Most of the world’s way of communicating today is through social media. Today, June 30th, is Social Media Day, the day we get to celebrate the digital world of social media! In honor of Social Media Day, I’ve created a list of helpful tips and advice for all of our small business owners out there starting to take their businesses to social!
Quality Over Quantity
There’s always controversy on how many posts you should be sharing on social media. Everyone has different successes depending on the industry they’re in, their audiences and followers. And it varies between each social media platform from Facebook to Instagram to Twitter on how many times you should post. Instead of worrying about how much or how often you post, work on creating quality posts that reflect your business and show what you have to offer.
Whether you post once a day or only post once a week, do what’s easy for you and your schedule. Set a goal for yourself for how many times you want to post on your business accounts and see how easy or difficult it was to reach that goal.
Don’t know what to post? Think about what your followers would want to see from you and your business. Maybe that’s a progress update on a project you’re working on or sale you’re having. Don’t be afraid to get some inspiration from other companies in the industry and see what they’re sharing to their pages!
Add a Visual
When you’re scrolling through your timeline, what makes you stop for a second? It’s usually a picture or a video! Catch your viewers eyes more with a post that has a picture or a video attached versus just a post with text.
Schedule When You Can
Running your own business is hard work on it’s own. Throw social media into the mix and it’s another task to add to your day. There are plenty of scheduling tools out there to help ease the stress of making sure you post frequently! Check out some of the free tools I’ve listed below.
If you have a Business Facebook Page, you can use the scheduler already included on Facebook! At the top of your Business Facebook Page, there’s some very helpful tools to make running your page a little easier! Go to the Publishing Tools tab. You can then create posts and schedule them to post at a later date! And the best part about this is that it’s free! There are plenty of scheduling tools out there but not all of them are free. Utilize the free ones when you can!
Gain Audiences
When trying to get people to follow your social media accounts, your friends and family are the best free advertising you can get. Take advantage of that! Ask them to like and follow your pages and to share your posts on their pages. The more people who share your posts, the more people will see them!
Not only is it important to gain new followers on your accounts but it’s important to keep the ones you already have. Interact with your current followers. If they comment or recommend your brand and products, make sure you respond and thank them! Share and celebrate customers’ posts about your products or services. This encourages them to interact with you online in the future!
Free Helpful Tools
Scheduling Tools.
While most social media scheduling tools aren’t free, they usually have a free version with limited actions available. Give a free version a try and if you think you need more capabilities, then consider buying a plan. Most of the time, you should be able to use the free version just fine.
- Buffer allows you to manage 3 social media accounts and schedule up to 10 posts at a time for free
- Tweetdeck allows you to monitor your Twitter, different hashtags, users and search terms on Twitter for free.
- Hootsuite offers a free plan to manage 3 social media accounts to schedule up to 30 posts in advance.
- Later is another free scheduling tool that allows you schedule 30 posts per month on each social media platform.
Creative Tools.
There are tons of free websites and applications out there to make creative graphics for you to use on your social media accounts. Create some great artwork to post with some of these!
- Over is a free app to design Instagram story templates and social media flyers, banners and logos.
- Canva allows you to create free custom graphics for flyers, marketing material and more.
- Adobe Spark Post is another creative app to allow you to create graphics, flyers and banners.
- Adobe Premiere Rush is a free video editing app perfect for easy video editing.
I hope this helps get your mind turning towards social! Comment your social media questions below!
About the Author:
Caitlyn Winkle
After graduating from the University of Akron, Caitlyn joined Atlantic-OASE in the fall of 2019. Caitlyn manages the social media and online content for the company. She also supports the Atlantic-OASE Professional Contractor (APC) Program and Marketing Departments in creating marketing and advertising strategies and plans.