To grow your presence on social media you need to do more than post occasionally!

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.