Social media is a fantastic way to promote yourself or your business – it can increase awareness of your brand, bolster your design portfolio, improve your site's SEO (web hosting services can also help here), and help you to genuinely connect with your customers. It's easy to set up a social media page, but gaining traction and turning handfuls of followers into thousands and thousands of engaged users is tough.
There's no magic formula to success in social media, and it can feel like it's taking a very long time to attract the right followers. There are some social media tricks and some basic rules you can follow to help things along. However, these vary between social media platforms, so we've zoned in on five power tips for each of the three main players: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
If you follow advice, and remain patient during the lulls in follower activity, you will be well on the path to audience engagement. Need to create a site worthy of a stellar social media presence? Here are the best website builder tools around. And be sure to back up your assets in secure cloud storage.
On this page we look at Facebook, and on the following pages you'll find power tips for Twitter and Instagram. Let's dive straight in…
Facebook power tips
01. Get local
If you are only going to do one thing with social media from now on then it should be this. Join as many local community groups as possible and post regularly in them. Get known, provide advice, answer questions. Just participate. People buy from people they know. So make sure everyone knows you.
02. Know your audience
Every single Facebook tip boils down to one thing. Get to know the people around you, and make sure they know you. Talk to people, answer their questions for free, be the guy everyone likes, the first person they think of. Then when they need something, you’ll have already sold it.
03. Share memes
People love to share funny pictures. The picture itself isn’t going to get you any business, but becoming known as a person who is funny isn’t going to do you any harm at all. Social media is about interaction. Be the person that everyone likes. Try to make what you share relevant…
04. Integrate email marketing
Do you have a regular newsletter? If not then shame on you, go start one now. Then integrate the sign up with your Facebook page. There’s no point in going to all of the effort of making people like you if you don’t leverage it to get an opportunity to pitch your business.
05. Retarget
We know it kinda goes against the ethos of this list to suggest you simply pay for adverts, but Facebook’s retargeting system rocks. And even better it doesn’t have to cost much. The more people see you the more likely they are to buy, so retarget to make sure they see you again!
Recommended app: Tabsite
This tool enables you to create tabs in Facebook, so you can run competitions, sweepstakes, and special offers.
Next page: Tips for making the most of Twitter
