​You have set up your Personal Profile on LinkedIn and as you have 3 or more staff you have chosen to set up a LinkedIn Business page too. That alone is not enough! To effectively build your brand on LinkedIn you need to be more proactive.
 
My #TopTips (in a nutshell)
 
YOUR LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE
Start to share regular (2-3 times a week) company updates on your Business LinkedIn page such as business accomplishments, anniversaries (both company and staff related) and business milestones. Also link to articles or blogs on your website and share interesting articles from other LinkedIn users related to your business.

Make your team admins on your LinkedIn Business Page so that they can share updates on the company page too. If everyone contributes, it becomes less onerous on one person.

Ask your team to link their “current positions” to your business page

Get your team to also share company updates on their LinkedIn profiles.
 
YOUR PERSONAL LINKEDIN PAGE

Make sure your profile is up-to-date, your summary is clear, concise and lets people know how to get in touch with you.

Share your Company Page updates – help spread company messages to a wider audience.

Start to LIKE and comment on posts from others that you may wish to develop a working relationship with or that are industry influencers.

Start to develop conversations with your connections through LinkedIn messaging.


​If you need help with putting a process in place to develop the above, then just get in touch.

So why have you chosen to be on social media? Because everyone is there? That’s not the greatest reason.

In marketing speak you need to set some SMART goals:

• Specific: “I’ve identified the social channel where I will find my target audience (say Twitter) and a metric (or response rate).”
• Measurable: “The response rate can be measured I your Twitter analytics.”
• Achievable: “I set a goal of say, a 50% increase in followers/RT’s/comments in a month.”
• Relevant: “My goal will have an impact on my overall social media presence, making it very relevant to those I am targeting.”
• Timely: “My goals will be met by the end of the first quarter.”

By setting the above goals, it will help you reach your target audience and save you posting randomly.

After you have agreed your goals, you need to identify your target audience. The number of times I’ve been told “everyone is my target audience!”  The world is a big place and if you try to target everyone you will reach no-one!  You may be looking to reach specific prospective customers or perhaps it is industry influencers, but whoever they may be, if you break your audiences down into key groups it will help you with the following:

• Which social media sites you’re active on – are they where your customers are?
• Your posting schedule – Are you posts different for each social media platform
• The type of content you publish – It is relevant to your target audience
• The information in your profiles – Is it up-to-date / correct?

The next question you will ask is how do I define my target audience? Spend some time looking at your audience personas, find out what brands they already love and what they tend to respond to.

The most important thing to be on social media is human. So many businesses come across as faceless organisations and people want to get to know you and your company on a more personal level and that is why you need to “talk” to your followers. Also, showing off the human side of your brand such as office photos or snapshots of your team keeps your feed personal.

The next question is whether or not your follower count is important and is it a metric you should measure. If you have 100 followers who regularly engage with you and your content, this is so much valuable than 10,000 that never respond to you.

If you are not sure where to start with relationship building, particularly on Twitter, then the following pointers will help you get started:

• Always @mention people you refer to in your social media posts. They will then be notified of the mention.
• Respond to questions that are asked by others. This will get you noticed.
• Reply to people when they @mention you or share your content. Thank them 😊
• Don’t continually Retweet and Like other people’s content; reply with a comment to start a conversation
• Ensure that you are regularly posting content that your followers will hopefully LIKE, Retweet or comment on, make sure you post regularly by creating a Content Calendar but be ready to respond to comments.

When social media was first used by businesses for marketing their products or services, many set up auto-replies but this is now considered insincere. If you want to build your followers then make sure you take the time to respond.

If you are juggling a number of social media channels, a Content Calendar will make the process easier. It will allow you to:

• Make you posts relevant for each of your posts for each platform without having to move  between sites.
• Time your posts to maximize engagement, keeping you from having to constantly post in real-time.
• Avoid repeating the same content repeatedly, ensuring each of your articles or pictures gets the most interactions as possible.

By setting up a Content Calendar we can ensure our posts are automated the correct way! Automation is the way forward in marketing right now to ensure that you are regularly seen for great content. However, you can’t expect to successfully put your social presence on autopilot and think that your job is done. You need to dedicate some time each day to responding to comments and thanking people for sharing posts.

If you would like a FREE copy of my Content Calendar Scheduling Template please get in touch and you can then tailor it to suit your Social Media platforms and plan the timings of your posts to ensure you get the maximum reach of your posts.

It is interesting to read that since people cannot connect with their friends in real life, they are “virtually connecting” on nearly every available online platform. Traffic has increased on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube but the biggest increase in traffic has been on Zoom ad Skype. 

Do you think this increase in online meetings continue after the epidemic has subsided or do you think people will go back to the old ways of communicating with their teams?

So why is social media usage increasing?

In the main, people are social by nature and whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, after a few days of isolation your will begin to miss your friends or work colleagues. The gap that grows through this lack of social interaction with your communities is huge for us all and social media offers a way to fill this gap.

This global pandemic leaves us feeling anxious and needing support and our social media channels help us to feel more connected. To stay “virtually connected” video interaction is increasing daily. You will have noticed that many businesses are streaming events, quizzes, exercise classes online.

Is social media really of value?
 
When done correctly, social media is the place where people go to talk, but now that we are isolated, it has become the only place to talk and this is why businesses need to now use social media to talk to and build relationships with their customers.
 
So how do you build a relationship with your customer on social media?

• Increase your social media presence during this difficult period as people are looking for new or fresh content, so provide them with it!
• Ask your audiences how they are? What they are doing? Don’t focus on making a sale!  Focus on how they are feeling and show you really care.
• With all your social media posts, be engaging and encourage engagement and respond to comments quickly. Your audiences will be online for longer than usual, so it is offers you a great opportunity to converse with them; but only if you respond quickly.
• Use this time of uncertainty to develop relationships online – use social media the way it was meant to be used. To connect with people!

​Looking forward to seeing more of your posts on social media. 
#Staysafe  #Stayhealthy  #Stayonoline

We all know that we need to embrace social media but do you really know how much time you need to spend on it to make it work for you? I have put together a simple Social Media Checklist to keep you on track!

YOUR DAILY BASIC SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
- Reply to incoming messages
 - Check alerts for branded mentions using your #
- Check current trending topics for language to use and avoid
- Schedule posts according to effective times of day:

• Twitter = 1-2 per day (including RT's)
• Facebook = 1 per day (including sharing content)
• Instagram = 1-2 per day (plus update your Instagram story)
• LinkedIn = 1 per day (including sharing posts from others)

WEEKLY
- Connect with influences on the various platforms
- Review products and services for upcoming posts
- Work on original content: Blogs, Videos, Eye-catching branded images
- Monitor competitor platforms for ideas, responses & trends
- Check analytics and adjust scheduling and topics as needed
- Create and monitor weekly goals for engagement, consistency and growth

MONTHLY
- Check analytics on all platforms and adjust where needed
- Research and try out new strategies
- Set goals and reminders for next month

QUARTERLY
- Review analytics and consider adjustment needed to scheduling and topics
- Review new strategies – integrate winning strategies and discard those that didn’t work

ANNUALLY
- Review analytics and consider adjustment needed to scheduling and topics
- Consider strategy changes for paid and organic audiences
- Review brand messaging and amend as necessary
- Research platform development

If you would like help in planning your Social Media Strategy just get in touch.