For many businesses, taking your social media visibility from a walk to a gallop can feel like leaping headfirst into the Wild West of marketing. Although social media trends and tech are in a constant (and exciting) state of flux, there are some evergreen elements that can help you stake your territory, build out your relationships, and welcome a new generation of customers to the fold. 

Below, find five tips for strengthening your social media management skills and performance which will propel your company from the sidelines to the heart of the conversation.

6 Tips For Businesses To Hone Their Social Media Presence

Learning to leverage social media’s unique capabilities can help you create a dimensional digital identity that has staying power in your customers’ lives.

Read on for five social media business tips to boost conversions, broaden your reach, and make your audience stop short in the endless scroll.

#1. Pay Attention To Your Hooks

In a world of constant social media engagement, you have mere seconds to catch your digital audience’s attention and ensure they stick around to hear what you have to say. 

In other words, you need a sharp, shiny hook. 

The hook metaphor works well here for a few reasons: 

1. Does a hook catch fish and your audience? Well, their digital attention span may be comparable. According to one study, smartphone users lose interest after 8 seconds of turning their attention to any given piece of content (for the record, goldfish hang around for 9 seconds).¹
2. If you were wondering what hook rate success entails, a hook should snag attention quickly and immediately so your potential customer doesn’t become the one who got away. 

Whatever medium your company is focused on, your social media content’s hook must be one of the most important factors for gaining a foothold in your social media marketing strategy. 

So what does that mean in practice?

• Voice – How you say things is just as important as what you are saying. That’s where the brand voice comes in. Your brand voice is unique to your identity and the hook is where it should be at maximum amplification. A unique voice will always grab attention.
• Creativity – Your hook doesn’t always need to be words. It can be an image, a series of emojis, a quick gif, or video thumbnails. Your social media platform is a veritable playground for creatives, so don’t be afraid to use your imagination to make your hook stand out from the digital crowd.
• Directness – A straightforward approach will make a lasting impression. Keep in mind, that you have 8 seconds to make an impression—don’t waste it by being coy in your hook. 

#2. Once Hooked, Keep Your Audience Engaged

There’s an art to capturing audience attention and there’s an art to keeping it. Your content strategy, no matter the format, boils down to four key components:

• Your hook
• Your callout (the “meat” of the post)
• Your credentials
• Your CTA

Depending on your brand, “credentials” may allude to social proof, notable social media statistics, or other ways of demonstrating your credibility to prospective customers. 

Each of these segments has its due place in your ongoing conversation with your customer. Together, they:

• Arrest attention
• Deliver a benefit
• Demonstrate why viewers should stick around
• Lay the groundwork for an ongoing relationship

#3. Make Your Content Shoppable

Shoppable content (also known as social commerce) is the art of making it easy for your potential customers to go from your social media post to a purchase. This means embedding service or product page links within the social media channel you’re working with. 

Social commerce speaks to customers where they are and offers them the opportunity to say yes to your offerings. And it works. In fact, social commerce is projected to balloon to $80 billion within the next three years.² 

Creating shoppable content positions you for success on two fronts:

• Shopper convenience – 83% of consumers report that convenience is one of the most important attributes brands can offer when curating their online shopping experience.³ Going the extra mile to streamline your customers’ path from social media platforms to purchase button can make it that much easier to lock in a conversion.
• Brand awareness – Social media posts are shareable. This means that any links you weave into your content have the potential to make waves well beyond the users they originally reached. In this way, capitalizing on the shoppable content trend can create more conversion potential without you having to pad your marketing budget.

The takeaway? No matter whether your follower count is in the thousands or you’re starting your social profiles from scratch—every brand can stand to gain from having a branding agency help make their social media content seamlessly shoppable. 

#4. Don’t neglect Small-Scale Influencers

Influencer marketing is a powerful measure of driving marketing efforts, earning businesses around $5.20 per dollar spent, and influencer marketing in the future will only get better.⁴ 

That said, many companies—particularly if they’re just beginning to build their online presence– may think big-league influencer partnerships are out of reach until they’ve gained a high following online.

As it turns out, working with nano or micro-influencers has several benefits for both major, mid-sized, and smaller brands:⁵

• High engagement – In many cases, megawatt influencers simply can’t match up to the engagement enjoyed by their micro-influencer peers. One study showed that profiles with a 1k following have the highest level of user engagement, likely because boutique accounts read as more authentic, down-to-earth, and accessible to their followers.⁶
• Trustworthiness – Psychologically, people are more inclined to accept a recommendation from a person they trust. One poll showed that 82% of respondents said they’d consider making a purchase per the recommendation of a small-scale influencer.⁷ No matter whether you’re a major league company or an MSB—when you partner with an authentic voice in the digital sphere, it rubs off. 
• Affordability – Despite their worth, partnerships with micro-influencers are still relatively low-cost, clocking in between $10 and $500 per post.⁸ While contract costs vary depending on your industry, platform, engagement rates, and other factors, the potential for returns is massive, with 89% of marketing teams reporting their influencer marketing ROI is superior to other channels.⁹

Beyond that, influencer marketing isn’t just about augmenting the number of your customer relationships—one poll showed 71% of marketing teams working with an influencer agency report higher-quality consumers from the traction they gain through influencer marketing.⁹

Suffice it to say, whether you’re a big company looking to connect authentically or a new brand just getting your name out there, working with the little guy can help you have a big impact.

#5. Take A Targeted Approach

The landscape of social media marketing can be dizzying, so it’s crucial to take a structured approach to your social media marketing strategy to turn out results.

Running a social media audit is the first step in gauging your performance by the numbers. There’s a whole library of performance data points to be gleaned from social media audits, but the information they can offer can be summed up in three key categories:

• Your audience – The more you know your target audience, the better your relationship with them will be. Social media audits can tell you which demographics or online sub-groups are plugging into your content. This helps your company map which avenues are bringing the most traffic and which untapped markets will be most lucrative to dip into.
• Your content – Beyond getting to know your audience, social media audits can reveal the type of content they want to see. Certain platforms can pinpoint which specific elements of your posts are landing (or missing the mark) with your audience. Be the keywords in your blogs or engrossing video hooks, knowing which factors coax customers further down the funnel gives you an operative formula to work with as you move forward with creativity and strategy.
• Your brand – While every brand articulates a different sort of relationship with its customers, social media is all about connection. Taking a closer look at your online interactions with customers through reviews, comment threads, and mentions paints a picture of your current relationship with your audience and how it measures up to your competitors.

There’s a bevy of data points to be gleaned from social media audits, but the best way to put them to use is to isolate your top KPIs and work gradually with creative testing initiatives. By zeroing in on your key variables, you’ll distill your brand’s unique vocabulary for the type of content that keeps your viewers coming back.

#6. Highlight Your Best Assets

Everybody loves party favors. If you’ve ever strolled into an event to catch a glimpse of swag bags by the entryway, you were probably much keener to stick around for the whole event rather than make an Irish exit.

Social media for business is similar. If you put your perks and benefits front and center, you’ll immediately pave the way for conversations by currying prospective customers’ favor. 

Some of the most effective benefits include:

• Free shipping – Free shipping is one perk with the power to significantly alter consumer behavior for worse and for better. According to one survey, 61% of shoppers are more inclined to nix a purchase altogether if free shipping isn’t part of the package. That said, 93% of shoppers will pile more into their carts if it means they’ll qualify for free shipping. 
• Payment plans – Affordable payment plans and buy now, pay later (BNPL) software like Afterway and Klarna are rapidly gaining popularity in the world of online shopping.¹¹ While high price points may scare off some consumers, letting your target audience know there are budget-friendly ways to covet your product or service improves your accessibility and widens your reach.
• Discount codes – Seasonal codes, insider discounts, and small tokens of affection for loyal customers are all tried-and-true ways of making followers feel special. Many brands go the traditional route by running holiday sales or gifts for first-time purchasers through their social media accounts. Alternatively, you can jazz up your discounts by gamifying the process with contests or discount wheel pop-ups that bring an element of chance (and fun) into the buying experience.¹²

Whether you offer free shipping on orders over $50 or increasingly popular pay-as-you-go plans like Afterpay, few customers are immune to the appeal of freebies. Your social posts may be able to garner more views and engagement by putting whatever benefits you have to offer at the helm of your profile—and making it enjoyable to boot.

Discover More Social Media Insights With Power Digital

Most importantly, remember that your social media presence is unique. 

While there’s undoubtedly a polished and professional tenor to social media for businesses, it takes a certain type of magic to cut through business-as-usual and make arresting and authentic connections with your audience.

If you want to get in the weeds and discover the best, most current practices for fostering your business’ social media prowess, we want to work with you. Power Digital is a digital marketing agency that offers businesses at all stages of growth, an internet marketing service for every element of your social media strategy, from audits that crunch the numbers to the creative that gets you seen.

Source: https://powerdigitalmarketing.com/blog/social-media-for-businesses-tips-tricks/