Whether your business is well established or just starting out, there's no right or wrong time to make those first steps into the social space. There is however a right and wrong way to go about it. To give you a helping hand and get you off on the right foot we've listed our 5 'must do' things for launching your business into the social media world.
1. Set out a long-term plan
This might seem obvious but it's the thing that most people tend to forget about. Because there's nothing worse for a business than having a social media presence that's not been updated for the past 5 months, you need to consider what you are likely to be posting in 3-6 months time and doesn't hurt to have a rough plan of what you're likely to post a year or two down the line. Do you have the capacity to keep your social media channels going or the content to keep it fresh?
2. Establish a Tone of Voice
We all know how we sound as people, but how should your business sound? There are several different ways to say the same thing on social media, so you need to establish what your voice is before you start. Are you aiming to be helpful or disruptive, opinionated or passive? Once established, this ToV should then stick with you throughout as it's that ToV that sets you out as being you.
3. Decide on your platforms
Yes, there are quite a few social platforms, but that doesn't mean that you need to have a presence on them all! You don't need to be on Snapchat and Instagram because they're cool (but if your target audience is young, they're worth considering). Similarly you don't need to be on LinkedIn because you are B2B. It's all about your audience, the content you will post and the best approach for you as a business - chose what social media platforms work for you.
4. Tier your content
If you're not using an external agency or you don't have a person dedicated to social media management, it can be very difficult to maintain the volume of content required for the social platforms. Quite often, social media finds itself on the bottom of the pile and before long, it's not been looked at in a couple of weeks. By tiering your content, you can create a single piece of longform content, such as a blog, then split it up into multiple social posts (and even more tweets). This can save you the effort of constantly looking for something new whilst still providing relevant content to your audience.
5. Think mobile first
You've got your plan in place, you've set out what platforms you want to be on and you've nailed your tone of voice. The final thing to consider before you start to publish content is, how is my audience going to access that content? The answer in the vast majority of cases is via a mobile device. Images with lots of detail and posts requiring a user to put in a lot of effort need to be left out of the plan...
We're aware that the above is not a complete list of everything that needs to be thought about but we hope that it provides you with a starting point on your social media strategy. If you are still confused about where to start, drop us an email at hello@wearehydrogen.com and we'll gladly help.