Social media management can be a tricky business – the harm you can do to yoru business and brand if you get it wrong can be remarkable, but get it right and the benefits can be huge. Here are five ways you can go about getting your social media strategy moving and working for your business.

Sharing Content

Social media is already the best way to share your content across the web and engage with a whole new world of potential customers. Start by looking at the sort of content your company produces already – do you have a blog? Do you produce videos? Do you generate a lot of pictures? Once you have a complete inventory of the sort of content you generate on a regular basis you can look at the sort of social media outlets you need to use to leverage it for the biggest impact.

Almost all companies should start with Twitter and Facebook as they provide very easy ways to share your content with yoru folloers – and not just blog posts and news items, but video and pictures too. If you do produce though, you should set up yor own YouTube channel and consider other sites like Vimeo. For pictures, photos and images then Flickr is the site for you to share those on.

Always keep an eye on how your audience reacts to the content you share. This is very easy to do on social media sites – look at comments and ‘Likes’ on Facebook, retweets and @ replies on Twitter and comments, favourites and shares on YouTube. Adjust the content you share to match what your audience reacts most positively and in numbers to.

Generate Conversation

While social media is a great way to distribute your own content it really is more than that. You should always look to bring value to your audience in other ways. Generating conversation is one way to do this through sharing news from around the web that relates to your industry and that your audience will have a shared interest in.

The idea behind this is to make your Facebook page(s), your Twitter account(s), the place to go for all the news your audience would be interested in. Retweet others, Share on Facebook, create Twitter Lists of people from your industry and related industries so people can follow your lists and always give credit where it is due for the things you share.

Sharing breaking news and industry opinion is an ideal way of making yourself the place to go for the latest news – you might not have created the news, but if people recognise that you are on top of what’s going on in your industry, they’ll come to you for it rather than searching for it themselves.

Engage Your Audience

If your social media strategy is working to this point then you will be generating quite a lot of responses and feedback to the content you’ve shared. Take it to the next level by responding to insightful replies to keep the conversation going and your to make your audience feel ‘special’. When posting your content via Facebook and Twitter and the like, ask a question – it’ll be more likely to get a response.

For example, if you’ve posted a new video demonstrating your latest product, post it with “Tell us what you think of our latest product? Anything you’d like to see added?” – with any luck, this will not only generate a response but also give you some free, valuable customer feedback!

Promote Your Social Media Presence

It is not enough to just set up your Facebook/Twitter/YouTube accounts and start posting to them – you have to promote them! The great thing about social media is that you can use one to promote the other, whilst also using your more traditional advertising channels too. So promote your Facebook page on Twitter and vice versa, at the same time adding links to your social media profiles on your website, in your emails and even on your product packaging if that fits with your business.

The more peole know about your social media presence, the more successful it will be.

Make Your Social Media Presence Your Own

Every social media site has a set of default settings to get you started. Familiarise yourself with these as soon as possible and then start changing them to make them unique to your business. Upload your company logo to use as your Twitter avatar (or create something based around it but unique for Twitter), use Facebook’s Tabs to create a bespoke landing page for your audience to see, rather than the standard wall, change the colurs, backgrounds and whatever else you can to match as closely as possible your brand.

The more your social media profiles stand out from the default, the more your brand will be remembered.

Social media is not something to be afraid of, it is a wonderful tool for your business if managed correctly. Start slow with a Twitter feed if you’re unsure and build up to Facebook and beyond at yoru own pace – you’ll soon see the benefits and want to engage more and more as you go on!

Author Bio: Ian Grainger is writing on behalf of Fluid Search, specialists in Social Media Management.

Category: Internet
Keywords: social media, facebook, twitter, youtube