Now that you know who you are targeting (ie. your buyer persona) and have an understanding as to their pain points, now is the time to figure out where they spend their time online. What social platforms capture their attention? What types of information do you need to create to capture their attention? How often do you need to ‘be’ present?
The purpose of establishing a presence is to provide information to your audience that is helpful. The top social media networks from Statista:
1. Facebook – 1.4 billion subscribers
2. LinkedIn – 347 million subscribers
3. Google+ - 300 million subscribers
4. Instagram – 300 million subscribers
5. Twitter – 230 million subscribers
Defining your buyer persona will help you determine not only where establish a presence, but also the type of content that is useful. And note, it is important develop content designed for each type of social network, as not every type of content will work for each network.
Posts that are 40 characters tend to get the best response. Use Facebook to engage with your community by posting something fun, asking questions or engaging your audience in an interactive post by having them comment or post pictures images to an event or your product/brand.
Depending on your business, LinkedIn may just be the place for you to grow your base. Because it is a professional social network, the types of content and ways to participate differ from Facebook, etc. Your content needs to be high-quality and provide very specific ways to help your audience solve a professional problem. Consider joining a LinkedIn group that is relevant to your business. By following the group you can leverage the comments to create content that is helpful to your buyer.
Google+
Best part of being active on Google+ is that your engagement also helps your SEO within Google. Start by ensuring your business page is connected to the maps listing. Google+ is a great tool for building communities. Add industry influencers and potential customers to your circles. Provide content that is interactive to boost your community and drive participation and engagement.
All users like to view content that is visual. As they say, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and visual content sticks much better than text – infographics are a great example. Other types of images to include are pictures of your products, customers using your products, even pictures of your employees hard at work.
With it’s character limitation set to 140, use twitter to promote educational information such as links to content of value from industry influencers, images related to your topic of interest, links to inspirational quotes or created content from you.
Once you have identified the social media networks where you need to be active, how often do you need to be post? According to SumAll:
- Facebook – 2 times per day, at most
2x per day is the level before likes & comments begin to drop off dramatically. - LinkedIn – 1 time per day
20 posts per month (1x per weekday) allows you to reach 60 percent of your audience. - Google+ – 3 times per day, at most
The more often you post, the more activity you’ll get. Users have found a positive correlation between frequency and engagement. When posting frequency wanes, some have experienced drops in traffic up to 50%. - Instagram – 1.5 times per day, or more
Major brands post an average of 1.5 times per day to Instagram. There's no drop-off in engagement for posting more, provided you can keep up the rate of posting. - Twitter – 3 times per day, or more.
Engagement decreases slightly after the third tweet.
In addition to the top social media networks mentioned above, there are many more - Pinterest, SnapChat, and Tumblr, to name a few. You do not need to have a presence everywhere – just where your buyers are. Take the time to understand what networks are most relevant to your buyer persona, where having a presence and providing helpful content would engage, then put together a plan to create content and captivate!