12 Tips for Building a Better Social Media Presence

Whether you’re a seasoned business owner, aspiring Instagram influencer, or anything in-between, social media is going to be a massive part of why your business succeeds. Creating a significant online presence isn’t as hard as it seems, but it takes time, planning, and effort. If you can invest the time to research how to do it and then actually execute, you’ll find that your online following will grow and grow as the months go by. Luckily, we’re here to help with the top twelve tips you need to know to build a better social media presence.

Brand consistency is critical, especially since you will likely have multiple social media channels. You want to make sure that you’re easily recognizable and that your brand is high-quality. Make sure that your logo is on all of your accounts and that it is well-designed. Upload high-quality, similarly-designed photos. This doesn’t mean that you should post ten pictures of the same table if you’re selling furniture, but that they should be edited using a consistent coloring theme or filter, and that they should be good photos. Ensure you have a consistent brand image across all social media platforms, always.

Hopefully, you already know that not everyone is your target audience. Creating social media content for everyone in the world is much harder and less effective than for a specifically tailored audience. Dig deep when identifying your target audience. For example, if you’re selling baby clothes, think about what demographic of mothers you’d like to target — first-time mothers, mothers in their twenties, stay-at-home moms, etc. Curate your content specifically for your business’ target audience.

A huge mistake a lot of businesses make is only creating and sharing content about their own business. Yes, you should definitely be doing that, but expand your horizon and create and share relevant industry content, too. Not everything you share should be about your business. In fact, if you are just getting started, most people probably aren’t too sold on your business yet. Writing and posting industry-specific content paired with content about your offerings is a great way to jump-start your social media presence and build a following. Even if you are already established, you should still continue to do this, as it is a great way to get content read and shared, therefore bringing traffic to you and your business.

A lot of social media platforms offer users data and analytics. Our recommendation? Use them. Often. Data can tell you what you don’t know about your audience and your posts. You may think that a certain post is doing well because it got a lot of likes when in reality, a different post with fewer likes generated more clicks to your website. Utilizing data, such as Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics is a crucial way to grow and scale your business, and it is worth the money. If you don’t know how to optimize the data correctly, consider hiring a marketing firm who can review and analyze the information, then recommend and implement strategies accordingly.

A top social media presence involves regularly-posted content. But if you are working across multiple social media platforms, it can become really time-consuming to post regularly, especially if social media is not your full-time job. Utilize platforms such as Later and Hootsuite to schedule out your posts. You can create a content calendar once a month (or at whatever cadence you choose), schedule your posts, and sit back and let the apps do the work for you.

Post regularly across all social media channels and coordinate your posts. This does not mean that you should copy-and-paste everything you post on Instagram, then post it on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Each website requires specialized posts, and you should optimize your posts according to expert guidelines on what works best for each site. Do some research or hire a firm to create your posts, then post and cross-promote across all of your social media channels.

Paying for advertisements, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads, is a great way to generate traffic to your site. These companies have more data than you could imagine — data that is not and will never be available to you. You can pay them to post ads for your business, utilizing the consumer data they have collected. You don’t need to shell out thousands of dollars every month, but definitely consider using paid advertising to build your social media presence.

Your followers want to know that you’re a person, not a robot! People like nice, friendly people, so make sure that you’re showing that on your platform. Respond to your followers’ comments and engage with them as often as possible. You don’t have to go through and reply to everyone, but try to spend an hour a week responding to comments. Word-of-mouth is a great way for your business to spread, and one way to achieve that is to find champions in your followers by creating personal relationships with them.

Optimize all of your social media accounts. While this can include posting SEO content, it goes beyond that — and is much easier. Optimizing social media ensures that your brand is strong, and information is clear and available. This can mean inputting your full business information on Facebook or filling out your profile in its entirety on Instagram. Do that basic step, then work on optimizing your social media for imagery, keywords, linking, etc. Again, if you don’t know how to do this best, hire someone who does.

Visual imagery is an integral way to better your social media presence. While it can be easy to throw a quote on Facebook or post a text-only update on Linkedin, graphics, and visual aids will increase your engagement significantly. In fact, Facebook found that live videos get six times the engagement than any other content. Visuals can vary and include live videos, quotes in a photo instead of a caption, infographics, and more. Ensure that your visuals are all high-quality and hire a designer if you cannot create them well yourself.

While you should be scheduling out your social media posts, this doesn’t mean you can go on autopilot and leave your social media be. Keep up on current trends and post accordingly. If everyone is talking about a new Netflix documentary, consider throwing in your opinion, too. Trends are called trends for a reason. Stay up-to-date on what’s going on in the present and post about them; make sure you’re not too late to the game that it seems outdated.

Nobody wants to be sold to all of the time. Chances are, your followers already know that you are a business selling something, and you don’t need to remind them in every post. Curate content that they care about, and that doesn’t make them feel like they’re being sold to 24/7. Post things that are of value to them get their buy-in, then you can sell to them.

Building a better social media presence doesn’t have to be crazy-complicated. Follow these 12 easy tips and your social media will be top-notch in no time. Good luck!