Being active on social media is essential because your current and potential customers are there. But if you want to keep your social media accounts up to date and at the same time take care of day to day operations, accounting, marketing, customer service, web traffic, SEO, etc, let’s be honest, you need an extra set of hands.
Staying focused at work, paying bills and looking out for your employees can be exhausting and so demanding that you just don’t have time to do it, and most important, DO IT RIGHT.
So, the question is, how can I leave my business in professional hands without losing ‘power’ and control? Simple: working together. Generally, owners find a professional and trust them with all their business matters, forgetting about that they are the soul and heart of the company… but nothing works better than the fusion of your knowledge as an owner, and an expert team.
To solve this problem, we will provide you with 5 tips to merge your business understanding with the professional skills of a social media expert:
- Talk. Sounds pretty obvious, but most business owners don’t communicate sufficiently with their teams. Nobody knows the history of your company better than you. Tell your business story, how it was created, how you got to were you are now, how important your employees are, and what is your philosophy of work.
- Consistent Business Image. Social media is an online reflection of your business. Make sure that your social media profiles reflect your image, colors, values, fonts and most importantly your spirit. Having a consistent image throughout social media is very important to communicate with your audience.
- Open your mind. Let’s face it, everybody wants to ‘sell more’, but if you want to get there you have to start by setting specific objectives on social media: position your business, engage your audience and get to know what the people are saying about your products or services.
- Don’t forget traditional marketing. One of the best formulas to get the results that you expect of social media is to take advantage of traditional marketing practices. For example, if you have a restaurant, display your social media profiles on the menu or TV screen, print some flyers, encourage customers to post pictures of your business in Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, the bottom line is free publicity.
- Online vs. reality. The Online version of your business has to be coherent with the real one. If you want to avoid a ‘crisis’ or negative comments on your profiles, offer a real version of your company. Some good practices are: carefully choose the pictures that you post, create original content, keep a high level of service and finally make sure your information is consistent on your profiles (Name, address, phone number, business hours).
These tips are simple but effective. The key to social media success is communication, consistency and team work!
