How to Uplevel Your Social Media Accounts
The Keys to Prepping Your Small Business for Stardom
As a small business owner in 2020, utilizing social media is pretty much a no-brainer. For decades, social media has been one of the most effective tools for marketing your brand. When done correctly, you can use social media to reach your target audience in the most natural and efficient way possible.
But for many small biz owners, social media feels overwhelming and stressful. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be! I’ve worked in PR for over a decade, and there are some proven methods to ensuring your brand’s social media accounts are top notch.
I recently wrote about how to prep your brand for the media spotlight — which included utilizing social media accounts to the max. Here are the tips and tools I use when working with my own clients to ensure that their social media accounts reflect how amazing their brand really is.
Use strong images.
As a brand, what message are you trying to convey to your audience? How you can do that with strong images? You know the old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. So where can you get photos to speak for you?
Having strong visual content on your social media channels invites more people to grow an interest in your brand and a reason to follow your brand in the future. A strong image should reflect your brand’s purpose and narrative to successfully convey your message.
That means minimizing stock photos as much as possible (and definitely no super cheesy ones!), ensuring photos are high quality, and touching up or editing a bit if possible.
You also want your photos to reflect your customers, so if your ideal client is women in their 40s, don’t use mostly photos of women in their 20s! That’s not an accurate representation of your brand, and it won’t get you where you want to go. However, using photos with people of various sizes, races, ages, and abilities whenever possible is always a good idea.
PRO TIP: I always suggest that brands invest in personalized stock photography if possible. If it’s out of the budget right now, you can DIY. Be sure to use the best lighting possible and use a tripod for a camera or your iPhone if you plan on using the self timer or a remote. You can also trade services or product with a photographer in your area, or find another small business owner who needs photos and snap photos of one another! It helps if you both have a little photography knowledge, but when in doubt, shoot in natural light (not direct sunlight - shady areas are best if you can’t shoot in the early morning or late afternoon aka the magic hour), try lots of poses, and practice the rule of thirds.)
Keep messaging consistent.
In order to maintain consistent messaging, it’s important to understand your audience. In understanding your audience, you can determine the best language and the best tone of voice for your messaging. Just like you don’t want to use photos of women in their 20s to reach women in their 40s, you should think about your voice in the same way.
What’s the #1 goal of your social media channels? Is it sales? Is it leads? Or is it inspiration or helpful tips? Hone in on whatever it is, then stick with that. Most of your content should direct people to that goal, whatever it is.
Consistency is important in almost all aspects of the social media game, but especially with the messages you’re sending to others. Your message — and the tone of how you share it — directly impacts how your brand is perceived and recognized by others. This applies not only to potential customers, but the press, too!
Imagine that you’re trying to land a Forbes interview, and the writer visits your Twitter account and finds nothing but pictures of your lunch and your thoughts on the latest reality TV show.
Now imagine if they visit your profile and they find a slew of great tweets giving sales and growth advice for entrepreneurs! It leaves a different impression, doesn’t it?
Make sure that your social media content all goes back to your goal.
Post consistently.
But don’t worry, consistently doesn’t mean constantly.
There is a balance brands must find when posting their social media content. There is such a thing as posting too often and just being annoying, as well as posting too little and losing people’s interest. In addition, make sure you aren’t posting too much of one thing and not enough of another. It’s an art, not a science.
Once you’ve established your goal, your message, and a consistency of when to post your content, create a content calendar to keep yourself organized. Knowing what you’ve got coming up for the next week, two weeks, and month helps you stay organized and on top of it.
PRO TIP: For posting, I suggest a minimum of 1 post per week on Facebook and 5 times a month on IG. The truth is, there’s no right number of times to post, because it all depends on your content and your audience. As long as your social media accounts are active and providing value, you’re on the right track.
If you are active on Instagram and Facebook, but Twitter doesn’t reach your ideal audience so you’re not posting over there, kudos for knowing where your audience hangs out! We suggest you create that Twitter profile with your same user name, add your bio and the same profile pic from your other accounts for brand cohesion, and use the account as a placeholder to drive traffic back to your more active accounts. A quick line like “Follow us on Instagram for weekly tips!” can tell your customers where to find your latest content.
Proofread (no-type-os).
You want to make a good impression on your audience (and potential reporters) and keep them coming back for more. Proofreading your posts is a crucial step in your process that cannot be ignored.
You’ve taken the time to create the best content for your brand, so why mess it up with avoidable typos? Rather than building your brand as professional and competent, type-os may seem careless. Of course, writing isn’t everyone’s forte. And that’s okay! Proofread, proofread, proofread! And I highly suggest downloading the online writing assistant Grammarly to your computer. No one is perfect, after all.
If you have a friend, relative, or colleague who is a gifted reader, writer, or editor, ask them to review some of your most important posts. Once you get in the habit of checking for errors, it becomes second nature. Trust me — there’s no worse feeling than seeing a type-o in a Tweet and not being able to edit it!
Share other business’ content that’s relevant.
By sharing the content of other relevant brands on your own social media, you can elevate your brand to the standards of your target market. Plus, it also gives you the chance to interact with other businesses, which is always a bonus.
When sharing content, be selective of the businesses you choose to associate your brand with. Be aware of their reputation, message, and purpose. At the end of the day, you’ll be building on the trust and awareness of your audience.
Do a little digging before you share their content to be sure that your values align. And tag them when you share their content - you never want it to look like you’re taking credit for their messages, quotes or designs. Plus when you tag them, you could build an allegiance and they could Retweet, share or engage with you publicly, exposing your brand to their audience! That’s what we call a Win/Win in the world of social media.
Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this blog post, which means we may receive commissions for purchases made through these links. We wouldn’t recommend them if we didn’t personally believe in them and use them for our business. Thank you in advance for your support and we hope you find our suggestions valuable as you grow your business!
