Social Media for Small Business Beginners - Retain Your Community
Social media is now an integral part of a brand’s online identity but it is not as simple as creating a Facebook page and expecting a community to form overnight. In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we discussed how to plan and launch your social media presence. Part 3 looks at how you continue to retain your community.
Social Media never sleeps
After a social media platform has been set up, it will be a permanent presence for your brand. Once you start posting content on your preferred platforms, it can be detrimental to your brand to stop publishing content – try to post in moderation and do so consistently.
If you start your online presence with a flurry of activity, it can create an expectation that you will continue in the same vein. So be aware of what you are unwittingly promising your followers from Day One.
Check what’s happening
Knowing what is being said about your brand on social media channels is important. Monitoring tools will allow you to aggregate records of every time a user mentions your brand on different social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. There are numerous free services that will allow you to do this. Monitoring tools can show positive and negative comments (called sentiment) about your brand.
It is critical to respond to unfavourable comments as well as positive comments from users. Regardless of the type of feedback, staying positive during any interactions with customers is important; negative responses posted by a business can reflect poorly on the brand and are unlikely to resolve the user’s problem.
Update, update and update
The most important part of managing a social media presence is to provide users with a good reason to return. Static platforms detract from user engagement; it is vital that new content is regularly published for users to view. Just as important is to keep this at a consistent level, as some users may feel overwhelmed by too much content from a brand.
Content can also be sourced externally: if there is other content that you think may interest your customers and target market, it can be used to provide a deeper understanding about your brand. Respecting copyright, declaring authorship, and linking back to the original source all play a part in any use of third party content.
Cater for different platforms
As different platforms are suitable for different types of content, it is important to try to develop content that ‘fits’ the platform it is being used on, such as:
• Facebook: Links, Images, Videos and Events
• Twitter: Text, Links, Images and Video
• LinkedIn: Text and Links
• Foursquare: Images and Location Tips
Having some content consistently represented across all channels can help ensure brand consistency – it is possible to link different platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, for specific types of content such as Text or Photo updates.
However if you develop more than one social media platform, ensure that not all content is exactly the same on every platform – differences in some of the content on the different channels can encourage users to connect with your brand on multiple channels.