Social Media Management

But how does this affect you, the business owner? How will social media help you spread and reach your clientele? For starters, your company having its own Facebook and/or Twitter pages will go a long way towards painting a picture of legitimacy. People will know that what you do is more serious than you and your uncles brewing some moonshine in the garage – you’ll come off as an established brand.

Needless to say, being on the aforementioned sites will also increase the chances of users ‘stumbling upon’ your page and becoming your clients. If you need even more reasons, how about giving your target audience easy updates on what’s going on with the company and any new deals being made? Having an updated Twitter page will let everyone know that the engine is running smooth – a few retweets sure won’t hurt either. By now you’re probably sold, so let’s get to the nitty-gritty part of mastering social media from a business standpoint. We call that social media management…

Helpful social media tools that will give you an edge

Tools that make the use of tools easier? Why not! There’s dozens or even hundreds of social media-related accessories that minimize your effort and provide valuable insights. Many of these are most beneficial exactly to you – a business owner looking to form a connection with leads and regular clients alike. I’ll go over a couple of tools that will have you celebrating the day that those tech-savvy geeks thought of social networking:

• Edgar: Social media updates will quickly go from a fun pastime to a tiring chore, especially if your business isn’t a small one. While the use of this program costs $49 a month, it’s helped many business owners and content creators interact with their audiences by letting them create a schedule. Once it’s there, the app lets you use a mostly hands-off approach as it posts one update after the other, even letting you repeat the cycle once there are no more fresh news.
• Tagboard: For any Twitter innovators, Tagboard is a very useful tool that combines hashtag creation with a handy interface that fully encompasses any use of your hashtags. Hashtagswag indeed!
• Quill Engage: Without costing you any money, Quill is going to organize your Google Analytics report in a way friendly to those among us who aren’t statistics wizards. Thanks to its AI-like capabilities, the report is going to seem as if it was written by an actual person.

Reaching a target audience with social media – what’s that all about, anyways?

The mistake of many business owners is trying to go for too big of a slice, too soon. In the beginning, it might seem counter-intuitive to limit your reach. Why would you possibly focus on a smaller audience and deprive yourself of more potential clients? The answer is simple: resource management.

You’ll have a much easier time marketing yourself within the confines of a smaller area. The more you expand, the more money you’ll have to pour into advertising, branding and so forth. Of course, there’s an even bigger problem with overreaching: the larger your area, the more competition you’ll have. To wrestle clients from them, you’ll need enough cheddar to beat all of their advertising campaigns – this is why the really big players routinely spend millions upon millions of dollars on ads alone.

Your local area(presuming you have a physical office or store) might already be facing a vacuum of sorts. There might not be any other businesses offering the same services as you, or there might be only a few you can easily squash – if this isn’t the case, narrow further.

Knowing your target audience will also pay dividends on Twitter – they’ll have an easier time following you, and you’ll be able to mold your updates based on the specific type of customers in mind. In general, your audience will reflect the type of products you are selling or the services you are offering – don’t try to market Hybrid cars in rural areas.

Social media statistics are also a great source of information that can help you up your game. You can see where your traffic is coming from and create a profile of your average lead that will let you mold your strategy accordingly.

With social media, time is of the essence!

Once you’ve got the basics down, you might want to consider using one of the tools I mentioned to send out social media feeds during a specific time. Strike a balance between when Facebook and Twitter are most used in general against when your target audience might be checking for updates.

Day and time both count here. Statistics show that Facebook users are most active around 3 p.m. EST, with Twitter users being similar – although the latter group tends to check their feed from early morning all the way to the evening. Here are the best times to post to social media and an ebook to download with a cheat sheet.

Of course, none of this might apply to your particular consumer niche. Depending on your business, your audience might be consistently most active around a time that deviates from the norm. To truly succeed, you’ll need to fine-tune every part of your social media business interactions, and this is one of them – keep a keen eye on statistics that show when your network of clients tunes in, and cater to them! Over time, this will let you attract people of a select audience that were previously unaware of what you can good for them, increasing your profits exponentially.