Social media and business guru Nikki Csek of Csek Creative and Kelowna Now spoke to Kelowna Women in Business in April to help us all become better communicators in the crazy world of social networking sites. I may be one of the world’s worst note-takers, so this is nowhere near everything that she talked about, but I have recorded a few gems for you here that might help you as you decide where to put your time and energy online.
According to Nikki, these are your ‘Must Haves’:
1) The ability to access your website and make changes to it
2) You must have identified and set up the social channels you wish to use properly
3) You must make it easy to share — content is 7x more likely to be shared if it’s simple for your user
4) Google Analytics
You’ve heard me discuss Content Marketing before, right? Unless you have a content strategy, nothing works. Her suggestion is to sit with a piece of paper and write ten article titles for your perfect customers. Once these are in place you know what you need to write and can schedule it for publishing.
Now that you know what you’re going to publish, let’s talk about how to get it ‘out there’ to your target market. Nikki had some analytics for the major social media sites that can help you decide where your potential clients are and meet them on their home turf.
1) Facebook: 71% of Internet users are on FB and most of these are between 24-50 years old with equal gender representation. If you are posting regularly to FB and people are not engaging with you (i.e ‘liking’ and sharing your posts) you may need to reconsider what you are posting.
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2) Twitter: 23% of Internet users are on Twitter, demographics between 18-29 years old and skewed slightly female. Over 30% of users check multiple times daily, so you can post more often without bugging people. (Nikki taught me that etiquette says you follow people back, so I’m working on that since manners are important.)
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3) Instagram: 26% of Internet users are on Instagram and it is growing quickly. Demographics are between 18-29 and again skewed slightly female. I’m not on this one yet, so can’t add much to this!
In each of these you need to decide how you wish to be perceived, both by existing and prospective clients. You can search for and look at your competitors; see what they are doing well and identify opportunities. Take a look at how people are using technology and what channels they are using. For instance, are your perspective clients looking you up on their iphone? You had better be sure your website is formatted properly for that or they will get frustrated and wander off.
Of course, there is a lot more to all of this, but hopefully this will get you started.
Are you comfortable in the world of social media for your business, or do you find it difficult? Do you have specific questions we can help you with?
We’re all in this together!
Alexis
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