Make Your Social Media Presence Shine in 2019
November 26, 2018
Social media has become an incredibly important tool for any business owner, big or small. With more than 335 million Twitter users, over 200-million Pinterest posters, and more than a billion Instagram followers, chances are your online presence is going to affect your business big-time.
In 2019, companies will be seeing some more algorithm changes from Google, Facebook, and the like regarding search engine rankings, advertisements, and more. Business owners will also be seeing some changes in the way many social media marketing campaigns are being run.
2019 is a fresh new shiny year, and that opens the doors to unique ideas, novel concepts, and a whole new way to portray your products, services and brand online. Social media isn’t just a way to bring internet users to your website for added hits and increased traffic, it’s also a way to improve sales and bring consumers to your brick and mortar or ecommerce business. Social media is a gateway to many new brands and services, and if you want to be one of the stops on this consumer journey, there are a few things you might want to consider upgrading in the new year.
Don’t Be Afraid to Use Tools and Apps: Believe it or not, there are hundreds of online tools and apps available to help you better manage your social media presence. One of the best ways you can use these tools to your advantage is by automating some of your posting processes. Rather than logging into every account to post the same message, you can use apps to post in one location and it will automatically populate everywhere else.
There are also scheduling tools, which let you input the information or link you want to share, and it will be added to your social media accounts on the date you specify. Going on vacation and can’t post for three weeks? These tools will post for you; all you need to do is provide the content and the date.
Finally, there are also automated tools for interacting with your customers. When you’re out of the office, there’s nothing more annoying for a consumer than asking a question only to find out they have to wait the entire weekend to learn the answer. If it’s something simple, which could be covered by a FAQ type of answer, you can pre-program this into your messaging app to share with consumers when they type certain keywords into the messenger. Automated messaging systems work great for a variety of reasons, but the main one is creating an ongoing presence on your website or social media profile.
Make Social Media Easy to Access: You might get the random add on Twitter or Facebook without any sort of prompting, but this isn’t the best way to maintain a social media presence online. If you want your customers to follow you and see what you have to say on Instagram or Facebook, you must tell them about your accounts. The best place to do this is your official website. Leaving links to your social media accounts and asking consumers to follow you and add you online are a great way to build an online presence. You can also add widgets or feed blurbs from your social media directly on the sidebar of your website. These will populate and update in real time, allowing customers to see what you’re saying and posting on Twitter without actually logging into an account.
Some companies never bother to promote social media, and this is a big mistake. It could lead to the avoidance of many customers who would have otherwise been checking out your online promotions and social media campaigns but are unable to see them.
Follow Popular Accounts: It’s not enough to be consistently posting and building your online presence through standard content, you also need to know what’s popular. How can you stay on top of the latest trends? Follow popular accounts and see what’s new, which hashtags are used most, what social media users are saying, sharing and viewing most. This will give you ideas to incorporate into your own posts and provide insight on what the masses want to see and read.
Of course, your followers may not all like the same YouTuber or Insta-celebrity, but you can still use this research to build a better online brand and make your own content, viral-worthy.
Images, Videos, and Infographics: Yes, the words you write matter in social media, but what’s really drawing the crowds of social butterflies now is aesthetics, images and videos. There’s a reason Instagram is so popular with modern youth, you can see, rather than read, about your friends and family and the world. You can look at what a celebrity did today, rather than look for news about it online. You can share what you had for breakfast with your husband overseas, rather than just type out, “jam and toast, you?”
This is the time of visual graphics, and when you use these to pad your social media posts, you’ll see a huge difference in the number of likes, shares, and comments. Show your followers who you are rather than just tell them. Include photos of products, short video clips of a day at the office, and infographics on ways to use your latest service to streamline their busy lives.
Whichever social media marketing changes you choose to make for 2019, be thoughtful and bold. It’s a brand new year and it could be a brand new you.