When it comes to connecting your business with an audience, social media is key.

But ever-changing platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn can be difficult to navigate – even for the experts – so it pays (literally) to know a few tricks.

Here are our top 10 social media tips, gleaned from the experts…

1. Create a plan: You cannot succeed without a strategy, and you cannot know that your strategy is succeeding if you don’t have ways to measure it. Figure out the driving motivation behind your social media strategy, then break your bigger goal down into smaller, more measurable steps. And write it all down!
2. Know your audience: Are people following you to know about your brand new product, or to stay in-the-loop about your events? You can’t create targeted content if you don’t know who you are targeting it to, so study your demographics (found in the ‘Settings’ of most social media platforms), run online surveys and hit the comments to engage in meaningful discussions with your followers.
3. Build your audience: Whether you’re just starting out or you’re eager to ramp up your follower count, there are plenty of ways to grow your audience. Hashtags, geotags and tagging other accounts are three ways you can spread the word and attract people to your profile.
4. Stay on brand: Think about your social media platforms as the front window of your business – if someone was walking past, how would you want it to look? Keep your branding (including font, colours, content, voice and use of language) consistent to ensure your virtual shopfront is eye-catching – in the best way.
5. Be personal: Social media is, after all, social. Reply to your followers by their first name and sign off your comments with your own first name to make your online interactions more personal. Showing behind-the-scenes shots of your team or business is another easy way to connect with your followers on a personal level.
6. Avoid salesy tactics: If people are looking to your business’s social media for personal connection, they don’t want to feel like they are being sold to. Posting too many promotions or products or constantly trying to sell, sell, sell are great ways to make your followers lose interest. Instead…
7. Give people a reason to follow you: Whether it’s providing useful advice and information or running competitions and giveaways, give people a reason to click that ‘Follow’ button – and not click the ‘Unfollow’ button a week later. When you know your audience (as discussed in point two), you have a better understanding of the content they want to see.
8. Mix up your content: While your posts should stay on brand, there is plenty of room to be creative. Share a mix of photos, text posts and videos – the latter performs particularly well – to keep your followers entertained and informed. When inspiration runs dry, don’t underestimate the power of sharing other pages’ content (with permission) and user-generated content from your followers (where relevant). You may even want to dabble in the occasional livestream to connect with your followers in real-time, whether it’s to demonstrate an exciting new product, tour your business premises or simply answer some questions your customers may have.
9. Utilise free tools: Don’t know how to make a graphic? Canva is designed to help you do exactly that. And Canva is not the only free website you can lean on to spice up your feed – chances are, if you’re struggling to make a video or write an engaging post, there is a free website to help you. It’s all just a quick Google away!
10. Set and (almost) forget: Posting regular content is vital to keeping your social platforms moving, but it can be hard to remember to post. Thankfully, there are ways to schedule your content in bulk – either through Facebook’s built-in Creator Studio (which also covers Instagram), or platforms like Later, Planoly (for Instagram) and Postfity (for LinkedIn). Just make sure you are going back and checking in on your followers’ comments and shares etc and replying/engaging with them in a timely fashion.