If you’ve been following social media trends, you probably have already learned the basics: converse, don’t convert (which means try to interact more and sell less). Make it fun. Do it regularly. Use different platforms and networks to reach different audiences. Educate and entertain.
Posts related to your business are good places to start this conversation. Tell visitors what you do. Show off your team. If you have a blog, let readers know about your industry and daily goings-on. Give readers advice for the next time they may need a service or product, and help them remember that you just happen to know something about that.
Sharing your internal efforts also may include discussing promotional activities. If you’re a retailer, start letting people know about an upcoming sale. Show pictures from a recent open house and get people excited about future ones. If you create artwork or homes or cars, show pictures. Give prizes away – people love to win.
Then, it’s time to start thinking outside of the box, or at least the box that contains your business. There’s a whole lot of world outside which you can reference in your updates and outreach.
Here are some easy ways to learn how to advertise your business plus things to avoid.
- Find a reason to celebrate. Sites like usa.gov can give you a run-down of “mainstream” holidays. Timeanddate.com gives even more historical and state-based holidays. Daysoftheyear.com talks about other cultural and promotional days. All of these could be good tie-ins to things in your content planning efforts. Maybe offer a discount to brothers and sisters on Sibling Day? Maybe don’t do anything for Go Barefoot Day on June 1, but just a few days later is Doughnut Day.
- Look for what other people are talking about. This could be as easy as seeing what’s trending on Twitter or Google News. You don’t necessarily need to share an opinion, but figure out a way to get people talking and thinking. If your client sells auto insurance, discuss a multi-car collision in another part of the country. If your client sells fuel-efficient cars, show how gas prices may start going up so it might be a good time to buy.
- Hot enough for you? Even if people don’t have much else in common, they can always talk about the weather. Put sunset or rainstorm photos on your business’ Instagram site. Give people suggestions on things they can do in the spring, summer, fall or winter.
- Be careful. As you may have noticed, people seem much faster to be offended than they used to be. And while the written word is great for communicating complex ideas, it’s a poor tool to clearly express humor. And humor is very subjective. So while you might send out a Tweet or Facebook post you think is hilarious, someone else may see it and have a different, negative reaction.
Joe B plans to boycott this year’s Go Barefoot Day. He also writes a lot and reads more.
