In today’s world, no online presence strategy is complete without having a social media outlet (SMO) used to be in touch with customers and promote your business, products, and services. Properly-managed SMOs can become powerful tools for brand equity, customer satisfaction, and sales.

Small business owners recognize this and tend to create company profiles on as many platforms as possible. Traditionally, they will join from one to all top social media players (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram). Unfortunately, small business owners jump into social media platforms without performing due research on:

• The overall communication dynamics within the platform
• The profile of their average user (and if it matches their target demographics)
• Kind of content that users expect you to produce
• Free and paid tools available for business promotion

On top of these, they sign in without clear goals or established marketing strategies for each platform. So, they frequently do not have any information to help them determine if what they are doing is beneficial or not. In short, they cannot measure success.

There is no problem with having 1 or 100 social media profiles. The issue comes with the amount of human and economic resources you will have to invest in management and to produce content for each platform.

With that said, the key to a successful social media presence relies on how much information you gather from the platform and how you use it to create appealing, engaging content for its users.

Set your goals

The first step is to set the objectives to reach on the platform. Even before considering the social media outlets you want for your business, try answering the following questions:

• What do you want to achieve with social media?
• Do you want to use it as a marketing platform?
• Do you want to gain brand exposure?
• Do you want to increase order number or sales?
• Do you want to improve your customer service?

Once you respond to these questions, the next step is researching platforms to assess which one aligns best with your goals.

Assessing Social Media Outlets

The best way to assess if an outlet is good or not for your business is to know who the outlet’s users are. You must know if the average user on X or Y platform falls within your target demographics. Data Raportal is an excellent starting point to obtain data on the most-used social media platforms worldwide.

As of 2022, there are really just a handful of global social media outlets that can help businesses of any kind grow:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

Also, you may join any relevant, well-established, or widely used platform in your community or country.

Create a strategy plan… and stick to it

A social media strategy plan, at its basics, will consist of publishing entries at determined intervals of time. These initial publications will help you to:

• Establish the tone of your company on the platform
• Start generating data, such as audience reached or the number of likes.
• Set benchmarks for future posts.
• Improve content production.
• Growing your audience.

Discipline is the secret

Do not forget: the secret to a successful strategy is discipline. You cannot create a couple of entries in a year and expect clients to know or trust your business. In fact, sooner or later, you will fall into oblivion, with customers taking a peek at your profile and leaving you for dead.

In your personal opinion, from the following examples, What company do you think is more likely to attract customers? Which one would inspire more confidence? Who will get the client?

• The company with a 2-day-old post or the one whose latest post is a year old.
• The company that promptly replies to customers’ inquiries or the one that lets customers without answers.
• The company with a well-organized profile or the one with a barely functional one.

It is not brain surgery: Being active on social media platforms is a big deal for its users.

The best recommendation we can give you is: Do not join a social media platform if you are not going to take care of it. This will definitely harm your brand and credibility.