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8 Tips For Social Media Campaigns At Christmas

8 Tips For Social Media Campaigns At Christmas

It’s Never Too Early To Plan Christmas Social Media Campaigns

Plan ahead: It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. ~ Richard Cushing

If there’s one thing that is true for marketing, it’s that it is never too early to plan a social media campaign. We see Christmas or seasonal items appearing in shops much before the season arrives, the marketers are ready with campaigns and promotions in plenty of time before we decide to hit the shops.

Why? Because it allows our minds to think about their products and promotions for when we are ready to buy. If we’ve already seen an offer that we like, we’re more likely to purchase that item when the time comes rather than wondering around a dozen shops or websites to find what you’re looking for.

If marketers can make an impact in your mind, and make it convincing, appropriate and enticing, you’re more likely to buy from them.

The same goes for social media campaign.

And as we head towards the Christmas season, many people have started their Christmas shopping or have an idea of what they want to buy. They’ve already started to think about the people they need to buy for and what types of gifts they would like. This makes it easier for brands to sell as they have campaigns running on social media way before December that puts triggers in our minds, which brings us straight back to their product when we are ready to purchase.

Have you started your Christmas marketing campaigns?

Now is the time (if you haven’t started already) to get plans and strategy into place for your Christmas social media push. These can drip feed over the next few months, but now is a great time to get them out into the online world and where your brand can start to be noticed and recognised.

Christmas campaigns are about speaking directly to your audience, pleasing them and tailoring to their needs. Your bottom line shouldn’t be the main thought in this process – it’s about engaging with your customers.

Get noticed

Marketing campaigns are successful when a brand is recognised. So, creating social media content is about raising your brand awareness and letting people get to know who you are. The more you are known, and people start to notice you, the more successful you’ll be.

Do what it takes to get noticed, this may be by getting a little creative, eccentric, different from the norm, anything that allows your brand to stand out from the crowd.

Christmas is a busy time, it’s a season where every brand out there is pushing for attention and in order to get noticed your business needs to do something different, that other brands are not doing.

What could you do to spice up your Christmas marketing campaigns?

 

1) Get creative with your social media profiles

Spruce up your social headers and profiles with some festive graphics. You don’t have to be super talented in the graphics department, you can head over to Canva to create some free images, or if you don’t have time, ask a Virtual Assistant to help! Have fun with your social headers, make them memorable. If you create a theme or series, you could change them on a regular basis to gain a little more engagement from your audience.

Here’s a Facebook header example:

change your social media headers to creative a festive feel

 

2) Utilise key festive dates

You may be focusing on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years day, but there are many more days out there that you could get creative with. We’ve got a few on our social media planner, including #CyberMonday #ChristmasJumperDay and a few more which could be interesting for your social media content. It’s all about creating engagement and excitement – jump on the trends and turn them around to suit your brand and audience. You may not be promoting your business or offers, but you’re getting people to interact with your content. They’ll start to know you and like you and will share your content with others – then when you do promote your products, you have a ready made audience to speak to.

Download our free 2020 Social Media Awareness Days calendar for key dates

free Awareness Days Calendar / KJP Creative

 

3) Engage with your followers

This may be something that you’re already actively doing, but if it’s not, now is a great time to start. Bring a little Christmas cheer into the conversations, jump onto conversations that are happening where you can a) add value and b) have fun with it, both while raising your brand profile.

If you’re using any social listening tools, use these to discover people mentioning your brand as to not miss any opportunities that arise.

 

4) Run a giveaway or competition

Everyone loves a giveaway, especially around Christmas when people are already buying gifts for their family and friends. When you’re planning your giveaway, you want to think about what you’re trying to achieve by doing it – don’t make it a wasted exercise.

Are you looking to raise brand awareness? Are you looking to gain more followers? Do you want to grow your email list? Depending on your goal, gear your campaign around how to achieve the right outcome.

If you’re wanting to grow your email list, you’ll want to ask people to ‘sign up’ in order to be in with a chance of winning your prize. If you’re looking to raise your profile, ask people to comment and tag another person in their submissions, in order for more people to hear about you. If you simply want to gain more follows, ask people to like your page and share your posts. There are lots of outcomes and ways of achieving them but try to focus on one for each campaign, it will make it easier and less complicated to manage.

 

it's never too early to plan a social media campaign for Christmas

5) Create a festive offer

You may not want or have the means to do a giveaway so a festive offer could be an easier campaign to do. Christmas is one of the biggest times of the year for businesses to earn income. Campaigns that are planned and run well have a good chance of being taken seriously, whilst growing your audience and raising your brand awareness.

Use words like, one day left, Christmas countdown, buy-one-get-one-free – these are all appealing and give a sense or urgency to the buyer.

Get creative with your visuals but don’t make it too crowded, allow the offer wording to stand out, be bold and showcase what you are offering.

You could also offer free-shipping for a limited time or one day only and have a message that shouts about that particular day being important.

 

6) Create an event

Have you ever thought about holding an event to create excitement or awareness? This could be online or offline, meeting people face to face or holding a ‘live’ event online. People like to see the face behind the brand and to engage with real-life people. So much is automated in the world we live in that to physically see or hear a person that represents a brand is a novelty for many. Utilise that and build up momentum prior to the event. Use your email marketing to invite and remind your audience and use social media to promote it. The more momentum the better!

 

7) Create templates

When you’re creating your Christmas graphics, stick to a theme or a create a template where wording or images can be changed but that doesn’t give you a headache every time you want create a new one. Make your graphics simple, make them bold and make them effective. If people cannot recognise your brand from one image to the next, it’s not going to be as successful. Branding plays a big part in how your business is perceived and received.

Here’s a couple of examples:

Social media campaigns at Christmas

Social media campaigns at Christmas

 

8) Be joyful with your Christmas promotions

Christmas is a festive season and should be full of joy – your social media content needs to be social and engaging, where people can enjoy interacting with you and your followers. You want to get people excited about Christmas, about the holidays and of course about your brand!

You could do this by asking simple questions about their Christmas experiences or do they prefer X or Y product. This will not only give you great research into your audience but will help you market the products or services that are favoured.

When it comes to creating a marketing campaign, too early is always better than too late. The more preparation you can put in, research into your target audience and gain insights into what your customers want or would like to see and hear, the better the impact it has on your business.

Do you have any other ideas that you could use for Christmas promotions? What’s your favourite and most successful promotion you’ve done? We’d love to hear your comments below.

If you’d like get started in promoting your material for Christmas but just not sure how and where to begin, get in touch, we’d love to help!

 

For further reading, check out our post from last year about preparing early for Christmas social media marketing

Why Should Freelancers Use Social Media?

Why Should Freelancers Use Social Media?

Marketing is important for anyone looking to promote their services and this is applicable to absolutely anyone; from those just starting a business, to freelancers, entrepreneurs to small or large organisations.

Many larger companies will have a marketing team where they can hire a social media manager to do the job however it’s not as easy for freelancers who are trying to make a name for their business, with just themselves to do the work.

As a freelancer you know your business better than anyone else and therefore can push your marketing in the direction that you know it will hit your audience but how do you do that well and effectively when time management can be a factor as well as understanding all the social channels in order to do a good job?

Embrace social media

Don’t think that just because you are a small fish in a big pond that social media is not important – it most certainly is. And for some freelancers it can be the main stream of marketing that brings in new clients and reaches out to even more people.

Whether you personally love or hate social media, as a freelancer you need to be using it to promote your services.

Embrace the social networks as if they were your best friends and find a channel that works well for you, and stick to it.

Here's why we think Freelancers should be using social media in their business

Which social network do you use?

This will totally depend on your type of business and who you are looking to attract. Before you do anything, you need to establish the basics.

  • Who is your ideal client?
  • Are you working B2C or B2B?
  • What do you want to achieve from social media?
  • Who is your competition and what are they doing?

By working on these basic questions, you can give yourself a basis to build your social media content around.

If you’re a B2B freelancer you will probably find that LinkedIn is a great place to discover clients. Check out our recent post on why LinkedIn is good for your business.

LinkedIn is a great place to network and build on your relationships, showcase your knowledge and expertise as well as getting your name known within the industry circles.

Facebook is good for brand awareness and building a community. Facebook is still the largest social network and one that is great for building a following. By creating a Facebook group and providing value through this to an audience that is interested in your services, you’ll build trust, reputation and loyal customers. If you’re not ready to create your own group, there are plenty that you can join and add your value to. Be sure to jump into conversations and give solutions to people’s problems. This way you become recognised as an expert and people will come to you when they need assistance. The way you manage this will determine if these people turn into paying clients.

Twitter is a place for opinions and news so this is a place to find your audience’s conversations and to offer solutions. You can search for #hashtags relating to your industry and follow trends that will lead back to your audience. Building a following on Twitter can be relatively easy if you’re prepared to put in the time to keep up the pace – but sharing your knowledge will definitely get you noticed.

Are you using social media for your freelance business?

If you’re love images and can showcase your portfolio or service through imagery, then Instagram or Pinterest will be the place for you. Instagram is rapidly growing and with 75 million people a day scrolling through their feeds, you have good reason to want to use this platform.

Instagram allows you to get creative so whatever you are doing, wherever you are, you can capture the moment and create content that will grab the attention of your audience. Motivate and inspire people, give them a reason to want to follow you and if they like and appreciate your creativity enough, they may even get in touch to work with you!

The same can be said for Pinterest, which has become an extremely effective search engine facility where people are searching for inspiration every day. Your images do not have to be perfect, and with Pinterest you can add text to tell your audience what you are offering. Just be super clear on what you’re offering and who your attracting and if you get the content right, people will discover you.

Should freelancers use social media to promote their services?

Pulling it all together

With all your social media efforts, there are few things that need to happen throughout all of it: engagement. The key ingredient to social media marketing is engagement. Without engagement, all your efforts, time and hard work will fall flat and will be for nothing. No one wants to think they are working for nothing, right!

With this in mind, all of your content needs to have a reason or a way for people to engage with you – on every single post or tweet. There should always be a call to action or a next step they can take. Even if you’re just asking for a ‘comment below’, the audience knows what to do next.

With so much content out there, it is so easy for a user to read and scroll past without a second look. But if you catch the eye of the audience and ask them to take action, they are inclined to do so.

In this way you build reputation, trust and expertise. People will recognise your name and your identity becomes your brand, you are building a name for your business which can grow and develop.

And when people engage with your content, be sure to engage back! Show that you are human, you have an opinion and you value theirs. Create relationships with your audience and provide value to them in every way possible.

Social media is a key part of a freelancers success and the more you do it and start to love one or two particular platforms, the more you will get to know your audience and love them too.

Don’t spread yourself too thin

This is one of the hardest things to stick to, there are many great social channels out there and sticking to one or two can be a hard discipline to get into the habit of but it’s much better to do a few extremely well than to be on all networks but do them all not-so-well. Your reputation is at stake with every post that you create. With every piece of content that you produce, it needs to be clear, to the point and be focused on your ideal audience. You can set up personal channels if you want to talk about things irrelevant to your freelancing business. Your business is your focus and yes you want to be ‘you’ but you also need to come across as professional and approachable. First impressions count when it comes to potential clients. Make that first impression good wherever they find your services.

Do you have a website?

Social media is great for promoting your services and shouting about what you can do, but do you have a landing page on where they can go to find you? This landing page or website is as important as your social media profiles. If someone finds you on Facebook and clicks a post to get in touch with you but is hit with an out of date, old website, they will move on to the next freelancer. Spend some quality time updating your website (or landing page) and ensure that it’s always up to date. If you change your prices or a service that you provide, update your website. Simple.

Get your FREE copy of our social media awareness days for 2020 - download now!

Time management

All the above should be workable if you manage your time well. As a freelancer, your time is most valuable as you only have one set of hands! (Unless you outsource your social media marketing of course!) But the fact is that you can only do what you physically have time to do. Planning and organising your time is important for any business owner, so the need to factor in your social media marketing is something that should be a part of that plan.

Social media should be fun and never a chore – planning ahead and being in front of your time is the best piece of advice we can offer and always know what’s coming up so there are no big surprises.

If you’d like help, we’d love to chat with you about how to go about putting a strategy and plan in place for your social media marketing and to get the most out of it for your business. Get in touch today!

 

Why Is LinkedIn Important For Your Business?

Why Is LinkedIn Important For Your Business?

Many business owners use the common social media networks to raise brand awareness, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, but how many people forget about LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a fantastic place to raise your profile and is a powerful resource that you can tap into in order to grow your business and find new clients.

LinkedIn? Yes LinkedIn. People often think that LinkedIn is simply a place to add your CV online and that’s it. But that’s not the case, there is so much more to it than that. It’s a professional online community where you can connect with other business professionals, become known as a thought leader, show and share your expertise and get in front of people that are interested in you as well as your business – and it can be extremely powerful.

So, why LinkedIn for your business?

LinkedIn is a professional social channel where like-minded people can come together to network, gain advice, provide advice, or seek opportunities. The more you use the network, the more you will become known and the more opportunities will come your way, if you use it well.

Your profile is the core of everything and what information you put on there will influence the people that you connect with. You can use this for good or you can waste it but if you’re a business owner looking to grow your brand, using it wisely will be the better option!

you personal profile on linkedIn is the most important aspect to make sure is correct and completeYour profile

Think of your CV; career history, qualifications, skills, references, experience. Your LinkedIn profile is where all this can be put into one place online for others to see.

Many companies will search for clients (and it works both ways) on LinkedIn so this is the place where you can stand out from the crowd – if your profile is glowing with everything that person or business is looking for.

Get ahead

The secret to getting ahead with LinkedIn is to be visible and to ensure that your profile is complete. This may sound a simple thing to do, but it makes a difference. Many people fail to complete their profile, leaving gaps in their work history or forget to include skills that could be essential to a what a new client is looking for. Another simple step is that some people fail to make their profiles public which does not do well if you’re looking for clients!

In order to gain a 100% profile, complete these sections:

  • Current Position and title
  • At least two past positions
  • Education
  • Summary
  • Specialties
  • Profile Picture
  • At least three to four recommendations

You can use the summary and specialties sections to describe your industry expertise along with skills or relevant experience that you’ve gained to get to where you are now.

It’s important that when writing your descriptions and summaries to use keywords that people will be searching for when they’re looking for your specific specialty. Include things that you’re passionate about, focused on and that drives you. People will see and relate to your enthusiasm and know that you have a passion for those things.

Remember that your profile is the most important part to complete. It provides the most valuable information for potential clients, networks and businesses to learn more about you, your skills and what you have to offer. It also gives people a chance to get to know you further before approaching you for your services.

should you be using LinkedIn to grow a business?

Business Page

This is the place to promote your business, to tell a story and to showcase what your business offers. Set up a business page that reflects all that you do and the services or products that you provide. Ensure that all your vital information matches what is on your website, on other social media platforms and Google. This enables the search engines to recognise and authenticate that you’re real and align your business with other places on the internet.

Just like you did on your personal profile, ensure that all the information is complete and it includes contact details for when people want to get in touch.

Once you have a business page, you can use it together with your personal profile to build on brand awareness. It’s not easy to get people to notice your business straight from the word go, you won’t have any followers or post likes and it can be hard to get noticed unless you’ve got some great keyword copy. Therefore, to make it work better, once you have posted something on your business page, share it on your personal profile. More people are likely to see it and if they like what they see, they will visit your page (and hopefully follow!).

Also, your business has a personality and a face behind the brand, you. Let people know who you are and what your business does through your own profile. Share your business page in your own newsfeed and shout about your services! Connect the two on a regular basis so people start to relate you with the name of the business.

A business page doesn’t have to be updated too often, especially if you’re a small business  or just starting out. Once or twice a week will suffice if you are still engaging, posting and promoting on your own profile (ensure that your business page is a link on your profile). Your business page is simply a page of reference for those who want to find out more about your business. Don’t stress about not having enough time to post content all the time on there, your personal profile is more important.

People have the idea that LinkedIn is simply an online CV database or a place to look for jobs. But LinkedIn is so much more – it’s actually one of the biggest search engines online! It offers professionals a place to network and build relationships that they would not necessarily have done without the social platform. It a place to ask questions, gain expertise advice from leading experts and improve on knowledge and expertise yourself through learning and helping others.

network on LinkedIn

Networking and LinkedIn Groups

If you’re at a place where you want to take on more clients or build upon your business relationships, LinkedIn is the perfect place to network. And there are groups for everything and anything you could possibly think of! You can find relevant groups through the search function.

Joining groups can help establish yourself as an industry leader and is often how connections become clients because they can see the knowledge you have and the value you are providing. This can help with any B2B relationships you may be trying to grow.

Joining general discussions can also be done straight from your newsfeed too or you can search for topics that you know you’ll be able to give input to. Just answering people’s questions or providing solutions can lead to much more than you think. People like to recommend people they know, like and trust. When you start to build a reputation around the people you’re communicating with, you’re putting yourself out there for other people to recommend your professionalism and services.

And networking or groups doesn’t have to be all work related, you can utilise LinkedIn groups for personal hobbies or interests too! Many relationships are built from outside the office and people who have hobbies in common also build trust through their conversations which can often lead to business interests.

When you know that a contract is coming to an end, or you’re simply trying to build a business with new clients, LinkedIn is a perfect place to find new life. By engaging with potential clients and providing value in all that you post or write, you’re showcasing your business and allowing others to see what you have to offer.

Get your FREE copy of our social media awareness days for 2020 - download now!

Show your passion

The enthusiasm and passion that you put into your content, whether that be your own content and posts, articles or within comments and discussions, will make people aware of how much you care about your specialist subject. When you are able to provide passionate answers that clearly show your knowledge and background experience, you’re indicating that you know that you’re talking about! People want to know that you care. People want to know that you’re good at what you say you’re good at. People will buy from people who can prove their capabilities. LinkedIn can allow you to express all your professionalism, personality, cares and desires all in one place! It’s not a platform to share your family holiday photos (unless it tells a relevant story), it’s a place to shout out to the world what skills and talents you have and how you can use them to provide value to others.

We personally love LinkedIn and think it’s a great place to engage with your audience. What do you think? Are you utilising LinkedIn for your business?

If you know you need to be on LinkedIn but are not sure where to start, we’d love to guide you through and help you get started. Contact us and let’s talk.

 

What To Do If Social Media Networks Go Down

What To Do If Social Media Networks Go Down

Yesterday saw quite a few people go into panic mode while they were having trouble accessing Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp following a glitch with the giant company. The problem resulted in people not being able to upload or send images across the platforms. What to do when social media channels go down - don't panic!

The reason for the outage has not been confirmed although it could have been rooted in the systems that provide the content or computing power to all three, such as cloud processing.

While the systems were down, users were able to see the AI-generated captions behind the images, automated by Facebook to describe an image, for example “image may contain a person smiling” – this showed an insight into the data stored by Facebook that can be used for ad targeting, although this was not confirmed.

What can this teach us?

A good start is to be prepared in our social media marketing. You never know when a system is going to go down and to stay ahead of schedule can help eliminate some of the problems.

Using a social media management tool allows you to schedule ahead of time, not putting on the pressure when disasters happen. Although it’s still hard to be responsive when the systems are down, you can know that the majority of content is ready to go.

Use management and scheduling tools for your social media marketing and get ahead of the game!

Don’t rely on systems

As much as we love social media, it’s still important to keep a personal touch in everything that you do.

By attending in-person network meetings and becoming known in social circles can go along way in building up your reputation and being a go-to contact when someone is seeking your services.

Plus is allows you to personal in your social media, when people know the real you in person.

Use the time as experience

When systems go down that we rely on, often we can go into panic and wonder ‘how’ we’re going to get around that situation. But in business there are always going to be ups and downs and it’s the way that you deal with problem and what you learn from it that matters. Not just focusing on the social media outage yesterday, but what other trusted sourced have let you down and how have you overcome that? When something happens, we can use these situations in our business plans and put steps in place to get around them the next time it happens.

Embrace the now

We’re a big believer that everything happens for a reason, whether it’s something you plan for, or not! So when the unexpected happens, that can be the time to embrace something new and try something different. And for this example, embrace the now in your marketing, you can take pictures of you doing business ‘offline’ and what you are doing instead, and then use these in your storytelling across your social once it’s all back up and running. You can let your audience know that although there may have been a glitch on social media – but they can still get hold of you other ways next time it happens.

What to do when social media channels go down - don't panic - tell your story!

Jump onto another social platform. One of the networks that you’re not so active in, you could use these to still keep your presence alive. Shout out and let people know that you’re still in business even if the networks aren’t!

Embrace whatever happens and use it to give your brand a relevance in the ‘now’ and let your audience know that you’re up to date with the latest news and happenings. Join the KJP Community and learn how to grow your brand awareness and business online using social media marketing

Don’t be negative

Whatever you do, try not to put a negative spin on your social media – people love stories, people love to know what’s going but they love positivity and inspiration and motivation – change a negative situation into a positive. Make it a challenge and not a stumbling block.

 

What were your experiences through the outage and have you used the time to tell a story or try something different? Let us know in the comments below.

 

For those who want to get organised in their social media planning, why not download our free social media 2020 awareness days calendar which gives you ideas and space to get organised as you think about the weeks and months ahead. Don’t let another outage stop you! It’s free – download now!

2020 awareness days calendar free download

 

Are you a women in business? If so, join our Facebook Group and be supported by like-minded women who are looking to grow their business online and receive regular motivational and inspirational encouragement.

Are you a women in business? If so, join our Facebook Group and be supported by like-minded women who are looking to grow their business online and receive regular motivational and inspirational encouragement.

How To Know What To Post On Social Media For Your Business

How To Know What To Post On Social Media For Your Business

What do you find is the hardest part of using social media for your business? 

Most business owners will find that the hardest part of social media marketing is coming up with new content on a regular basis.

This could come down to not having the time to post, not knowing what to post or how to attract your audience with posts.

Lingering on these points alone will procrastinate your social media marketing and will slow you down. It could have an impact on other parts of your business too, if you spend too much time concentrating on this one aspect, or even if you get too stressed trying to figure it out, you run out of steam to carry on with anything else!

Creating content is not easy and it does come with practice. It’s a never ending cycle machine that needs to be monitored and fed, and also it needs some love. Finding the passion in your social media goes a long way to making it successful. It’s the same as anything, when you enjoy something, it works.

Not sure what to post on your social media? What do you enjoy talking about - what makes you happy?

Should I just post ‘something’ to get content out there?

Many business owners fall into the trap of just posting ‘something’ so it looks like they’re on top of their social media. Anything is better than nothing, right?

Not necessarily. If you’re churning out content with no engagement or reactions, no new followers, no comments or shares – it’s not working. You are simply spending time creating content that has absolutely no impact on your business at all, wasting your precious time and causing you stress when you can’t get ‘something’ posted.

How do you know what to post on social media?

This is the part that you need to figure out – and this should only be a handful of things, preferably not the same content posted on every social platform out there. Once you’ve worked out what it is that works well, the rest will fall into place. It’s much better to do one or two things well and to see results from those actions, than to try and do lots of things not very well. One of the reasons we lose followers or people unsubscribe from our mailing list is that they are either bored with the content, or they feel that it’s not relevant or adding value to them. The key is in providing the value so the people are going to want to continue to listen and ask for more.

Therefore, to be able to post something well and make it relevant and with value, you must enjoy what you are posting about. When you don’t enjoy it, neither does your audience. The positive energy and the vibes that you give out from your content is an important factor in your social media marketing. You need to make your brand stand out from the crowd, make your content unique and by adding in your personality and spice you’ll give it an edge – the whole reason people choose to follow you rather than another business. what should you posting about on your social media?

What should I be posting about on social media?

When you’ve discovered what you’re enjoying and what makes you smile when you’re creating it (along with more and more people engaging with the content), that’s when you’ll know that you’ve found your sweet spot. Now it’s time to focus in on this and to make it the best it could be.

You’ve tried Facebook and managed to get a little engagement. Perhaps your friends and family still support your business page and like your posts, but the community isn’t growing. You post two or three times a day, spend ages creating beautiful images with captions. Share all the latest articles that you come across and even add in some of your blog posts… but still no engagement.

You jump over to Twitter and again share all the best news stories and retweet a few posts that you like the look of. Perhaps even follow a few more people in the hope that you get some love back. Tumbleweed… nothing.

So you head over to LinkedIn in a last attempt to get a little attention, perhaps you might get one like on a post and feel like you are still appreciated.

After all of this you are absolutely exhausted, completely overworked and have not achieved very much – sound right? So what have you done wrong? 

What do you post on social media when you haven't got a clue?

Niche down and specialise

You’ve not done anything wrong per-se but you’re not giving your business the chance it needs to dig deep and find its perfect clients. After all your posting and content creation, you need to work out which is the right platform and what type of content fills you with joy; you’ll know when both are right when the content you create gives you a buzz every time you create it and you just love to talk about it and share.

This may mean that you’ve got to niche right down, you may even think that this will cut out half your audience and you’ll lose people, but that’s ok. As when you do specialise in a particular area and have a focus on your ideal clients, not a general overhaul of everyone you can imagine in a ‘just in case’ mindset, then you’ll start speaking directly to the people you want to reach.

Being too general can have a negative result even though it can seem the best thing to do to reach as many people as possible. As a young business, a startup trying to build a business, you need all the positivity you can get – and nailing down to a smaller specific audience will be beneficial and help with the success. When those ideal people start to see that you are sharing a solution to their specific problem or scratching their itch, they’ll start to follow you and engage in what you have to say. When this shift happens, you’ll discover the people that want and need your services and they’ll begin to share your content and recommend you to their communities too.

When you dig deep down, you may only find one social platform that suits your audience. For example if you are a B2B, LinkedIn might be a great place to connect with other business owners and to build relationships and to show your expertise. This will build trust and a familiarity of your brand. And when they realise that your services will give them value, they’ll come to you. No more hard-selling, no more pushing and knocking on doors. When you build a reputation for being an expert and offering value to those who need it, your business will grow organically.

What about the other social platforms?

We’re not saying that you have to dump every other social network that you’ve ever used and totally disappear from these sites. Customers are still searching for you on their favourite platform and having a presence is still a good idea. But why not spend 90% of your time focused on the platform that works for your business and 10% keeping up appearances on the rest? Join the KJP Community and learn how to grow your brand awareness and business online using social media marketing

Using a scheduling or management tool for your social platforms will help with time management and give you a freedom to spend more time on the platform that you enjoy being on and communicating with the people that are more likely to become clients. If you realise that Pinterest or Instagram are your platforms of choice, we recommend Tailwind – you can try for free too!

Where do you go from here?

It’s all about using a working marketing strategy that you can work alongside and adapt as time goes on. Setting goals and targets, understanding your business objectives and knowing what you want to achieve. When you can answer these questions, finding the platform and creating the content will be a lot easier.

Don’t forget that we’re not all good at everything – we all have our own creativity inside but not everyone knows how to express that into social media marketing. If you’re looking for guidance and a creative spirit to come alongside your business and help you tighten the reins, we’d love to chat with you. Get in touch to start the conversation.

Why not start off with our social media checklist, giving you an idea of what you can achieve on a daily, weekly and monthly basis before you get started? Organisation is a good habit to get into! Best thing is, it’s free! Download nowsocial media checklist - don't forget the basics - from KJP Creative, social media management

 

10 Top Benefits Of Social Media For Business

10 Top Benefits Of Social Media For Business

What are the benefits of using social media for business? What impact can it have on your brand and is it worth the effort long term?

These may be questions that you ask yourself over and over again, but consider this – there are 2.77 billion social media users around the globe, that’s not something to take lightly. The people on social media are engaging with brands and businesses, they are following celebrities or influencers and they are making their purchase decisions right from the social platforms.

If your business is not on social media, you could be missing out on huge potential and the chance to engage and build relationships with many customers in an extremely cost-efficient way.

Let’s take a look at the benefits to using social media for business.

1) Brand Awareness

We all want to see our brand grow and become established. As a business owner you need to reach your customers where they are and to be where they hang out. With the large global number of people on social media, your audience is going to be on there somewhere. The more you post, the more active you are, the more times you push your business out into the social media world – the more chance there is of people seeing and hearing about you. When someone discovers and likes your brand, they will tell others about you, and the awareness and journey of your business begins.

Are you using social media for business? Here are our top 10 benefits why you should be

2) Become a Thought Leader

Whatever niche you are in, there are people searching the web for answers. The more you assert yourself and provide valuable content, the more content there will be available to be found by people looking for solutions. Social media allows your brand to grow and become established within an industry niche. It’s a way to build trust and relationships, it’s a way to engage with consumers and for them to know that you’re a ‘go to’ place for information.

If you’re looking to establish your brand in this way, LinkedIn is a great place to start. Network with people relevant to your industry. Provide answers in comments that can solve issues or problems. Give people a reason to trust and like you and you’ll soon become recognised as a thought leader if you are consistent and reliable in your approach.

3) Increase website traffic

When you create killer content, you want it to be seen by as many people as possible, otherwise what’s the point, right? Once you’ve created your content, you can use your social channels to promote it. Blog post, article, press release, offer, new team member – whatever it is that you want to shout about on your website, you can use social media to do it more effectively.

Not only do you need to create the killer content on your website, you need to write just as well on your social channels in order for people to want to click through to your site. And once they’re there, you want people to stay there for a little while. Although the incoming links and shares from your social accounts aren’t as great as authentic links from high-quality sites, they are still important for SEO purposes and help to rank your site on the search engines. And you want to rank high to be found!

The best way to think about using the two platforms together is by using both your website and your social media accounts to direct traffic from one to the other. Great content on website, promote it on social media. Great post on social media will drive a consumer to your website.

4) Generate and increase leads

What’s the point of getting a consumer to click from social media through to your website? The ultimate goal is usually to gain sales. The more leads (people) you have that discover your site, the more chance of them being interested in what you have to say along with liking your brand. If they like your brand, there is a higher chance of them purchasing from you.

Not only thinking about the sales aspect of your business though, the exercise of generating leads is extremely important. It creates a database of people that are interested in your brand. It’s a resource that you can tap into when you need to. Most of the social media networks provide paid advertising ways of providing lead generation – and always worth a try if you have the budget to do so.

5) Faster and easier communication

Communicating via social media is great for responding to customers in a quicker and more effective manner. People are after ‘instant’ and that applies to questions they may have about your brand, about your product, or anything… if they can’t get an answer, it’s just as easy for them to go to the next business on the list. Many businesses miss out on opportunities when they either do not have a social media presence, or they have it and are not using it effectively.

Now it’s even easier to contact a business, file a complaint or provide a positive feedback experience. As a business you have a responsibility to be where your audience is and communicating with them on a level which they feel comfortable on.

How do you grow your business online? Are you using social media for business? Here are our top 10 benefits why you should be

6) Great customer service experience

As with the above point, having a faster and easier communication line going, customers can have a better journey with your business. The user experience is an important factor to get right. Lose the customer on the first hurdle and it could be hard to get them back.

By using social media for business, you are providing a way for them to communicate with you at any step of their journey with you. When they first hear about you, when they want to ask about your services, or if they have something to discuss – providing great customer service goes a long way. And if a person is happy with your services, they are more likely to recommend you to a friend. Loyalty and trust are built on relationship, use your social media as your customer service help desk.

7) Create engagement

Social media allows you to engage directly with your customers or followers. It’s a safe place for them to interact with your brand and to provide a two-way street between you and them. Unlike offline communications where often it can be one-sided, social media provides a way to have a dialogue or to engagement with you as a business.

This allows them to get to know you, what your business is about and if you can provide them with value. If they engage and interact, if they share your posts or like and respond to comments, you’re creating people who respect your brand. The more engagement that happens, the more changes there are of building on that relationship and in turn, building your business.

Are you using social media for business? Here are our top 10 benefits why you should be

8) Learn about your customers

The more a person engages with you, the more information you can obtain about them. Social media generates a lot of information about a person, the longer they use the channels and the more they interact with posts and brands.

By utilising the analytics functions on all the platforms, you can create a picture of your audience and angle your content directly towards what they are looking for. If you tailor your content to what the audience wants, you’re providing them with value. When a customer sees value, they start to trust you.

Encourage your followers to engage in your posts, ask them questions to gain responses and insight, learn more and more about their needs – and then use the data to create a perfect environment for them to take a step forward if they want to.

9) Keep on top of competition

You’re not the only brand out there doing what you do! Even if you think you are, there’s probably more competition than you realise. Social media gives great opportunity to keep an eye on the competition and to see what they are doing. If you can see that what they are doing works, use their ideas. Note, we didn’t say ‘copy’ their ideas! But if something has been tried and tested and it works, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

It’s also good to know what people are saying about your competition. If you find someone complaining about a service they have receive or a product they have bought, there is your opportunity to swoop in and let them know that you’re there to help.

Social listening is great for hearing about new product launches and offers and generally anything that relates to your brand. If you can stay up to date with the competition, you can stay ahead of the game.

Join the KJP Community and learn how to grow your brand awareness and business online using social media marketing

10) Tell your brand story

Using social media is perfect to tell about your brand’s story or journey. It’s a place where you can be completely open and honest, share the heart of your business and its core values and mission and be transparent to your audience.

Every business has a story. Every brand has a journey. Social media gives you a platform to share that story and to make your brand unique and stand out from the crowd above all the other competition that is out there.

You can use different social platforms to tell the story, you can use one form of medium to tell the lot, but be consistent in whatever you choose and allow you potential customers to get to know and love who you are and what you stand for.

You can also share the stories of people who buy your products or services, again building on brand awareness, customer service and engagement to create a fuller picture of what your business is about.

People love a story, what’s your story?

KJP Creative is an online marketing agency, specialising in social media management and there to help business of all sizes grow their online presence. If you’re looking for guidance in creating a social media strategy for your business or help managing your social media, we’d love to speak with you. Get in touch and let’s talk!

You can also download our social media checklist to ensure you don’t miss the basics when it comes to your social media marketing. A daily, weekly and monthly checklist to help you grow your business using social media.

social media checklist - don't forget the basics - from KJP Creative, social media management

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