Millions of businesses use social media to interact with their customers and grow their business but working on your accounts and social media performance can sometimes make it challenging to see what you need to do to improve.

These 5 actionable tips to improve your social media performance will help you to take a step back from just creating content and work on improving your presence on any platform.

Review your social media accounts

Lots of businesses create their account, craft their bio, etc. and then never go back to it.  The focus becomes all about creating content, pushing it out, and renewing it every so often. Did you know our bio, profile, description and services sections are all highly searchable keyword-rich opportunities to help you to be found? 

When was the last time you evaluated your accounts? Are they still an accurate representation of what you do? Who you are? The services you provide? Make sure that your descriptions all include the keywords that you know your customers are using to find whatever it is that you do or sell.  If you have won any awards or worked with new clients or industries make sure that these are incorporated.

Join the social community

As a digital marketing company, one of the most frequent questions we get asked is “How often should we __________?” (insert post, tweet, pin, update, go-live, etc.). The reality is that there is no magic formula or one size fits all answer to the question.  

What is true is that consistency is rewarded on pretty much all of the platforms. As well as your own data will show you where the majority of your audience is on. Most social media platforms have their own data analytics and you can use that to find out the best times that work for you.

Think quality over quantity here as well. Two or three good quality Instagram or Facebook posts a week that engage with your audience and are well received are much more valuable than 10 posts that receive no engagement. Genuine engagement is a key to success on social media and natural, good quality content will always receive more engagement than poorly thought out mass-produced content.

Stay social and relevant

One of the quickest and easiest ways to lose followers and customers is to bombard them with “buy now” type messages. The clue to improving your performance on social media is in the name. Staying social will draw many longer-lasting results than just selling!

Social media is a powerful tool that can act as a face to face interaction but without the hassle of actually doing it.  If a customer was in front of you it’s unlikely that you would grab something off the shelf and tell them to buy it now but on social media, that’s what businesses have a tendency to do (and it's annoying).  Good salespeople get to know their customers. 

They find out their preferences, needs, wants, and what their intentions are. Then they make suggestions based on the information they have found out. Being social on your platforms will give you the same answers but only if you create the right topics and listen to what your audience is telling you. Using a combination of a good-hearted message to your potential customers and social media marketing practices, the results are endless.

Respond to your customers on social media

If a customer came up to you in real life and asked you a question or staff member compliments, what would you do?  Would you leave them hanging for a day, and then go back to them? More importantly, would they still be there if you did? Unlikely. This scenario on social media happens all the time. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen reviews, recommendations, and comments unanswered or a thumbs up and nothing else.

All of the platforms expect a certain level of responsiveness and in order to do that, you have to be present.  Make sure that someone is monitoring your social media notifications and responding to comments and messages as quickly as possible across all of your platforms.

Keep in mind that this can be time-consuming to achieve “Very Responsive” on Facebook you need to respond to 90% of private messages within 15 minutes which takes dedication. Unfortunately, Instant Replies aren’t included as a response but they are a good way of managing a customer’s expectations.

Measure then analyze

One of the biggest differences between online and offline social media marketing is the ability and depth to which you can measure what has been done.  However, the measurement for the sake of collecting numbers on a spreadsheet is no use to anyone and only works if you use it as a basis for a deeper analysis. 

The highest growth in followers on your Instagram profile?  Great job but the numbers alone aren’t enough.  What did you do to make it happen?  Which post had the highest engagement?  How many website visitors did that acquire? Analyze what has worked in the past and what hasn’t. Use a deeper analysis to help you decide what you need to do again, what you need to differently. A perfect executed example of social media marketing and how social media performance increases is here.