How to Set Up an Effective Social Media Presence for Your Service Company

Social media is one of the world’s most powerful business resources. The days of social media’s use as singularly…well, social are long gone: in our increasingly digital world, having an active social media presence means connecting customers to your brand in an organic, engaging way. This is because few tools – if any -are more powerful than social media when it comes not only to building customers’ trust in your company, but also to incorporating your brand into their everyday content consumption. That said, like with any other marketing tactic, an effective social media presence for your company must be maintained through a careful and consistent strategy. To learn about how to get started with revamping your social media to get results, check out our top five tips below.

Social media serves to help develop the recognizability and impact of your brand, but that can only be done if your brand is portrayed consistently. Generally speaking, your brand encompasses two categories: visual and voice. Work with a creative marketing team to specifically identify your visual branding: this includes your logo, branding colors, fonts, and any photo editing presets that will be used on your social media. Then, set your brand voice in stone: outline your company’s vision and values, your target customer, and the tone you use when speaking to this ideal customer. Once you have these branding elements outlined, your social media manager will know precisely what and how to communicate with your audience.

Your ideal posting days and times on social media can vary depending on where you live, who your target audience is, and the particular service you’ll offer. Consult with a digital marketing team to determine what this ideal posting schedule is. If possible, we strongly recommend working with a marketing agency to manage your social media. However, if you or a member of your in-house team will be taking charge of social media, look into using an automated social media management app like Hopper or Hootsuite. These platforms allow you to schedule social media ahead of time (like, months ahead). It’s super useful to automate your social media management because it allows you to stick to your optimal schedule without consistently disrupting your or your employees’ daily schedule.

Every post you share on social media should be geotagged (that is, tagged in the city or town where you live), and it should include hashtags that are relevant to the industry you work in, services you offer, and what is featured in the post itself. Your digital marketing team will be an extremely effective tool for researching the most effective hashtags to use in order to get your posts – and, as a result, your social media accounts – seen by potential customers in your community.

A big misconception about social media marketing is that the best way to get your company out there is to work with famous (and expensive) influencers boasting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of followers. Of course, this is an impossibility for small local businesses – but it’s also incorrect. Research shows that the higher an influencer’s follower count, the lower the return on your investment when working with them. This is because smaller influencers with just a few thousand followers have more authentic, reciprocal relationships with their followers: they’re able to respond to a greater percentage of comments and, proportionally speaking, have way more one-on-one interactions with their followers than influencers who receive millions of comments every day. As a result, working with a small local influencer is not just more effective – it’s much more affordable.

Don’t limit yourself to posting photos on your feed. The power of social media lies in the authenticity it promises. People are tired of seeing overly produced, big-budget commercials. They crave the opportunity to forge real human connections, including with the brands they invest in. When using social media to grow your company, it’s important to remember the feature that allows for the most authenticity: Stories. From Snapchat to Instagram to Facebook, Stories offer a more down-to-earth, unpolished look into your company than a well-edited grid post will. While those polished, aspirational permanent posts are important for establishing brand identity, Stories are useful for featuring the real people behind the brand. Something as simple as a Q&A session, an Employee Spotlight, or a tour of your office can seem small, but it can go a tremendously long way in humanizing your brand and forging meaningful connections with your audience.

Setting up effective social media for your company starts with clearly defining your brand, then executing a well-constructed strategy that’ll get you where you need to be: into the everyday lives of your target audience. If you’d like to learn more about boosting your social media presence and seeing results, just shoot us a quick message! .