The Cathedral Quarter BID have put together some information to help you to start or refresh your social media channels.
During this challenging period, people are embracing online technology so its a great time to engage with previous, current and potentially new customers and keep them informed of how your business is operating now and once the isolation period has ended.
Goals & Objectives
What do you want to achieve?
Decide what you want to acheive from your Social Media. Do you want more followers, increased engagement, sales, traffic to your website? Come up with some objectives.
Social media has changed the way we live our lives, it’s everywhere, unavoidable and a powerful marketing tool.
There are 3.5 billion daily active social media users, thats about 45% of the population. This proves a fantastic opportunity to grow your online presence and your business.
Engagement
Make sure you ask questions, respond if someone answers and try to keep the conversation going, it shows you’re interested.
Try out different content types to find what works for your audience. Try linking to blog posts, videos, your website, go live….
If you ‘re posting a link to a an article, write a description so people know what to expect when they click on the link.
Blogging
A blog doesn’t have to be huge amounts of text – great pictures and minimal text can make a great blog too!
You can regularly see Micro blogging on Instagram and Facebook, it’s just a longer version of a post, nicely ordered paragraphs telling a story and they usually centre around an image to draw in the reader.
Different Platforms
LinkedIn – A professional network that is perfect for B2B audiences.
Facebook & Twitter – A bit of everything but video and live content seem to be very popular in getting engagement..
Instagram – If your content is highly visual this is the platform for you.
Pinterest – Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is highly visual. it can be highly effective at driving traffic back to your blog or online shop.
Remember many people are at home at the moment with more spare time than usual, so this could be your time to increase your following.
Helpful Tools
hootsuite is great for scheduling posts and it allows you to create a free account. It does restrict you to managing 3 social media accounts, For example you can add Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and post out to all at a time specified by yourself.
Photo Editing
Ensure you take the best images possible. you can also use a photo editing tool of which there are plenty. You will more than likely already have apps on your phone which should be more than enough to resize and enhance an image.
ripl, canva and instories are really good tools for stock photography and allow for adding text, colours and other elements that fit with your brand.
Look at the latest trends
Instagram stories is a fun way of engaging and when used regularly you’ll find your loyal following.
