The holiday season is upon us and every company—your competitors included—are pouring their time and budgets into getting your customers' mindshare with email, banner ads, and search engine marketing. One of your most effective ways to compete, especially with a limited budget, is going where your customers are on social media.
We've put together some best practices and recommendations to help your business optimize your social channels this season.
Go where your customers are
Not every social network is going to be the right channel for your business. Take some time to think through: Who is your target customer? How old? What do they do for work? For fun?
If your customer is primarily in the 16-24 year-old age group, try Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. Conversely, if your core customer is a business professional, odds are they'll be looking at LinkedIn.
Plan ahead
Create a social selling calendar, scheduling both your content and your promotions. Writing posts and tweets—not to mention designing visuals—takes longer than you might expect. Having a calendar in place will keep you from scrambling at the last minute to post something worthwhile. Commit to a regular schedule—post one thing weekly, for example.
What to say
Once you've figured out the where and the when, figure out what you're going to say.
Shoppers come to your social channels for many reasons: to learn more about your company, to get information or ask questions, or because you've got something interesting to say.
Build a reputation as a thought leader—or perhaps an original voice—in your industry. Address problems that your potential customers might have—problems that your products can help solve. The more you can show people that you're interested in helping them, the more they'll trust and eventually buy from you.
Emphasize social, not selling
Remember that social selling is soft selling. Building relationships with your audience is more important than generating immediate sales. A relationship is a two-way street, so take the opportunity to both get to know your audience and to let them get to know you.
Interact with your shoppers. Reading and responding to their posts will help you understand what's important to them. (It's also a great source for keywords and other pieces of information that can help you target your products and promotions better.) "Like," respond to, repost and retweet comments or posts from your customers. Similarly, post questions that can start discussions.
All this serves to help customers feel they're getting to know you as a person and as a business owner. Plus, all the while you'll be building ties back to your brand.
It's OK to sell your products. Just be strategic.
As you build out your social selling plans, be strategic with the portion of posts you dedicate to featuring your products. Twitter suggests an 80/20 rule (80% of your tweets should focus on relationship-building, while 20% link back to products or promotions). The truth is that there's no one rule that fits all.
While hard-selling in every post is a sure way to get customers to unfollow you, posting content that adds little relevancy is only going to bore them. Just make sure to be sensible, relevant, and contextual when selling in your social channels. You're going to have to test various approaches to find out what works best for your business.