In this day and age, one of the most cost-effective ways to build your brand online is with social media.

While it requires time and effort to plan and post/schedule content, it’s a sound way to establish your presence.

But it’s no secret that it can feel a little disappointing when you first start and wait to gain traction. It’s something that takes time, persistence, and dedication.

The key is not to give up, and to remember the “golden rule” that prospective clients need to see the same message at least 7 times before taking action.

After spending the past 8 months working on some of our clients’ social media presences, we’ve put together these tips to help you!

TIP #1: COME UP WITH UNIQUE AND ENGAGING SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

Working in B2B, we’ve come to find that it’s hard for business owners to envision what their social media content should look like. Many specialty, service-based companies don’t know what to share beyond ‘Sales CTA’ posts and sharing events/workshops or other related posts.

It’s very understandable to not know what’s unique and fun to do, especially when you are as close as you are to the business!

That’s where we like to step in to come up with a strategy for you.

But in place of contacting us, we’d like to offer some food for thought that you can use to come up with your strategy.

First and foremost, keep a consideration to nurturing an audience.

Even if you’ve been in business for years and are doing well without social media, you should approach your online presence with the purpose of educating them.

There are two sides to this which are (A) informing and building trust with prospective customers, and (B) keeping current customers up-to-date. While a lot of businesses focus heavily on prospective customers, it only takes a few tweaks to how you work things that will cater the message to include why current/previous customers should return.

With the education piece in mind… It’s always a good idea to have some fun with this. Taking this approach can set you up to stretch content across different types of posts that all look unique.

For example: Several different types of posts can all be based on a singular piece of content. In this example, let’s use an informative blog post you publish. In addition to being able to produce 2 or more different types of posts that showcase the blog post, you can also create Q&A posts that cover components of it. Then you can use this information to create other storytelling posts that transition into a Sales CTA. You may not mention the blog post in everything, but this method allows you to use content for multiple purposes without thinking up something new.

To fill other gaps in content, consider videos and photos that provide a look behind the scenes of the company. You honestly cannot go wrong with this! It may surprise you to learn that when we started doing social media management for an industrial manufacturer of custom corrosion-resistant products, their presence took off because we used actual workshop photos in their posts.

The photos aren’t what many would consider “pretty” (simply because of the environment that it is). But that doesn’t matter because it shows them working hard on the projects they were creating. To this day, they get consistent follower growth and engagement on their posts because of this.

So if in doubt, take this information in, let it sit, and see what ideas you can come up with.

TIP #2: KEEP A CONSISTENT SOCIAL SCHEDULE

It might be a topic of debate today, but not too long ago, there was a universal understanding of why this is necessary. The facts come from social media platforms recommending this, while the evidence that supports it is simply found through implementation.

The truth is that social media platforms do not specifically detail how their algorithms work. However, influencers and social media specialists have found it safe to say that following a consistent schedule reflects one’s ability to “train” these algorithms.

But let’s peel this back for a moment and state why it matters to you, no matter what you do…

By sticking to a consistent schedule, your audience learns when to expect to see a post.

And by creating unique and engaging content, your audience will look forward to seeing your posts!

This means if you suddenly fall off your schedule, you’re going to disappoint more than just the social media algorithms. Especially in businesses that benefit from showing you (the human being) through your post content, it could leave people wondering what happened [to you].

To ensure you can keep up with fresh content, create a schedule that works for you. Social Media Marketers will be the first to say you must be active 24/7 with stories and make a post every day (or at least 5 days/week). But if this doesn’t suit your business and you know there’s no way you can keep up with that much content, go with what makes sense.

After all, the worst part of pushing content when your heart isn’t in it is risking people noticing that it doesn’t have a purpose or message. This can undo traction by possibly prompting people to unfollow you.

Consider your target audience, their most active days & times on the platforms (each one is different), and use this information to create a schedule. Experiment as needed to find those perfect days & times, then stick to it. Or better yet, use a Social Media Scheduling platform that will help you find the best times to post.

TIP #3: CATERING CONTENT THAT REPRESENTS YOUR OFFERINGS

Piggy-backing off of Tip #1 of creating unique and engaging content, we want to talk about why it’s best to pave your own path instead of “playing it safe”.

The biggest problem with not having a plan is that it’s hard to be consistent in your messaging. Your approach should also consider that when your posts are among everything else that shows up in one’s feed, it can sometimes be easy for people to not realize who posted it.

That’s because people have a shorter attention span these days, and they’re just scrolling through when they have a few minutes; clicking the Like button when they see something that grabs their attention. At the same time, many of the people liking a post on Facebook and Instagram don’t read the copy on it.

This is also why it’s good to approach your graphics with the same consideration that you give to your post copy. Both should reflect the core message of the post so that you cater to (A) people who read posts, and (B) people who only pay attention to images.

So if you’re posting a fun or funny graphic, but talking about an unrelated offering in the copy, you’re not making the best use of the content. The exception is using content that cracks a joke or makes light of something involved in what you do – but this shouldn’t be your focus for all posts.

There are 2 Case Examples we want to give more advice for:

1) BUSINESSES THAT ONLY POST WHEN THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO SHARE OR SAY.

This leaves gaps in their timeline – leading to a stagnant presence that rarely gains new followers.

When this is the case, we recommend at least sticking to a purposeful post every other week; if that’s all they can do.

Think about this in terms of the user experience in discovering a company…

People find your website or hear about you and check you out.

This then leads a person to look at your social media accounts.

But what is a person to conclude when they navigate to your social media profiles and notice you last posted more than 1 month ago?

And that all the posts they see only talk about an event or offering that is no longer relevant?

Wherein this is the case, it doesn’t incentivize a lot of people to follow the profile/page.

But instead of immediately ramping up to a schedule you might struggle to keep up with, just make it a goal to post something new on a specific day of the week – every other week, or every week if possible.

2) BUSINESSES THAT STICK TO CONTENT THAT GETS A REACTION BUT RARELY/NEVER MENTIONS WHAT THEY DO.

We’ve seen companies garner attention by sharing irrelevant memes and social posts. What we mean by “irrelevant” is sharing funny cat photos or seasonal jokes; all of which cannot tie into the businesses’ offerings.

While these go over well enough because they get a Like for their relatability, they don’t transfer into getting new customers.

This is a delicate argument because if your goal is just to have a “good” social media presence, then this might be fine. But if you’re hoping to get attention that will transfer into revenue, then the approach needs reconsidering.

We once supplemented blog & service-focused posts for a company that regularly posts memes and purely personal social posts. The results were that almost no one reacted to these company-centered posts. This was reflective of a realization that people were following the company for laughs and not due to a genuine interest in their services.

The problem? Their social presence thrived but had nothing to do with their services. So while they were happy with their engagement rate, it took some in-depth explanation of their traffic sources (using GA4) for them to realize this was not helping them gain customers. In fact, their social channels rarely produced website traffic.

Long story short: It’s nice to have fun, but don’t forget to drive your audience to take some form of action. The “rule” is that 20% of each month’s posts should be a direct CTA, whereas everything else can be more informative with the purpose of nurturing your audience.

FINAL TIPS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY FOR BUSINESSES

When you’re starting out, or trying a new approach to rev up your social media presence, engagement is key.

The number of Likes, Shares, and Comments on a post increases its visibility. However, there’s an invisible timer on this. Having these actions occur as close to the posting time as possible produces the most results. This means that going in and Liking your weeks-old posts isn’t going to produce a ripple effect.

Our suggestion is to build a brigade of employees and loyal customers to help you with this while you rev up. Offer some form of incentive for doing this over a period of time to ensure people willingly participate.

Every post should have a CTA (Call To Action). You’ve noticed us reference “Sales CTA” and “Direct CTA” as posts that should be sprinkled in – and these refer to actual sales-purpose posts that ask your audience to take action. These would be the “buy this”, “join today”, “sign up for this”, etc. posts.

Yet, for all other posts you make, you also want to suggest a relevant action such as “read this blog post here: URL” or “learn more about us here: URL“. Other social media specific action-drivers would be “Like if you agree”, “Share with someone who can appreciate this”, and when it’s appropriate to ask for input, saying “Drop your answer in the Comments”.

Research your hashtags for each platform to increase your Reach. Reach refers to the visibility of a post that goes beyond your current list of Followers. This only occurs when you use hashtags in your posts. Hashtags that are in use and trending differ from one platform to the next – including across Facebook and Instagram.

Our tip is to curate a set of hashtags that will apply to your business as a whole. These would be specific to your industry and product/service offerings so that anyone looking these items up on a social platform will be able to find you. But then, add in 2-5 more that are specific to each post’s content.

NEED ASSISTANCE?

Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you need a strategy created, or if you want someone to take over the planning and scheduling part of your social media presence. As a company that’s focused heavily on helping small businesses grow, we’ll be happy to help.