26 1CHOOSING THE RIGHT PLATFORM FOR YOUR BUSINESS Social media provides the ultimate resource for marketing your business, and with its data collection, metrics and algorithms, the targeted approach can benefit your business on a local, national, even global scale. But which platform is right for you? Most social media platforms allow the posting of text, images and videos; however, the audience varies across them all – TikTok is targeted at 10 to 19-year-olds while YouTube has a predominantly male audience! Facebook is still the most used platform worldwide, with 2.5billion users and around 80million small businesses; you can post images/ videos/text and target your audience based on demographics such as location, age, gender and income – invaluable insights! Although YouTube is the world’s second most-visited site, allowing users to post videos of any length, does it meet all the needs of your small business? Possibly not! Due to platforms having differing audience demographics and total number of users, do your research into which one is best for you. You can create as many profiles for your business as you like across multiple platforms but be realistic with the time you have – it’s time-consuming to create consistent content, and monitor and moderate campaigns and accounts. That’s why choosing the right social media platform for your business is crucial to it being successful. 2KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE Have you done market research and data capture to discover who your target audience is, and who’s currently purchasing or looking at your brand/business? Knowing your target audiences’ needs, shopping patterns and demographics is important so you can create an effective marketing strategy. A tailored digital/marketing campaign will ensure repeat custom and customer loyalty. If you’re unsure of your audience demographics you could be wasting valuable resources and money on the marketing you’re doing, ie: time and money spent promoting a product to the wrong audience = no return of investment (ROI). 3CONTENT CREATION It’s better to post little and often rather than leaving large chunks of time between social media posts so that your followers have a consistent awareness of your brand/business. In an age where everything is visual and time limited, posts should be engaging instantly and concise in the goal they’re trying to achieve. Variation is key; videos, reels and carousel image displays are all available across most social media platforms so take the time to experiment with the tools each platform offers! Think about what your users want to see; yes the end product is lovely, but from its design concept to its production, people want to see behind a logo or a brand; customers want a personalised/human element to their purchases to gain their trust. This relationship-building between the business and consumer will ensure loyalty and repeat custom. 4MEASURE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS Only by continued analysis of data metrics will you be able to make an informed decision as to whether what you’re doing is working; from likes, shares and comments, to click-through-rates and viewing times, how is your audience responding to what they are seeing? Statistics and figures are readily available on most social media platforms, if you find they are low, the next question is: what can I do to change it? Perhaps a new approach such as more video content, or callto-action posts to get people talking about your brand again. Monitoring such activity, and additional data analytics, means the brand can assess the direction it needs to go i.e. which new lines to launch, or whether you need to shout about your sustainability impact. Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing and how their social media activity looks too, it will give you more information about your audience that you may not have already. 5MONITOR CONSUMER FEEDBACK – THE GOOD AND THE BAD! For a brand’s growth in a competitive digital market, it’s key to have a customer-focussed approach and social media activity will provide insight to what’s working for a brand and what isn’t. It’s important to always be ‘present’ on social media, not just to have a continuous stream of content online, but to also be ready to react to anything that might be left on your platforms by a user. Whether it’s positive or negative comments/complaints/feedback, monitoring your platforms means you can have a quick and effective response rate, ensuring continued customer satisfaction and maintaining that brandconsumer relationship – in turn, reviews left on other platforms such as Google Reviews and Trustpilot will be more forgiving and improve your brand’s reputation. In the first of a three-part series, Gift Focus Managing Editor Danielle Harvey shares her expert top tips for improving your social media presence online, increasing brand awareness and monopolising on audience engagement LET’S GET SOCIAL
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