When I meet new clients I tell them one thing; I will make sure you are following digital marketing best practices (often with a lot of free general business advice thrown in because I can’t help myself when asked) and that in itself should make a big difference to your sales. Here are some tips that you don’t see online enough:
“When I meet new clients I tell them one thing; I will make sure you are following digital marketing best practices…”
Stop trying to go viral
Using influencers usually yields followers and it’s a good way to achieve going viral but that doesn’t always equate to sales. If you are going to go down this route, you’ve got to make sure your business is ready when you do. You want as many of the new accounts as possible that you’ve reached to engage with your brand and spend money with you. If your business is in its early stages of online presence or if there is a lot of clean-up work to be done (i.e. fixing your social media image, improving customer retention, bettering online customer service, creating a new marketing strategy, improving product/service photography etc) I would never advise trying to go viral as part of your initial social media strategy. This is because content can gain traction for the wrong reasons and won’t benefit your business if you aren’t ready for this kind of attention. I would also never advise gaining lots of exposure for your business without having a functional user journey and polished social media pages in place first. I.e. Is there anything that could put off certain audiences (and valuable customers) from your account pages? If people do head to your shop, is it easy to purchase items online and is your stock up to date? Are your services understandable to everyone?
What you really need is to find an audience who actually spend money with you. Would you rather have 1000 followers who engage with your content daily (helping you reach additional like-minded customers), shop with you and use your services loyally and recommend your business to other people… or would you prefer to have 15,000 followers who never engage?
Never ever be tempted to purchase followers
Purchasing ghost followers who are there simply to make your following look good can actually damage your engagement rate. As ghost followers can have this negative effect on your statistics, it’s also wise to remove ghost accounts from your followers when you’re certain the account isn’t genuine.
Hold off from posting for the sake of posting
It’s certainly beneficial to post regularly but if you’re spending a lot of your precious time posting daily without financial gain or you find yourself wasting your social media budget asking an expert to simply get content out there then I recommend you take a step back. In this scenario where budget is limited, I tell clients to narrow down what their most important goals are in a way that can be quantified so that we can track progress and adjust tactics accordingly. You will then be able to build a focussed strategy around this through research and proven digital marketing techniques. Posting every day is great when you have endless time on your hands and a large social media budget but it’s not wise if you can only afford a handful of professional hours a month.
“…where budget is limited, I tell clients to narrow down what their most important goals are in a way that can be quantified”
COMPARE YOUR OFFERING TO YOUR COMPETITORS AND CHAMPION WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT
Trust me, it’s worth putting some time aside to research your competitors social media presence. You’ll be able to see what customers liked and disliked, and realise all the ways in which your business is different. This is the point where you should build a social media plan so you can fill any gaps in the market. If your competitors have a hard sales approach then you could try a softer style; show your business behind the scenes, make your call to action links more fashionable, gentle and design them so they don’t look desperate. Combine this with posting more often than your competitors (as long as you’ve created a seamless plan) and you’ll likely be seen as the more appealing option.
ReLAX and take a break if you want to
“Adopt the mindset that they need you!”
Have you ever unfollowed a brand you like because they stopped posting for a week? If you answered ‘no’ then that’s most likely because you see value in that brand and how often they post on social media isn’t going to alter your opinion of them and the products you like. Yes, posting more often is overall the best thing to do because it keeps your social media reach growing but if your content has become watered down rubbish just so you can keep up with the time demands of posting every day then what’s the point? If you lose followers because you didn’t post for a few days then it really isn’t the end of the world, they were unlikely to shop with you and aren’t worth the time it takes to create content. If anything, creating a bit of mystery by disappearing for a while can build intrigue and make your followers more interested when you do come back. It can also be quite off-putting to see a tonne of posts from a business screaming ‘buy from me’ in your feed every day. Take a more relaxed approach, encourage people come to you. Adopt the mindset that they need you!
So there you have it, a few tips from Cotswolds Content that I hope will help your business and encourage you to stay away from some potentially damaging social media paths. Let me know in the comments what you think and if there is any other advice going around on social media strategy you disagree with!
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