms that you should follow to keep your business from looking out of touch.
Your Message
Creating a social media post is not one size fits all for your platforms, but your message can be. You just need to change up the message to suit where you are posting it. Take the famous "donut analogy" for example. Twitter is where you tell the world "I am eating a donut." Facebook is where you say, "I like to eat donuts," and Instagram is where you say "here is a picture of my donut." All posts are about the donut, but the delivery suits the platform.
Billions of people use Facebook each month for personal reasons and for business reasons. You can share photos and make status updates on a daily basis, and it can be a great platform for directing others to your business website. They key to getting a lot of eyes on your posts is engagement. Each like or comment on a post will get it to show up in more timelines, ultimately opening your business up to new customers.
This is a fast-moving platform. In fact, there are about 6,000 tweets sent per second! On this platform, you need to be succinct and enticing. Users are moving through the timeline at a rapid pace, and your post needs to stand out in a way that gets people to take the extra second to read it and perhaps click that like button. Again, the focus will be on engagement. People want conversations on Twitter, they don't want brands simply shouting at them.
Instagram is a visual platform. So that means you need to be a crack-photographer, have super witty or interesting captions, and properly use your hashtags. Again, engagement is going to be key (noticing a trend here?) You will want to make sure that you don't overuse your hashtags or spam your photos. Plus, you want to engage with your most used hashtags by liking and commenting on photos.
YouTube
Going back to the "donut analogy," YouTube is where you show your audience "how you eat a donut." Videos often spark more engagement than simple text-only posts, but the quality is going to be very important when making your videos. There needs to be value or you won't keep people's attention.
Social media is complex, but that doesn't mean you have to figure things out all on your own! SOAP Media offers social media management services, and we can help you develop and implement your marketing strategies across all of your platforms.