Why social media is important for your business
1. Social media builds brand awareness
It’s important to let your audience know that your business exists and that you’re different from your competition. Social media content allows you to be discovered and stand out. Over 3 billion people in the world use social media channels, so building awareness and promoting your brand is an easy and affordable way to introduce your business to your target market.
2. Social media leads to conversion
Conversion happens when a user responds to your call to action. This could be a user sharing your post, going to your website, giving feedback or purchasing your service. Besides knowing that you exist, you want your audience to interact with you through social media.
3. Social media can highlight user feedback
Social media platforms also allow you to stay connected to your customers. You can respond to questions, concerns, suggestions or feedback. You can also create posts that encourage comments and engagement by asking questions or opinions. Engagement creates a trusting bond between your business and audience.
How to use Canva
Thousands of businesses use Canva to create simple and beautiful social media posts. They have stock photos, font pairings, color palettes, graphics and templates to make your life easier. Even someone with absolutely no design experience can create stunning content. The basic package is even free. To get started, you’ll create an account and then click the blue “Create a design” button. Choose “Social Media” and it will be the perfect sized document for you to use. The available templates change with seasons, holidays and events so there’s always fresh content for you to use.
How to create a strategy
Now we come to the slightly trickier part… actually coming up with the ideas for content. Here’s a great how to guide from Canva that will help you make a plan and set it in motion.
Set goals and a strategy
When it comes to creating social media content, it’s important to first start with a strategy. Start by asking yourself a few questions:
- What are you trying to achieve with your social media content?
- How much content do you want to create and when will you post it?
- What metrics will you measure success by? Followers, engagement, conversion?
Define your audience & brand voice
The main reason users unfollow brands is poor customer service, followed by irrelevant content.. So, how do you create content that really speaks to your potential customers? Ask yourself who are they, where do they live, what do they like to talk about and what are their challenges. As visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content, creating eye-catching visuals is the most effective way to get your message seen.
Build a style guide
A design style guide is important, because it ensures that you’re keeping your social media content on brand. Below are some branding tools to consider. Canva can help you build your own.
- Color palette Start with color. Think about what colors represent your brand and then pick approximately 2-4 colors that will form your own core color palette.
- Typography Fonts are another way to define your brand. Choose 2-3 complimentary font types. Canva has a bunch of fonts you can choose from.
- Imagery Social media is largely image-based, and so it’s important that brands consider the type of images they want to use in their social media content, and that they are high-quality. Canva has thousands of free, high-quality images as part of their image library that you can try.
- Consistency Most importantly, stick to all previous visual elements or assets (your brand’s style guide) to create a visually consistent brand, so people can recognize your social feed, no matter where you post. That’s why a brand visual guide is key,
Build a calendar
A calendar will help you organize your ideas, your time and your resources, so you can make sure you can execute your plan. Remember you can repurpose the same post across different social media platforms. Later.com is a great option for scheduling posts.
Promote your content
Now is when you push your content out into the world, in a way that reaches as many people as possible. Remember to include sharing buttons, and respond to your audience comments, engaging through Q&As, using hashtags or even collaborating with other brands that can be a good fit for your brand.
Measure your results
Finally, measuring the impact of your posts monthly will allow you to check if you’re hitting your goals and how to tweak your strategy and optimize your results in the future. Here’s what SproutSocial considers the most important metrics to track.
Use videos to increase engagement
Canva also allows you to create and edit videos which means it might be a good idea to incorporate some videos in your social media plan.
Tutorials
Try doing a video tutorial, showing how to get the most from your service or share industry related tips. These days, most people would rather watch a video than read a blog.
Behind the Scenes
Tell the story of your business, how you got started, what your customers mean to you. Share success stories and talk about lessons you’ve learned. Interview customers on how your product or service has helped them in their lives. Personal videos are a great way to build trust in your company.
Webinars
These days webinars are all the rage. Create a simple presentation (Canva can help with that), and invite people to attend via zoom or your preferred video conference app.
Q&A sessions
Go live on social media a couple times each month to answer questions and interact with your audience. With Instagram’s question stickers, you can now host a Q&A session on Instagram Stories.
Getting started
You now have all the tools to start creating an excellent social media presence. As you put more effort into posting engaging social media content, your organic lead generation will start to improve. We’d love to help you out with your social media if you’re interested. Feel free to fill out the form below to learn more!
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