7 Social Media Tips Your Contracting Business Needs
For many, social media is simply a way to interact with the world. For the budding entrepreneur, it is a gateway to big business opportunities. With these seven social media tips, you can extend your online reach and get people talking about what your company has to offer.
- Know Your Target Demographic
Almost seven in 10 people spend at least some time on social media, but they don’t all use the same sites. Facebook is a pretty safe bet for almost any demographic, but you definitely want to know where your target customer is likely to be most of the time. If you’re just getting started and want to have the largest reach possible, you might go with:
Other social media channels like SnapChat can be useful for businesses, but you may need to get some practice before you start working with its unique posting format.
- Choose Your Channels
You may think that, as a businessperson, you have to create social media accounts for your business on all channels. This is not true. Managing your social media presence can be a full-time job, especially if you have to spend hours a day answering customer questions or promoting content on a large handful of sites. You’ll have access to more people if you open accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Just keep in mind that these sites are large and well-developed enough to engage readers long-term, and established businesses know that. Where you can reach more people, you will also find more potential competitors.
- Invest in Quality Content
Customer engagement is the goal of virtually any social media campaign. You want to make people, particularly those in your target demographic, aware of your business and the services you offer. But once they know you exist, you need to keep them coming back. You can achieve this by generating and sharing content that is entertaining and provides them with useful information. Content that readers will find easiest to share is well-written, mostly practical for their needs, and offers good images or video to go along with it.
- Maintain Consistent Activity
The biggest reason to set some basic limits on your initial social media setup is sustainability. Too many companies set up an account on every platform, and then neglect them because they can’t keep up with it. Until you have enough business to support a social media manager, you should keep your social media engagement at a level you can maintain for months or years.
- Pay to Promote
The idea that you can post something that will become viral, that your customers will share again and again and dramatically increase your reach, is on a rapid decline. This concept is called “organic reach,” and it has become all but a unicorn by 2017. If you want readers to find your content, you must be willing to pay for advertising or promoted content for readers that live in your area and meet other requirements you set. You may not need to spend a ton to take this advantage–some advertising options on Facebook cost as low as $5–but you should assume that you may not reach anyone otherwise.
- Use Social Media Management Tools
There are plenty of tools available to help you manage your social media presence. Some of them are even free, although the more you pay, the more you generally receive. Having a busy job as a contractor means that you aren’t spending your whole day at a desk, ready to handle your social media accounts. Programs like Buffer help you find content to share, and let you create posts on an automated schedule of your choosing. If you are willing to pay more, you can access package deals like BuzzSumo, which includes data analysis of your social media presence.
- Take Advantage of Metrics
When you create a professional page on a social media network, it may offer you some performance metrics to see how many people are engaging with your account and content. Again, many of these tools are free for your perusal. Use them as a way to determine what is working (and what isn’t), to guide your future customer engagement plans.
Becoming a contractor who works with businesses and the public requires a social media presence, and the right kind of engagement to keep people’s interest. To learn more about how to succeed as a contractor, contact CSLS today!
