How To Make An Impact On Social Media

Social media allows you to drive conversations about your brand. It’s a direct line to your audience, gives you a real-time view about what your customers are talking about, and lets you provide instant customer service.

Whatever you’re using social media for in your business, here are a few tips to help you make a big impact:

Determine (and understand) your company’s goals. Do you want to drive people to your website? Are you looking to create brand awareness? Do you want to increase your sales? Understanding your end game will help you determine what type of content and voice will work well to help you achieve your goals.

Know your voice. After you determine your company’s goals, it is equally important to determine your social media voice. Decide what language should be used to build your on-line persona. While you’re determining your voice, keep your goals and target audience in mind. Once you’ve settled on what your voice is, a “Brand Voice” document can be helpful to articulate your thoughts with stakeholders in your company.

Personality is key. This may be the most important tip of all. It’s important to be authentic on social media. No one wants to follow a buttoned-up Twitter account with tweets about the company’s earnings, and no one wants to follow an Instagram account that only posts lifeless pictures of the company’s products. The 80/20 rule is something good to keep in mind when deciding on content. 80 percent of the content should be useful content for your target audience and 20 percent should be directly or indirectly promoting your product or service.

Measure, optimize, and repeat. The number one question I get asked about social media is, how can you measure the impact social media has on my business? According to Social Media Examiner, 85% of marketers aren’t sure what social media tools are best to use.

There are a number of free analytic tools that provide useful information to measure social media’s impact. A few of my favorites are Google Analytics, Buffer, SumAll, and Twitter Analytics.

But once you have the data, don’t stop there. Use that data to optimize your current social media plan. For example, were your most popular tweets about a specific topic? Consider writing a blog post on that topic to share more of your knowledge and drive your followers to your website.

What social media tactics work well for your business?