Business guide to getting started with Social Media.

Getting started on Social Media can be quite daunting at first and many people do not know where to begin. Particularly; which platforms should they be on? what type of content should you be sharing and how often?

You also have other questions such as who should be handling your social media, how much budget should you put towards it and when is the right time to start some paid advertising and much more.

Step One - Get to know your target customer

Write down who your main customer is, if you do not know at this stage you will no doubt have a rough idea of who you target customer is for your service or your product. This is fundamental for any business.

The key information you will need to define is

- How old they are

- Are they male or female

- Where are they located e.g. within the UK, Europe or globally

- What their buying habits are like

- What other interests do they have

If you wanted to be even more analytical and / or you have the data available to you from your business marketing efforts to date, you could start to define

- Are they first time buyers or second home owners

- Do they have a disposal income?

- What types of jobs are they likely to have?

And so you see you will begin to create customer profiles based around what you either know about your customer or think you know based on intelligent guess work.

You may not get it right at first but having a starting point for any of your marketing is the best way to go, then later down the line in say 6 -12 months time you can stop and evaluate the new data you have from your social and digital marketing to see if the above still rings true or has your customer changed. All of this work informs you social media targeting and the content that you share online and ultimately lead to better conversions, more customers and more sales!

Step Two - Where are your customers most active online

Using what you know about your customer, you can start to make a hypothesis about which platforms on social media, they are likely to be the most active on. For example if you target customer is between the age of 18 -35 female, you will most likely find them on Instagram and Facebook, and so you know to have a presence on that platform and start marketing to this audience. Maybe you have a product that appeal more to older professional Males between the ages of 25 - 50, therefore you may want to interact with them on Linkedin and Twitter. So you begin to form ways to target your desired customer.

Another way to check which platforms your business should be most active, is to list your top 5 competitors and see where they are most active online. This will give you a clear insight, not only into where you should be, but what you should be doing online in terms of content that best fits your audience.

Step Three - Do A Competitor Analysis

For any good business or business idea you should in the beginning start to look at your competitors.

- What are they offering

- What content are they are sharing online

- What is their website like and the user experience

- What types of posts are they sharing on their social media platforms

- Which types of posts are generating the most engagement for them.

This will give you an idea of what type of content would resonate with your target audience or customer, and also what if any do you have to offer that they do not. Your USP!

You should also take a look at what is going on within your industry on the whole to get a bigger picture and to surface any trends that your competitors might not have seen as yet, being this active may give you a content edge over them.

Step Four - Getting Started and setting up your social media platforms

If you have someone in your business that is tech savvy they could help in setting up your platforms, but we would definitely recommend getting a professional to help you to do this and these are the top reasons why;

1) It's important to make a good impression and social media is most often the first platform a person will hear about your business and find you online.

Having it fully optimised, looking professional and linking to your sites or product correctly, to avoid loosing any potential customers along the way.

2) Setting up correctly is key and your profiles, account and handles need to be set up to be able to function for what you need not only now but as your business grows. Setting up the wrong accounts in the wrong way can cause many issues down the line and having to change or transfer can sometimes cause loss of old accounts and in some cases not even possible, so make sure you do the right thing from the beginning. This include getting the right social media handles, creating the right copy about your brand, picking the right types of pages or accounts and much more.

3) Keeping your brand protected is important. Whilst some companies get a more junior member of staff to manage this, I suggest this is a recipe for disaster, because you really want this task to be in a safe pair of hands. Social media is new form of PR and if you accidentally share the wrong post, with the wrong hashtag, at the wrong time or not responding to problems correctly, all of these things could seriously damage a businesses reputation and in some cases have actually closed businesses down due to the bad press generated by a mistake that has been made. So you really must be careful

If you are going to use a junior member of staff please at least ensure the the following to protect your business:

- Give this member of staff proper Social Media Training

- Make sure they get some form of Online Reputation Management Training which includes how to respond to customer complaints or dealing with a crisis

- Put a process in place where you have a senior member of staff to review your content before it is shared live or sometimes more staff members, this is also good practice for any potential spelling or grammatical errors.

- Put a process in place where the team can discuss some of your socials and share ideas, if generally people are onboard then it is a good thing and you can stop any potential bad ideas in their tracks.

- Lastly and most importantly, think "What would Disney do!" unless you are a news company or your purpose is to share hard hitting headlines and close to the bone content. Please, stay away from posting about politics, religion or any other potentially divisive topics.

4) Consistency is key. Making sure your branding is on point, when a customer visit any of your platforms, ensuring your tone of voice fits your brand and appeals to your customers and lastly that the content is engaging and looks professional

All of this this builds trust between your customers and your brand, that you mean business!.