Social Media can be one of your biggest assets in business. If you are already using it, great! But how do you know if you’re unlocking its full potential? If you don’t use it, or would like to, this is a rough guide on how to go about setting up and using Social Media. 

Step 1: Write Down Your Objectives

The best way to start is to identify what you want to achieve by using social media to market your company. Think about possible objectives like engaging your current clients, offering better customer service and building your brand reputation. These are the types of objectives that you should be looking at. You should always keep in mind that leads are not your only goal from this.

Step 2: Know Who Your Target Market Is

A social media marketing campaign should be focused on a certain target audience. Companies that say “we can sell to anyone” usually end up having a larger audience to cover. There’s 5 Million businesses in the UK alone, are you really going to target that many? Having a specific company or person in mind can

Step 3: Look at What Your Competitors are doing on Social Media

It is always good to see what your competitors are doing on Social Media. All you have to do is login to a Social Media site such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Etc. and search for that company’s name. You can then see what type of content they are posting, are they using any graphics and what feedback they are getting. From this you can see what works well and what doesn’t.

Step 4: What Are You Going to Say?

One of the trickier parts is what you are actually going to say. Many organizations don’t have a lot of available information to share. If your company does – you’re half way there! If not, then you’ve got a little bit more work to do. Your content should be timely, engaging, entertaining, thought provoking and educational…or one of those 5 at least. Also, think out of the box but always make the content relevant to your target audience.

Step 5: Choosing your platform

Which Social Media site is best for you and your business?  Every business is different and some will find success quicker on one site than the next. All of the sites are constantly evolving and making it easier for businesses to get involved every day. For business purposes you are looking at sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter. LinkedIn is the 'business hub' of the internet and allows you to connect with people from other businesses which could turn into potential clients. Twitter is also another great way of getting information out quickly which is effective if you have a lot of work to get done.

Step 6: Find a Good Support Site

Finding a site to help you manage your accounts can be a great asset. There are free sites out there such as HootSuite that allow you to track, search and even schedule profile updates quickly. These sites will make it a little easier for you to manage your overall campaign.

Step 7: Measuring your Success

After building up your reputation on Social Media how can you tell if you are doing well? Do you know how many likes or click throughs you have got? After you’ve put all your hard work and effort into Social Media you need to analyse how well you’ve done. Most Social Media sites have their own analytics tools so you can see the engagement you have got with people. Google Analytics is also a free tool that you can use. This allows you to see, a lot more in depth at how your Social Media objectives are going. Also it allows you to see what’s worked and what hasn’t so you know what not to do next.

Thank you for reading and I hope that helped!