3 basic principles that make your social media presence successful

In this short writing I want to reverse the way of thinking. My aim is to give you the opportunity to think a little bit with a head of a customer, which requires a lot of empathy. We need to understand what they actually need when they are on social media. We need to look through the lences they have and thus we can get accurate explanation about the way we can manage them to buy something.

This post is especially for the people who are in B2C business but I think we all can learn something from it because this is not just about social media and marketing. It’s about real life too, it’s about understanding each other in a better way.

1. People are on social media because they want to be social — reverse the way of thinking

Quite simple right? But unfortunately we tend to forget it. At the beginning we started to use social media platforms because we wanted to interact with people, we wanted to communicate more, we wanted to know more about the world around us.

„Nowadays we tend to forget why social media world emerged. We wanted to be more social.”

If your aim is to win people, it’s an essence to communicate with them. If you run a business and that business has a social page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., you need to get in touch with your followers. They probably have questions to you and for them social media is the easiest way to obtain some knowledge or information. Just reverse it for a second. Now you are the customer and you messaged the company you want to offer something from. You asked for details about the product, some practical tips to use it. You don’t get any answers just after 3 days. How do you feel then? Aren’t your feelings inconvenient? You may feel that you are not important for the company, you may feel you are just in the background behind a lot of stuff.

„Will you like them after they’ve left you in bad feelings? „

Let me add a short story here which may can serve as a relevant example.

Recently I had an issue with quite a big company — I don’t want to name them- . I don’t want to talk about the details too much but it was about losing more than $100 on my side. So I decided to write them a private message on Facebook. They replied to my message within 24 hours, which was a big surprise for me. We did talk and they kept replying within a day. Every time. So finally I lost my $100 but in fact I wasn’t dissatisfied. And You know why? Because despite the issue we had, the whole team was very kind, helpful and had a very good manner. And that is what a client needs. They tried every choices and I felt that they really want to help me and solve my problem.

To sum up:

• Communicate with your followers! They need it!

• Don’t leave them in bad feelings.

• Be emphatetic and think through the lences they have.

• Reply to their messages as soon as possible and really do try to help them.

2. Your main purpose on social media is not to sell your product — first

It may sounds weird or new but that is the truth. Of course the final aim is to sell it but first you need to build trust, you need to inform your potential customers, you need to go through the process to make them do so. This process has different time periods. There are plenty of people who don’t ponder too much and what they may need is just a creative, attractive video with the features of the product/service and you’ve already won them.

„But there are people who need to get a glimpse behind the scenes and so they will trust you.”

Some people really need that. They need to see content continuously, they need to be convinced. Your task is to know your audience and after that you can start sharing contents that contribute to this aim which is to build trust. This part of social media is not easy but it really worth the effort. I would call it „social media trust”.

„Imgaine social media trust as an enormous castle. You start the construction with a thing you don’t see the result of. The ground.”

It really is a tough work but what comes after is something more beautiful and attractive for all social media marketers. After you built up a basic audience and you stick to your image, people start to write comments under your posts, they start to ask for information, and they start talk about you. So if we go back to the trust building process, I would recommend to start with building your audience. You get more followers, you get more comments, shares and then you can slightly start to show what you have to sell. In the first time period you just provide value and tell what are you up to what will result you the deserved amount of ROI.

To sum up:

• Know your audience so you know who and how to convince.

• First, just provide value, build the „social media trust” and then sell your stuff.

• Forget the „Buy it now” buttons at the beginning. You need to build up the process.

3. Be consistent, have a structure — story tell

We’ve heard from many big marketers, social media experts the following: Instead of creating content, tell your story. But what does that exactly means? What it means is that through your journey, through your company’s journey there are a lot of things, happenings worth sharing. Let’s see some examples.

Clothes merchandise

You run a fashion shop where you sell clothes. Here is what you can do. You can put out a picture of a fully satisfied customer. You can ask him/her to send a picture when he/she has the new clothes on and you can share it. You can share pictures about the newest models. You can share a picture about the newest collaboration you made with another shop in the neighbourhood. You can share a video about an interview you made with a vendor who works there, or again, a satisfied customer who is opened enough to do that for you.

Mid-class restaurant

You run a simple mid-class restaurant. Here is what can you do. Before the opening hour, You can put out a picture of the whole space filled with outstanding furnitures, saying: „The whole team is ready to serve our incoming guests.” You can put out a video about the food decorating process, the last and the most attractive part of food-making. You can share your latest discounts, the actual menu, etc.

See? There are just so many ways to tell your story. Instead of sharing unintresting and unrelevant stuff on social media, try to focus on great story telling.

„Every single company has a story worth telling.”

Another important part of storytelling is the structure. So you have the story you want to share with your customers but be aware of the way you want to tell it. Let me explain this a little bit because it may seem a bit problematic.

Here are some relevant questions to start:

• Who do I want to reach through social media? What will they expect from me?
• How many posts do I want to share each day?
• What kind of content will the posts have?What is the budget for social media?

You have to be clear about the „infrastructure” you share your content in. Know the outlook of the pictures you want to share: black and white, pictures with quotes, pictures with people, etc. Know the audience you want to reach so you can personalize the content for them. Know how much you want to post on each day, know the best time to do it. Which time is your audience on social media? How much money you have to spend on social media? Can you buy automatization? Can you buy analytics to track your statistics? Or maybe you can pay somebody to do that whole thing?

After you answered these questions it becomes clear and simple to start. You have then clear goals, clear obstacles you have to beat. And so the progress begins.

And another thing for story telling: Make it interesting for your audience, make it funny and benefical. I started to understand this concept when I saw this quote from Daniel Ndukwu: „Telling a good story removes our defences & lets us learn lessons while being entertained.” I think it becomes clear when we think about that a little bit.

You can entertain your audience and provide practical life tips simultaneously.

To sum up:

• Story tell. Your company also has a story worth telling.

• Have the proper structure to tell your story. Be consistent, be easy to follow and understand.

• Ask yourself the relevant questions before you start and then you will know exactly what you want to achieve.

Instagram: @ksocialmedia17