With the increasingly high levels of competition online, businesses are doing everything possible to make sure they stand out from the crowd, and social media is a quick and easy way to help build this momentum.

But with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and many more available to choose from, and millions of businesses worldwide posting updates every single day – how do you make it successful?

Here’s some quick tips, to help you give your social media the boost it needs:

• Think like the customer – Would your customers actually be looking on Google+ for you? Don’t waste time posting about things they’ll never be interested in and where they’ll never look. Having an account on every possible social media site may have it’s SEO advantages, but if it’s not giving you a decent return for your time, it’s not worth it. Think about your target market, what content would they be interested in seeing on social media? Would they want to see lots of pictures, or have links to relevant articles? Cater to their needs, but don’t lose track of your branding.
• Monitor your followers – Each follower, like, pin, etc. could be a sign of a potential interested customer. Take some time to look at who’s following you, and even go the extra mile and send them a message to say thank you. Respond whilst you’re still fresh in their mind and you will have a much better response rate. Track your overall progress, how many followers did you gain this month? Was this ‘average’, or was there something special that happened this month which brought you extra? Analyse your activity and if something worked, do it again
• Use the tools available – There’s hundreds of special widgets and features that aren’t commonly known of on social media. Take some time to have a look through and you might find something useful to you. Outside of social media, external tools such as hootsuite.com offer a platform that helps you to easily manage and co-ordinate all of your social media accounts. You can schedule updates to go out in advance, setup streams of your top keywords and monitor activity.
• Get social – After all, it is ‘social’ media, so start talking to people. Nobody is interested in listening to you if all you do is talk about yourself, so make the effort to communicate with others. Reply to their updates, ask questions, re-tweet – it’s the best way to build relationships If you’d like any help or advice with your social media, contact us today