Social media has never been so important to boosting your business, so boosting your social media is a quick and proven way of giving your business that extra kick and momentum. Here’s 6 top tips to help you on your way:

1 Think like a customer

It’s great to have a presence on this social media platform and that social media platform and there is something to be said for the SEO value in that, but if your potential or current customers don’t use Google+ you are probably wasting your time. Don’t spread yourself too thin and focus on the channels that are likely to bring you your best rewards. As well as being in the right places, make sure your conversations / content are in line with your brand and what your customers are after. Have a look at some of their own profiles. What else do they like? What are they talking about? Knowing your customer means you will immediately gain better engagement

2 Images are great but still need work

Images and videos, even audio are great engagement tools and will likely gain you more shares, likes etc. But don’t think a related stock pic is all you need. To maximise your benefit, think about titles or descriptions for those images and rich content. At the very least a caption should be considered (as well as all the hidden coded tags). Better still a contrasting colour tagline on the top of the photo as a text overlay gives it real impact, as does a discrete version of your logo in the corner – which will also help when it comes to sharing.

3 Use the ‘hidden’ features of the platforms

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, they all have little widgets and features that few people know exist or use but can really help your business use social more efficiently. One of the best is LinkedIn’s Your Day feature. Syncronise your LinkedIn contacts with your calendar and Your Day and you will be prompted as to who is having a birthday, who has just got promoted or has some other big event in their working world. A little congratulations goes a long way and it is perfect to remind your contacts you are there and using Your Day you are prompted with a reason to re-invigorate that contact – so much better than cold calling. In Twitter don’t overlook the recommended follow accounts and on Facebook make the most of being able to drill-down to regions information about your fans, that could help with targetting future campaigns.

4 Monitor your follower progress

Each follower to your social accounts could be a potential new deal so pay them some attention. Avoid automatic welcomes – it is too obvious – but do try to engage new people and at the very least take fifteen minutes every day to have a look at the profiles of new followers to see who they are and think about how you might engage them in the future. Take a look for new people to follow too, on the back of your new followers as building a presence is a two-way process.

5 Link Google Analytics with social and your site

If you are not yet using the most essential free online tool, shame on you and go get it now! GA has dramatically improved it’s social integration and monitoring in the past year or so. You can monitor the channel name, what they are sharing and even link it to a specific campaign using the traffic URL builder. Plus use goals within Google Analytics and you can begin to collect insightful data as to how your social media integration is progressing.

6 Get out in the field

Social media is intended to be social and to be honest being sat behind a desk in an office is not the most socialable of positions. Social media works fantastically at meet-ups, conferences and lectures. Get to events and make sure you are involved in the discussions going on on the official hashtag. Keep an eye on who else is on the same stream too they could be future partners or customers.

Being social is where social media comes into its own, don’t forget that.

Image courtesy of screationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net