5 Ways to Position Your Business for Social Media Success

…and how a Virtual Assistant can help you achieve your goals.

By now, it’s a given for businesses across all industries—having a social media presence is crucial. However, knowing the best ways to connect with a specific audience can be a challenge for many.

As such, aligning your social media channels properly is essential for success in today’s business world. As Cassandra Hayes at SocialBro notes, “Not having the right social media channels for your customers to reach out to you is the 1995 equivalent of not having a phone line.” 

Many business owners don’t realise that they can easily outsource this critical task to a trained Virtual Assistant (VA). It’s the secret of many big brands, marketing teams, and companies of all sizes. By leveraging the techno-fluent proficiencies and skills of a VA, you’ll have the time to focus on the high-level activities that demand your attention.  

Here are 5 expert tips to ensure that you’re positioning your business for success on social media, along with the key tasks a VA could perform. This will create a strong online presence for your business, saving you time and money.

1. Identify Your Target Audience 

Photo by Directive Consulting

Identifying your target audience is one of the first steps of any quality marketing strategy. Clearly define what age group, lifestyle, profession, hobbies, and topics of interest align with your brand’s products and services. From there, you can develop your brand’s message and selling points to decide on the best platform.

2. Decide Which Platform Best Suits Your Audience

A key element of success for any live performer is to “play to their audience” or “read the room”. This same idea applies when deciding on the best social media platform for your brand. According to a PEW Research Study, YouTube and Facebook continue to be the most widely used platforms among U.S. adults. Facebook, part of Meta, remains the most popular platform worldwide.

With this in mind, it’s important to note that while Facebook and YouTube have the most users, they can also be the hardest platforms to engage with your audience. What’s more, they can be the most expensive when it comes to utilising paid advertising. As such, the more targeted and interested your potential social audience is, the better your ROI.  

• Facebook Caters to “Older” Audiences

Closing in on 3 billion global platform users as of Q1 2022, according to a report from Sprout Social, Facebook caters to an older audience. In fact, over 80 percent of Facebook users are over the age of 24, with one-third of those users actually being aged 45 or older. 

The majority of these users tend to want to share photos, keep in touch with friends and family and the occasional co-worker, and perhaps engage with brands they like and trust. The main goal of your Facebook strategy should be to provide valuable posts that people will want to share and engage with—while trying to avoid sounding too “salesy”, or you’ll be overlooked.

• Twitter is Where Users Go for News

The majority of Twitter’s platform users tend to use it for live event updates and news. Users will gravitate towards trending topics and follow updates in real time. Communication with potential customers on Twitter must be witty and punctual in 280 characters or less. A good way to engage with Twitter users is to find appropriate hashtags to post with stats, quotes or news, and always include a link to your website.

Photo by Yoke

• LinkedIn is Designed for Professionals

LinkedIn is used worldwide by millions of professional networkers, job seekers, and job recruiters. However, it’s also a great resource for expanding your knowledge and learning more about industry trends. If your business mainly operates in the B2B space, LinkedIn might be the best platform to reach your target audience. It’s also a great tool to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field, which can eventually drive traffic to your website.

• Instagram is Visually-Oriented

Did you know? About one-third of all Instagram stories are from businesses. Instagram is a great platform to show the solutions your brand provides by creating content that users want to share and tag their friends in. It’s ideal for sharing and editing photos and videos that align with your brand’s message. 

As you grow your followers you can take them behind the scenes by capturing live videos. Always keep your clickable link in your IG bio updated. This link will help your brand make sales, direct users to download your app, register for events, and so on.

• YouTube is Great for How-to’s

Quick and helpful video content is becoming increasingly important in digital marketing strategies for many brands, both large corporations and growing businesses alike. Some of the most popular videos are vlogs (video blogs) that offer how-to guides, tips or hacks and other instructional content that users find helpful. Be sure to create quality videos that engage with your audience.

3. Measure and Adjust Your Social Strategy Accordingly

As you grow your social presence, make sure that you are differentiating the tone of your brand across multiple platforms. While it’s an excellent strategy to hone in on the best platform for your business, it’s common for brands to use multiple platforms to get their message out there. Social schedulers like HootSuite, StatusBrew and SocialBee allow you to schedule your posts and updates weeks in advance. Remember that audiences respond differently to posts on each platform, so remember to read the room properly. 

As you grow your audience on each platform, always measure which types of posts and hashtags get the most engagement and followers. There are excellent free resources to measure your social engagement on each platform and you can also analyse your traffic and page views with tools like Google Analytics.

4. Outsource Your Social Media Operations

Photo by Brands Martini

As you can see, there’s a lot to keep in mind when it comes to positioning your business for success on social media. Outsourcing your social media operations can ensure you find someone with the necessary skills to get the job done right.

 Here are three critical skills to look for when outsourcing your social media:

• Creating Engaging Content Based on Market Research

For brands that run highly successful and effective social media accounts, content reigns supreme. A quality social media manager will perform high-level market research, including deciding on the right platforms to focus on as well as researching the best hashtags. From there, they will craft engaging posts that people will want to share and interact with, growing your audience and eventually leading to sales or other end goals.

• Providing Exceptional Customer Service 

A large part of maintaining a successful social media presence is personable and quick customer service. Social media users know when brands copy and paste responses, or worse, ignore their legitimate criticisms or questions entirely. When outsourcing your social media, your choice of talent should possess exceptional customer service skills that are evident remotely.

• Scheduling and Calendar Management 

Maintaining a content schedule can be tricky, especially if you post across multiple channels. This can get even more challenging if your brand uses social media to schedule sales calls or other meetings. A quality social media manager should be a scheduling and calendar management whiz.

5. Partner With the Right Agency to Find Social Media Talent

There are various ways to find social media managers these days. Sure, you could trust your mini-influencer niece with 5k followers to help, but you would probably see much better results if you hired a VA who has been rigorously vetted and expertly trained.

As seasoned C-level Executive Peju Adebajo discovered, hiring a VA to manage her company’s social media presence was a game-changer. This board member of a FTSE 250 company needed someone to develop a social media calendar and do first-level research for thought leadership articles. 

She hired a VA from The ROOM, who brought more discipline to her company’s social media content and provided her with confidence that information published in articles was factual and verified. 

“Maureen is quick on the uptake and smart. It was a relief to know that her responses would always be thorough and well thought through.”

Home to a highly specialised community of agile digital talent, The ROOM connects individuals and businesses of all sizes with the talent they need to thrive in the new world of work. The ROOM’s world-class Virtual Assistants can navigate multiple industries and are offered continuous professional development at no cost to the employer.

As Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, notes, “Social Media puts the ‘public’ into PR and the ‘market’ into marketing”. Don’t delay in maximising your social presence and growing your brand in the right way.

Visit The ROOM to access a pool of Virtual Assistants with social media expertise and administrative skills.