Marketing yourself on social media seems to be easy and free. But it’s not free because creating, updating, and maintaining social media profiles takes time. And it’s not easy because you have to update your profiles often and interact with your audience. Here’s a concise step-by-step social media guide on how to establish a strong presence on social networks.
1. Start with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and WordPress
Consistency is key. Although all these platforms are essentially different, it’s crucial that you use the same username, contact details, description, and when possible, even colors and graphics across them. Provide full information, completing your profiles 100%. Make sure you interlink all your profiles.
2. Update and improve your social media profiles
The social networks above can direct thousands of visitors to your website, but only if your content is good. Content is king when it comes to social networks. Start by updating and improving your existing profiles with great content, and build an audience on each before creating profiles on new networks. Expand gradually.
While you want to be on as many social networks as possible, you don’t want to use more than you can handle. A social media strategist can help you choose the right sites to begin with.
3. Attract the right followers
Winning followers is crucial to consolidating your social network presence. But as a social media strategist would tell you, it’s far more important to make sure that all your followers are actually interested in what you have to offer. Having many followers doesn’t guarantee great conversion rates. To attract the right followers, target them based on their interests. You can do this through the topics and keywords you choose for your content.
4. Increase your followers
Building a loyal following takes time. To speed up the process, become actively engaged in the social networks you’re on, commenting, liking, and following other people and companies.
5. Add social media sharing and liking buttons on your website and blog
If you use a platform like WordPress, adding those buttons will be as easy as installing and configuring a plugin. Even if you don’t use WordPress, you can get official sharing and liking widgets and add them to your site or blog.
3 Tips When Establishing a Social Media Presence
- Keep your personal and corporate social media profiles separate.
- Post as much unique content on each social media website as you can, and do it often.
- Keep an eye on your competitors’ social media profiles to see what they are doing.
In the end, keep in mind that while building a social media presence takes time, it’s time well spent – the benefits, including more traffic and engagement – will be significant.