Social media Presence: How to build your online brand

These days, social media plays a vital role both in business and in one's day-to-day life, even if we don’t want to admit it. Social media can be a very effective marketing tool for your business when used correctly. It is important to portray your brand through social media in an accurate way to maintain your brand image in every aspect. It is one thing to have a social media account, and another to have a strong social media presence. Tying social media in with your business requires you to have a purpose and an objective, and in order for your account to be effective it requires a following. Everyone wants that huge following, but how do you get there? With all the different components at play in social media, there is much to learn about the different ways you can build an optimal social media presence.

Managing Your Profile:

When working on your social media account, one of the major things you need to keep in mind is consistency. Consistency in your content builds trust for your customers. When it comes to business, bring consistent also strengthens your branding, which can allow you to stand out from your competitors. This means that the content on all your different social platforms should be relatively similar, whether you follow the same posting template, use the same colours, or stick to a theme.

An active social media presence can also play a huge role in increasing engagements and increasing your followers. You want to keep your followers engaged, so you should stick to a posting schedule to make sure you are posting a good quantity of material. Social media algorithms are more likely to showcase eye-catching, consistent material in their feeds, so if you can get your account to be picked up by the algorithm you'll be able to reach a wide range of potential leads.

When looking at what content to share with your followers, be sure to think about what your brand stands for and create content based on that. Consider the quality of the photos you are sharing and how they will stand out, as you want to upload content that will grab followers' attention. Highlight your best quality photos an those that show off the best parts about your amazing program to give viewers a glimpse into what they could be part of if they enroll in your program.

Outreach on Social Media:

To strengthen the effectiveness of your social media platform, incorporate the power of outreach. With social media, don’t focus solely on your own content, as following, linking, and commenting on others' profiles is just as useful. When online engagement is reciprocated, you are building relationships and connections through social media, which ultimately is the goal.

With a larger following comes a wider range of influence, as you are reaching more people who may be interested in your business. You can develop relationships and gain trust online to hopefully turn followers into paying clients in the future. To develop a larger following, it can be helpful to locate and relevant profiles, such as childcare companies or popular care providers and follow them. The larger the following, the more leads you are reaching and the more potential clients you gain.

More Engagement:

When managing your social media account, one of your goals should be to reach high levels of engagement. Learning how to get the highest level of engagement possible is challenging, but there are some tools and tricks you can use to help increase your reach.

• Insights are a powerful tool that allow you to see the statistics of your posts. You can get an idea of when the ideal time of day to post is, or which kinds of posts get the most engagement. This tool isn’t always taken advantage of, so getting familiar with it can give you an advantage not everyone has. By using the Insights tool, you are able to see when your greatest engagement time is, so you can be informed on when to schedule your posts in order to reach the largest number of followers possible.

• Using a technique as simple as a hashtag can also be useful. This causes your post to show up in other sections of your social media platforms, which helps you reach more than just your following. A hashtag also gives your post the ability to trend, which means it is selected to be featured by a platform.

• A giveaway can, somewhat surprisingly, be one of the most effective methods of gaining engagement. Most giveaways require followers to like, share, and comment on a post, or even invite multiple friends to view the post as well. By setting up an engagement you can reach an unprecedented amount of engagement by letting your followers spread word of your business for you. People who are originally enticed by the giveaway will oftentimes stick around to learn more, and this can lead to a boost in long-term followers. You should take any opportunity possible to reach a larger audience, in hopes to get the word out about your business.

• As mentioned above, reciprocating engagement and liking your followers' posts is surprisingly a beneficial way to increase engagement on your post, as it increases the likelihood that other people will see your comments and click on your profile to learn more.

Measuring Effectiveness:

When spending time on something, you want to know that it is working and worth your time. One way of looking at it is to consider that by having a social media presence, you are further developing your brand in an invaluable way. You can also look at the number of people you are reaching (your followers), which are learning about your business. To do this you can look at the number of followers you have, the number of likes on your post, and the views you get on your stories. Having a social media presence gives customers another place to look into your business, which gives it more validity and credibility. Customers often feel more comfortable investing in a business when they are able to look at larger amounts of content from the business.

Building an online social media presence is a very important tool for business growth and customer connection. There are numerous tips and tricks you can use to enhance your social media presence. The major things to focus on are consistency, activity, and reciprocation. The larger levels of engagement, the larger number of potential customers you are able to hold on to. Do everything in your power to make the most of your social media and online presence.