How to be heard on social media

How to be heard on social media

Social media is unavoidable these days - even as I type they're discussing its influence on the radio.

For small businesses or your own personal brand it's a high impact and low investment way to raise your profile.  It's an opportunity to reach new audiences, develop fans and be seen by buyers, journalists and potential customers.

But it can be overwhelming - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube where do you start? And how do you avoid making social media a full time job in itself?

Here are my top tips for getting started on social media:

1. Don't spread yourself too thinly. You don't have to be on every single platform. It's better to focus on one or two and do it really well.

2. Keep it personal. My old mantra is 'People tweet not businesses' and the same goes for the other platforms. If you're a tiny business use a picture of yourself in your profile rather than your logo so people get to know you as an individual.

3. Think about your tone of voice - social media is just a new way to chat and gossip with friends - so don't come across as corporate or monotone - you need to sound genuine, authentic and interesting with a variety of content.

4. It's not a one way street - continually plugging and pushing your own products or services will be counter productive and put people off, like a pushy second hand car salesman! It's ok to slip in the occasional plug but mix it up with behind-the-scenes insights, sharing other news or links to press articles and blogs you think would engage your followers.

5. It's all about conversation - listen to and engage with other people, comment on their posts, ask questions and don't forget to reply to people who talk to you.

6. Sometimes things you find mundane about your work can be fascinating to others. Behind-the-scenes content is always popular - people like to be nosey and have an insight into your daily life or the process of making your product. 

7. To find people to follow (and hope they follow you back) look at some of your competitors followers - if they're interested in one gin-distiller or cheese-maker chances are they'll be interested in you too.

8. Twitter and Instagram are particularly strong and useful in the food and drink. Instagram is growing hugely but is still a relatively small community so it's easier to get noticed here than Twitter or Facebook.

9. To be noticed on Instagram you do need to use good quality photos. Photos taken on your phone are fine but perhaps spend a bit of time editing them before uploading, cropping, or brightening. Don't use the Instagram filters - they won't do your photo any favours.

10. You can automatically share your Instagram posts on Twitter and Facebook - but don't bore your followers with the same content on all platforms all the time.  If you tweet from Instagram your followers won't see the image only a link to click through so I would recommend posting images separately on each.

11. Don't be intimidated by hashtags! They seem to be being used less on Twitter these days but they can be really useful for increasing reach on Instagram. Don't clutter up your post with loads of hashtags, but you can put in a few paragraph returns and hide them below the fold. There are lots of websites out there that will tell you the most useful hashtags in food and drink. But have a look at what other people are using and find the ones that appeal to you.  

12. If you're more confident with words than images stick to Twitter. Use it to join conversations and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise in what you do.

13. On Facebook you will need to create a business page and make sure you put useful business info and some photos in. But Facebook has made it harder to get reach and engagement without paid for content and I'd suggest if you're new to social media focus your efforts elsewhere at least to start with.

14. Facebook wants people consuming content so will reward brands creating engaging content and penalise those that aren’t by limiting their reach. While once it was better to post something every day now it’s more important to focus on quality.  

If you need help getting set up on social media or just to reboot your presence and get more followers give me a shout >