Social media is an interesting phenomenon. It’s been around for decades now, which has been more than enough time for businesses to move their marketing operations onto various platforms for the purposes of promotion and customer engagement. It’s worked, with some fabulous success stories of guerrilla marketing booms and customer engagement hits. Yet there’s still a disconnect for most companies on social media – between their staid, lightly boring online personas and the fun, vibrant personalities that usually occupy social media. Here’s how to change that, perfecting your social media activity for the future.
Deciding on Tone
Your company will have a brand identity that you worked on in the early days of your set-up. You’ll have decided whether you see yourselves as the “hero” or the “sage” – or whether you’re a youthful and vibrant brand, or whether your customers would prefer you to be more grown-up, serious, and professional. his approach will have filtered through to your social media pages – despite the fact that your social media presence is your chance to actually show your firm in a different light – with your hair down and a cocktail in your hand. What’s key here is that social media is informal: make your tone less formal to acquire more interest in your pages.
Engagement
The social media posts from companies that always do well in the mainstream media and among a large number of users are those that engage in contemporary issues. If, for instance, a company is floundering in the news cycle, it’s worth jumping on the bandwagon with a comment about their predicament. This should usually be tongue-in-cheek or amusing in some way to attract the most attention from users. Keep your ear to the ground in order to jump on the latest craze or trend as quickly as you can – offering you a chance to perfect your vitality.
Consistency
Though your tone of voice may be different on social media from how you’d communicate via traditional marketing techniques, that’s not to say that you should fire from the hip when you’re speaking on social media. You’ll still need a guide or a rule to follow in terms of what you should say and what you shouldn’t. Here, companies like SOCi can be useful, centralizing your social media output and helping you coordinate different posts across different platforms, regions, and timezones. It’s a smart way for larger firms to manage their social media output.
Risks
All this said, the most successful firms on social media tend to take risks. They know that if they simply share photos from their stores or stories from their CEO, they’re barely going to get a nibble in terms of likes, shares, comments, retweets, and follows. What online consumers are really looking for is something different – something worth their time as they’re scrolling online. Trying different things comes with an element of risk. But you should try it: risk might just place you in the driver’s seat with consumers you’re looking to impress online.
Perfect your social media approach as a business with the tips outlined above.