What Are the Best Social Media Practices for Your Business?

Most every business is on social media nowadays- that’s a given. Some businesses are more successful on social media than others because they know what they’re doing, and have managed to find something that followers connect with. Plus, said followers also like the business in question, meaning that they’ll stick around on their social media profiles.

If you’re a new business, however, you may be unsure as to what the best social media practices should be. How you manage your personal social media profiles should differ from how you manage your business’ social media profiles. So if you’re opening a business and want to nail the social media game from the get-go, here are the best social media practices for your business.

1. Determine which audience(s) you want to connect with

This may come to you as you figure out the customers you want your business to reach. This includes their age, their socioeconomic background, their spending habits, and even where they are in life. There are major differences between a 21-year-old college student, a 30-year-old mom of two, and a 65-year-old newly retired individual.

Regardless of the customers you want to reach, these are the same people you want as your social media audience. Create a list of them so that you know who you want your followers to be. They’re the ones that will most likely flock to you first, and that’s super important.

2. Choose which social media networks to utilize

It may be tempting to create profiles on every social media network for your business. But that actually the worst thing you can do. Instead, focus your energy on the social media platforms that will best benefit your business. You want to go to where your audience spends their most time.

This again goes back to the background of your audience(s). If you’re unsure where to start, I highly recommend that you look at Hootsuite’s Social Media Demographics for 2020. Connect the statistics to your audience in order to determine what are the best social media platform(s) for your business.

3. Monitor your competition’s social media

It would be a big mistake to ignore what your competitors are doing on social media. You need to keep tabs on them to determine how they’re executing their respective social media. You want to understand who and where they are, what they’ve done and continue to do, how well they’re doing, and how they threaten your business.

This may feel like a pointless task on the surface- but it really isn’t. Looking into your competitiors’ social media answers many questions that can in turn improve your social media. This includes (but isn’t limited to) the social media networks they use, how much they post, their social media engagement, and their strengths and weaknesses. The most important thing you’ll discover is how much of a threat they pose to your business’ social media. From there, you can determine where you need to improve on your social media in areas that your competitors are both good and bad at.

4. Respond to comments, mentions, and mentions ASAP

This is another important social media practice that your business needs to do religiously. Two-way communication is so important because customers will want to hear from you. Whether it concerns a customer complaint, customer service question, or just praise, it’s important to respond to it in a timely manner.

No matter what social media platforms your business ends up using, it’s crucial to monitor where your business is mentioned. It could be public mentions, comments on a post, or private messages. How and when you respond to them matters because your audience is looking to hear from you. Responding to them doesn’t just make them happy- it also boosts your overall social media engagement, which is also very important.

5. Measure your results and adjust when needed

No matter what you’re doing on social media, it doesn’t fully matter if you aren’t measuring how you’re doing. After all, it’s important to see how well your business’ social media is doing, and where improvements need to be made. As time goes on, this will be necessary in order to better your social media and increase your followers and engagement.

Most, if not all social media platforms have their own analytics dashboards within the sites. They each allow you to see how well you’re doing, as well as where you need to improve upon. They show four important factors:

• Impressions: The number of times your posts were on-screen.

• Profile Visits: The number of clicks on your username.

• Reach: The number of unique post views.

• Website Clicks: The number of clicks on the link in your profile.

All of these matter equally, so learn up on them so that you can finetune your business’ social media on a regular basis.

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While there are many, many more social media practices that every business should follow, these are a few that are arguably the most important. Once you’ve mastered these, you can go on to dramatically improve your business’ social media as you see fit. The sky really is the limit!

Do you know of any social media practices that businesses should follow? Please feel free to share them in the comments. I’d love to hear them!

xo,

Elizabeth