One of the most important principles in building an effective social media presence is to recognize its business purpose. A huge number of managers mistakenly believe they can advance their business faster by using social media as a broadcast platform. In reality, their best option is to use the medium for one-to-one contact. Their profile should both invite and support that option.
Personality
There is a well known principle that says a human face is the most eye-catching element in advertising creatives. The human brain is uniquely qualified to notice and evaluate the meaning in a human being’s expressions. So it stands to reason the first thing you should include in any kind of public-facing profile is someone’s picture. They should be smiling and look approachable. This will make your profile attractive and encourage more potential customers to subscribe. It will also encourage credit and financial companies to do business with you. As most business leaders know: entrepreneurs get credit. Businesses get billed.
Writing Quality
This is one of the things most social media managers overlooks. Even if the people in charge of the profile and the content of the page or channel have no professional writing experience, it is vital they seek the advice or involvement of a good editor, copy writer or a professional writer. The reasons for this are two-fold.
One, the image of any company that cannot communicate effectively with the written word will suffer over time. It is a well-understood fact that customers react poorly to spelling, punctuation and vocabulary errors in any materials presented by a commercial business. Companies like Business Credit and Capital will be looking for effective communication skills when they make credit decisions, because those skills are vital to a successful business relationship.
Secondly, even with good technical care, persuasive writing with authentic voice and energy is a skill that takes many years to learn and many more years to apply effectively to a given task. When these two things are combined, the results can be dramatic. When they are absent, there will rarely be any results to measure.
Color
If a picture is worth a thousand words, it can also be worth a thousand followers. This is especially true in a world where individual graphics can become exponentially more promotional depending on the number and type of followers a particular channel has accumulated.
For these reasons, it is vital that any social media profile be liberally provided with photographs, videos and, if possible, animation. As with the human face principle, colorful profiles are far more eye-catching and also have a much higher potential to retain the attention they attract. Your social media channels may be used for a variety of purposes, but their effectiveness can often be reduced to a single metric, and that is ‘how many of these people actually follow through on a purchase or revenue-positive activity?’ For a business and their financial advisers, nothing else matters.
No Birthday Cakes
One of the snares encountered by more than a few businesses in their pursuit of an effective social media profile is a tendency to turn today’s update into a birthday cake. This metaphor is instructive because everyone who has attempted to get new customers or attention online has engaged in it to a certain degree.
A “birthday cake” in the context of this example is a single social media update that becomes so involved and so complex that it begins to drain time and resources from all the other things you have to do in order to run your business. You get out the eggs and sugar and flour and stir up the batter and bake. Then you mix the icing and lovingly sculpt little roses around the outside edge. Meanwhile the world is racing by at 200 MPH. By the time your wonderful cake gets to the public, whatever you were trying to accomplish has likely passed you by.
The answer is not making one big amazing post that will eclipse all other posts. It is the consistent visibility of effective and attractive posts.
Trust
The “no birthday cakes” policy will allow you and your business to establish trust with your audience more quickly. Trust is achieved by the consistent effort required to maintain the quality level of what you post and why. When your audience can come to believe you will continue to provide them with what they want, you will find your social media channels and your overall business will start to improve. This has been true in numerous industries from manufacturing to video games to comics to publishing.
Establishing trust with your audience should be among your top priorities as a business because it will immediately set you apart from a large number of your competitors. It will also help you maintain and improve your relationship with your creditors.
Social media is a fairly recent arrival in both general culture and the culture of the Internet. Most companies are still learning, but those that follow a few basic principles will see success much sooner.
Image Credit: mkhmarketing