Social Media is a necessary evil in this day and age for your business. You can try and ignore it or just pass it off to someone else, but there is no escaping it so you may as well learn to love something about it. Embed it into your business development and marketing so that over time it becomes second nature, and not something you have to think and re-think about so much.

Here are 10 basic tips to help you restart or start your social media posting habits:

Why do you want to be doing social media, what are your goals? What do you want to get from it?

A goal such as, ‘to make more money’ probably isn’t going to serve you very well but a goal of ‘to understand my customer better and connect with them’, would be great. Share more info with them on what you do that will make their life better – is a great goal. Very aspirational and inspiring.

Pick your target audience; who do you want to talk to that lives on social media?

Is it a business person, new mom, investor, entrepreneur, who are they and what do you know about them. Do some research and see who hangs out where. Make sure the story you create is detailed enough that you are picking one person and their story to target, the others will follow.

Pick your platform.

everyone seems to have a default platform they want to use but does it match up with who your target audience is? You are not your target audience, so do the two match up? If not find one that does. Here is a good link to check out and see if you are matching up right. 

Be consistent.

Is your social media name handle, the name you use for people trying to find you, consistent? Is it easy to understand, easy to find? How will people find you? Are your graphics the same, is your logo on there, does it all feel the same for people so that they can find you simply?

Create a strategy.

You probably have more to say than you think, I would put money on it. Do you have content you can repurpose and break into bite size pieces, media coverage, articles, testimonials, case studies of work, interesting facts about your team? FAQs, client stories, do’s and don’ts, your core values would all be great things to share. Create an editorial calendar. If you want our free editorial calendar template email us at hello@switchbackcreative.ca subject line: Editorial Calendar please. It is simplest first step you can take.

Create the right mix of things to share with your audience.

You need to have some consistent brand messaging for sure. But you also need some silly things, behind the scenes, reviews, links to your website, great articles and resources to share. Variety is the spice so it doesn’t get boring for people.

Have conversations, get engaged.

Be genuinely interested in what things others are doing. Comment, share their information, events and share your opinion as appropriate. If you have thoughts to share put it out there, be brave.

Be Curious.

Find resources and articles you are excited to share. Social media can be hard if you don’t believe in continued education or if you are not constantly on the look out for new information and sharing what you have learned. If you change your mindset to ‘BE CURIOUS’ then it’s a lot easier all around.

Be a Novice.

Don’t worry so much about what you are and aren’t suppose to do and just treat it like conversations you would have with potential customers for your business. Think outside the box what do you think would be interesting to share and tell people about?

Keep at it.

Use the schedulers as needed and do your posts for a week, at least, at once. Facebook has page scheduler. Twitter has tweet-deck. there are lots of third party ones that work as well but won’t get you as good of results as the native posting ones will.

Give them all a shot and worst comes to worst reach out for more help. Check out what others you admire are doing and how can you learn from them. If you want help posting and managing social media we could help with that too but we hope that these tips get you started in the right direction. Write on!