Without dramatically increasing your workload
As many around the globe remain in various states of lockdown, maintaining an online presence has never been more important. It might seem an overwhelming task, when the whole world is competing to achieve similar outcomes. That’s why we at NACUE want to help you. With these simple digital marketing tools, you can increase your brand’s online presence without spending hours of time doing it.
Social Media
Perhaps the biggest mistake Entrepreneurs make in their social media strategies is ignoring their audience, and focusing on what social media platforms they personally prefer. The simple truth is different platforms appeal to different people, and if you’re using Twitter to advertise your dance club for teenagers, you’re never going to achieve the engagement rates you deserve. Researching what platforms your target market primarily use should be the first point of any social media strategy.
Facebook:
Once the giant of all social media platforms, Facebook has seen a decline in engagement over the past five years. That being said, Facebook remains one of the most popular platforms amongst the over 40s whilst 25–34 years olds make up Facebook’s largest demographic.
It’s certainly not time to write-off Facebook just yet, but the way in which businesses utilise the platform is changing. Groups and pages are unrivalled for businesses on Facebook as opposed to other social media platforms. The ease of uploading products for members to share is key. Keep your key product updates relevant on Facebook, but don’t be overly concerned with uploading a status.
The biggest flaw by far however in any social media strategy is not posting during peak engagement. Engagement times differ between various social media platforms, but for Facebook:
Best times: Wednesday, 11 a.m. and 1–2 p.m. With Wednesday being the most popular day, and Sunday the least.
The best content, if posted at the worst time will not receive the correlating engagement rates. By scheduling your content to go out at peak hours, you can make your social media channels more engagement efficient, thus possibly reducing efforts to advertise your posts, or create more content to reach the same awareness.
Twitter:
The largest demographic group of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29 (37%). 25% of users are between 30 and 49 years old*.
Twitter’s main professional benefit is the ease of B2B communications. Brands can easily tag their partners and share each other’s content. These B2B shares can increase your online presence and open you up to new potential customers.
Twitter’s engagement rates are best on weekday lunchtimes, thus scheduling content around these times will increase your brand’s online presence.
Instagram:
Instagram is more appealing to younger demographics, 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 use Instagram and 33% of internet users between the ages of 30 and 49 use Instagram. According to one study, 17% of teenagers say that Instagram is the most important social media platform to them and 90% of users are under 35 years old.*
Instagram poses more challenges than other social media platforms because of recent changes to the main feed’s algorithm:
Your content will only appear in 10% of your followers’ feeds (usually the most engaged), and depending on how the post performs with that 10%, only then will more of your followers view the post. Thus, if you have 200 followers, only 20 people will actually see your content.
To increase the views on your instagram posts, include new posts in your stories. Instagram stories are a great way to keep people aware of your brand, but because of the quick nature of them, it won’t feel like spam to the viewer.
Instagram’s active hours are far more extended than those of Twitter and Facebook, you should consider posting earlier, or later in the day.
Other Platforms
LinkedIn should be used as an extended CV, keep it professionally relevant and upload any recent achievements (eg. a new blog post, video, or product). Because posts are less frequent, they will almost certainly be seen on your connection’s feeds.
YouTube is the best place to go to upload any new products. Videos can then susequently be shared throughout various social media channels with ease. Product reviews are also big on YouTube and it may benefit you to approach an influencer about this.
TikTok is the baby of social media being the newest platform, and appealing to the youngest audience. It should be used for teenagers, however, given it’s short video content, it can be tricky to create content for a business. Creativity is key.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, is a tactic to increase traffic to your website organically, and without a transfer of money. It comes from adjusting and rewriting copy/content to include keywords that are commonly searched for. SEO can be particularly effective if your business has a niche angle which can be easily searched for.
Re-read your website copy and see if additional buzzwords could be added to optimise your visibility in search engine results.
We hope that these simple alterations with ease the journey to digitise your business. It is no easy feat, but having a streamlined social media strategy, and SEO is an easy way to increase your online presence without spending a lot of time or money.
~ Witten by Abigail Howard for NACUE
