Mike Schertenlieb
Social media – in all its various forms – has become a mainstay of our lives, both personal and professional. For businesses and entrepreneurs, a presence on various social media platforms can be a key component of generating leads, driving traffic, and building relationships with existing customers and clients.
Unfortunately, though, keeping up with social media, especially multiple accounts, can be a time sink that many business owners find a bit cumbersome. In an effort to make more time in their busy days, they end up outsourcing their ongoing social media needs to services like ours – and that’s great!
We’re happy to help, but to make sure it’s going to work effectively for everyone involved, there are a few things that should be determined before you delegate your social media posting to a third party.
If you’re considering hiring LongerDays for your ongoing social media, following these tips can get you up and running faster, ensure your messages are effective, and help you achieve more with your social media.
1. Why Social Media?
What’s your goal? Why do you want to have a business presence on social media in the first place? It’s surprising how many business owners don’t have an answer to this simple question.
There are plenty of hyper-strategic answers here, but even a vague idea is better than nothing. “Because everyone else is doing it” is not a good reason – but “getting to know my customer base on a personal level” sure is… So is “get more views on my videos to drive interest in my products.”
Just a little bit of intent goes a long way in helping the people you hire – from helping you decide what social media networks are the most effective for your needs to crafting the copy of the posts themselves. It helps us know what to tag or link to, what kinds of messages to notify you about, and so on…
Consider it basic context – the more our team knows about your goals and intentions, the better we’ll be able to meet your expectations.
2. Voice
Just like creating site copy or blogs for your business, the “voice” you use in your social media posts says a great deal about your company. Or put another way, the demographics and interests of your target audience are going to influence what type of “voice” will be the most resonant and effective with that group(s).
If you’re selling a game app or hip clothing, your social media voice is likely to be pretty casual, with plenty of room for comedy and commentary on the other interests shared by your market. If, on the other hand, you’re a tax lawyer… Your clientele probably isn’t interested in much other than specific, to the point, professionally presented information.
Your unique business may fall anywhere between those two extremes, but knowing how you prefer to interact with your customers and prospects will help us create appropriate content, and make a seamless transition when taking over your social media project.
3. The Strategy
Different businesses take all kinds of different approaches to social media, including some companies that architect entire campaigns, carefully study metrics, and have an entire strategic plan for ads, boosted posts, video series, and the like. If that’s the camp you fall into, outsourcing the actual labor of implementing such a plan can be a huge value.
That’s not to say that we can’t help if you haven’t yet worked out the “how” and “what” of your campaign. It’s safe to say that more of what goes viral is unplanned verses planned. There are countless examples, Success Kid is one:
Social media moves so quickly that simply “being active” to show that your company is “alive” can be a perfectly legitimate plan.
4. Expectations
Keep in mind, most social media sites make their money from selling ads to businesses. They don’t necessarily want your business posts to be seen by your audience. If businesses could just post status updates for free and reach their market, why would anyone ever pay for ads!? It would destroy the social media revenue model.
Building an organic, engaged audience on social media is an uphill battle. That is why it is so important to have a clear goal in mind. Considering this, you may want to split your social media budget between status updates, boosted posts, and PPC ads.
How We Can Help
We’ll schedule and post content that you provide, or post content we create that you have approved. We’ll set up your ads with the targeting you’ve provided or approved. We’ll create the graphics and images you need, tag the pages and Twitter handles you give the green light on, get your posts online at the times and dates you select, and so on. We’ll even check messages and respond to prospects and customers, if you like… We are here to help, to save you time and energy.
Want to learn more?
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