It’s common knowledge that to adequately market most businesses, you need to have a presence on social media. Depending on your industry this will include at least two platforms from the big 4: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. With new platforms being introduced by the day, it’s tempting to want to jump on board the next new thing. So you create a profile, have a play around and post some content for a few days, then realise perhaps it’s all a bit too time consuming after all.The problem is these pages are searchable, and they have your business’s name on them. While there’s an argument for securing your business’s name on the platform, the danger is that when a potential or current client comes across your profile they find nothing more than a ghost town - with evidence of life months or years prior, but nothing to entice someone to stick around. This is not the image that you want for your brand - abandoned and ill-thought through. The internet is a crowded place, and you need good content to cut through the clutter. But good content across multiple channels takes time, and while you may have a great presence with interesting content on Facebook, your quiet Twitter account or sporadic Instagram updates could be hurting your business.
So how can you fail, when you go in with all the best intentions of a vibrant social media scene that will generate quality leads for your business? There are a number of reasons, but at the top is a lack of strategic planning, and this includes the major decision of who will manage your business’s presence. Does your company’s social media fall to one person? Your marketing manager may be brilliant at B2B relationships but has no interest in Facebook and can’t work Twitter, or perhaps they’re really savvy, but it all falls apart when they move on. We’ve even heard of companies where someone has resigned and the company has lost the social media passwords and are unable to reset them because the security defaults to a personal mobile or email address.Or on the other hand, perhaps social media falls to no one at all? Often a special project is undertaken to create a social media presence but there is no ongoing resource allocation worked into the marketing budget or individual KPIs. Maybe none of that is true and your social media strategy has fallen apart because of demotivation - you’re posting great content but it seems that no one is listening. This is where a vicious cycle can develop: if you don’t have many followers, you don’t feel the need to post frequently, but if there isn’t evidence of frequent posts, then people won’t follow your page. It takes time to build a sound digital footprint - so a lack of success at the beginning should not put you off.
Social media influences customers and their purchase decisions, and also drives traffic to your website, with backlinks integral to SEO. You’re probably well versed in the whole bunch of other reasons why your business should be on social media, also explained in this handy infographic.But there’s a few questions that need to be asked before you commit to a social media channel:
Your social media presence should reinforce your brand and the best way to achieve this is through a comprehensive content strategy. Don’t be afraid to crowdsource for content both from within your company, and from your customers. Educate your employees in best practice for content creation and responding to comments and messages. Finally, ensure to build the strategy into your budget and the position descriptions of the relevant employees so your page is not at risk of “dwindling.”Working with an agency of digital marketing professionals can ensure that your brand’s voice is consistent, engaging and vibrant, so you can reap the rewards social media has to bring.To discuss how Bang Digital could benefit your company get in touch with the team at Bang or call us on (08) 9328 7000.
