10 Must-Try Social Media Tactics

Whether you’re new or a veteran decorating business, there’s no more wiggle room on the fact that you need a social media presence.

Aside from introducing people to your brand, social media is a direct line of communication to your customers. Plus, it supports your sales and marketing efforts, lets you learn more about your prospects, and drives traffic back to your website. Try these 10 tactics for improving your efforts on social networks.

1. Utilize a management tool. Online tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social allow you to manage all your social accounts in one place. You can generate all the messages you’d like to send to your profiles and networks without switching between accounts. Depending on the route you go, you can receive messages and monitor engagement to better address any customer issues in real-time. These tools also provide you with data about your current strategy so you can decide what’s working for the future. You’ll discover what networks score you the best results, what posts get the most engagement, what keywords get clicks, and who is likely to engage with your content.

2. Use social media to boost your SEO. Search engines like Google regularly collect data on pages with steady traffic, as well as the pages people don’t pay any attention. Part of your social media plan should be to encourage traffic to your most optimized pages. This tactic will help those pages climb the ranks of Google much faster. If you use Facebook’s scheduler or another online tool, make sure to lead back to these pages consistently throughout the month on your channels.

3. Authentically engage with your customers. According to Sprout Social surveys, 86% of buyers want an authentic and honest brand personality on social networks. Ask yourself if you’re sharing useful content, as well as exclusive products and deals. That’s the sweet spot. Customers want answers to their questions, as well as to be entertained and shown where and how they can purchase products and services when they’re interested.

4. Share the love on social. Did you team up with another decorator on a project? Donate screen-printed T-shirts to a charity race? Help a client achieve a marketing goal with a promotional products campaign? Share that excitement and tag them on social media. You’ll show off your skills, give other businesses and organizations some publicity, and hopefully receive more visibility when they reshare the post.

5. Run an ad or boost your posts. Craft highly targeted ads on the social channels of your choice based on customer industries and interests. You can target Facebook ads by age, location, education, industry, and behavior on the site. With Facebook Audience Insights, you can also analyze information about your followers, including interests, demographics, and behavior.

6. Try out newsjacking. If one of your custom garments gets worn on a reality show, or an industry player shows off your work, that’s a story that will blow up on social media. Is there a news story, meme, or pop-culture moment that resonates with your brand? Jump in and engage with the story. This type of strategy is called newsjacking. The key is to jump in on it quickly, so you don’t look like just another company joining on the tail-end of a popular trend.

7. Know that social media garners sales. Yes, you first want to push authentic engagement rather than sales, but a strong social media profile can encourage sales. Blog articles, videos, and images are the three most engaging content types on social media. Using these content avenues, you can nudge customer buying decisions during the sales cycle. Plus, four in 10 sales reps have recently closed two to five deals due to social media, according to HubSpot.

8. Don’t shy away from Facebook Live videos. We watch more than 100 million hours of video content on Facebook daily, the site reports. Plus, while only 20% of people will read the text on a page, 80% will watch a video, according to My SMN. Further, after watching a video, 64% of people are more likely to make a purchase, Forbes reports. In your live videos, you can show people around your showroom, demonstrate your latest screen-printing technique, or even show highlights from an industry event. Remember that the majority of your live stream views will come from the replays. That’s why you should start the live stream with a value statement, or your main point, right up front that keeps them watching. You can also repackage your Facebook Live video. For example, embed it into an email or newsletter.

9. Social media can be a customer service platform. About 59% of Americans say that customer service via social media has made it easier for them to get their questions answered and issues resolved, according to Lyfe Marketing. That’s why you shouldn’t hesitate to communicate with customers via the sites and assign a staffer to monitor your post comments and direct messages throughout the day. Social’s also a gold mine of great content-generation ideas, like your customers’ most-asked questions. Plus, it’s easy to create a question post or include a link to a quick survey with a prize incentive to one lucky responder.

10. Create a CEO profile on LinkedIn. 40% of LinkedIn’s 562 million members visit the site daily. It’s one of the most useful places to connect and engage with decision-makers. As the boss, you’re the face of your business. You need to create a compelling LinkedIn profile to build credibility, authority, and trust with people who might need your services or want to become partners.

Cultivating relationships on social is a surefire way to skyrocket your sales and marketing efforts, so jump on the cyber train today.