I’ve really been enjoying the digital marketing seminar series being put on by the Savannah Chamber of Commerce over the past few months – so much good information to share! This month, they had a social media round table, where experts shared some of their favorite social media tips and tricks, and fielded questions from the business owners in the audience. Read on for my notes!

Social media is important to start conversations with customers. Social media marketing supports traditional marketing, and vice versa. They work hand in hand, and should present one cohesive message about your brand. Social media needs to be a part of how you’re going to market your business – it needs to be consistent across all channels.

You should get on social media because that’s where your customers are. They’re talking about you, so you need to be there to join that conversation.

Creating your social media strategy

• Understand your approach
• Where are you customers
• What is your message
• What are your competitors doing

Talking to your customers in a way that tells them they’re clients / potential customers is key. Educate them teach them your value.

Patience, patience, patience. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Ask yourself – why are YOU on social media? What do you want it to do for you as a business?

If you start up social media for your business, keep it up – don’t set it and forget it.

What social media channels should your business be on?

Depends largely on your business – where is YOUR audience?

If your business is visual, definitely get on Pinterest and/or Instagram.

Customer service industry? Get on Twitter.

What’s your goal? Create your approach to leverage the channel of your choice to attack that goal.

Always, always track your results.

Facebook – It’s the number 1 place to be.

Everyone’s on Facebook, it’s the number one stop.

But remember, don’t spread yourself too thin. Only do the channels you’ll keep up with.

If you’re in the hospitality business, get on Instagram for beauty shots and twitter for customer service.

What’s the difference between social marketing and social networking?

Social networking is how you personally use it – it’s more casual.

Social marketing is getting people to act on what you’re doing. It’s designed to cause reactions; it’s more calculated. People that don’t know you or what you do – how do you talk to them to get them to help accomplish you goals on social media?

Note to self:
Think more carefully about how you’re leveraging spend on promoted posts to get the most engagement.

Social media tips for best ways to engage your fan base

Utilize the tools – analytics, insights, etc. Look closely at those to discover which posts do best, what time of the day does best, what days do best. Do more of that.

Know your audience and what they’re reacting to. Do more of that.

Keep in mind that visually driven posts do great.

Start developing a content library – stuff to share in the future.

Embrace all of the data that’s out there to make better decisions on your social media adventures.

Stop doing things that don’t work.

Don’t sell 100% of the time.

Be aware of the world around you – if there’s a tragedy going on, think about addressing it. If you have something to say about a trending topic, get in on the conversation. If there’s a tragedy going on, be mindful and respectful of it – in the wake of a natural disaster you don’t want to be the business that shows up in a Twitter feed saying “all emergency kits are 50% off!”.

Data says if you put your message out on Twitter at least 6 times, you’ll get the best engagement on it. Don’t use the same message over and over verbatim, mix it up a bit.

Social media tips for Instagram

If you’re selling products, Instagram is a great way to generate sales. Example given is antique store that shows the latest items to come into the shop, and they actively sell items through interactions with customers in the comments.

Content is king, but VISUAL content is even more so.

That’s how people are interacting, so get on it. Think of people on their phones – pics grab the user’s attention as they scroll through their Facebook feeds.

Viral content you’re generating yourself needs to be relevant to your business. If it’s too out there, and not connected enough with what your biz is all about, no one will remember that it has anything to do with your business.

Whether you’re posting on your business page or on your personal profile, be careful of your content – you’re always branding yourself.

Think about micro videos – 15 second long pieces – and post those directly on Facebook. Keep it short, because attention spans are short and getting shorter all the time.

How do you track ROI (Return on Investment) on social media?

The investment in social media is largely time spent creating and sharing content. The return on the investment is if your social media goals are being met. Finding out if your investment of time is working can be done through analytics and insights.

In the digital world, insights are easy to get – you can compare and find what’s working, what’s not. You can set up social media insights on Google Analytics.

UTM codes – you can tag every campaign with these to see if people are interacting with a campaign.

Keep in mind, it’s all a game.

Once you’ve got a particular social media channel figured out, something changes – maybe it’s the customers, maybe it’s the algorithm. Facebook is changing the algorithm in January again. Stay fluid, stay on top of the changes instead of complaining how it used to be. You can keep on top of Facebook pages by visiting the developers area.

Be careful what you’re reading online – not all of it is fact. Lots of it, like this blog, is one person’s spin on the news – your best bet is to read a lot of different news sources.

What about Linked In?

It’s great for recruiting, good idea to have a business page, but it’s not really a sales tool.

Mobile technology is huge for social media.

Mobile devices are integral in managing your social media reputation on the go, and work hand in hand with social media.

Mobile technology forces businesses to get really on top of their own reputation management in real time – you don’t want gripes from customers to get out of hand.

One strategy – if you see customers griping about a competitor, you can step into the conversation and offer your solution.

Mobile technology has raised the bar – expectations are high now for fast response times – people are getting all of their information in real time.

Social media tips for things you shouldn’t do on social media

Be careful about responding too quickly/emotionally when there’s a bad review. How you respond is how people will see you and your business. Try to take the negative and turn it into a positive.

Don’t jump too quickly on trending hashtags – know what they are before you get involved.

Stay away from hot rear endon topics like politics, religion, race. Racial jokes are right out.

Your personal profile isn’t always your personal profile – you still work for a company, you’re still a professional.

The Thanksgiving Rule – don’t mention anything you wouldn’t say at Thanksgiving dinner. (This obviously doesn’t hold water for my family. We talk about everything at the dinner table.)

What’s next for social media?

Social is always different and always changing. Shopping on social media is getting big.

Social platforms are going to move towards pushing businesses to spend money. Be prepared to look at social as a place where your marketing dollars need to go.

Playing organically isn’t going to last forever.

Before you create a post, decide what you want it to do.

Facebook ads are great because they’re super cost effective, and they can be super targeted.

Key to spending on advertising with social media is test what works for you. Do a few different things with a few dollars.

Instagram has an ad platform now, but remember you can sell through your posts and the comments.

Remember that text on an image equals higher engagement, but also remember you can’t have more than 20% text on the image for Facebook.

What contests are good for building your number of likes or amount of engagement?

Quick giveaway within a short amount of time. Make sure they can do it from their phone! The less info you try to get, the more success you’ll have. Make it easy easy easy to enter.

More likes on your business page isn’t necessarily better. It’s all about engagement – getting people to interact with your posts gives them better traction.

Share it to win it is really effective, so is tag a friend to win – it increases visibility.

How do you deal with negative responses?

Keep in mind when you’re writing a reply on social media that you’re not just addressing that guest – you’re addressing future customers as well. Try to get the upset customer offline to fix it, and make sure your response online makes it clear to others that you’re actively working on the problem.

When you’ve taken the problem offline and solved it, come back to the post and leave a comment that shows you went as far as possible to fix the issue.

Some platforms like TripAdvisor won’t let you change your answer, so be careful. Take a little time (but not too much time) to really think about your response before writing it.

How do you address two types of customers on one platform?

If some of your customers are tourists, and others are corporations doing group activities, embrace that in your social media. Show both customers that you do it all, and the ones booking you for one type of activity will remember that you also offer the other. Share all sides of your business visually.

What about Google Plus?

It’s important from an SEO standpoint, but it’s not where most customers are. From a social media standpoint, it just doesn’t work. You can post to your Google Plus page the same things you post to your Facebook business page.

It’s really important if you want your business to show up on Google Maps.