Surviving Social, 3 Must Haves To Sustain Your Brand On Social Media

Just being on social media isn’t enough. While it only takes a couple minutes to set up an account, it takes months to build up a credible presence. And it’s tempting to want to be everywhere because everyone else seems to be. It appears that peer pressure doesn’t end when we leave grade school. It’s all around us as small business owners and social media is the ultimate playground.

But don’t allow yourself to be bullied. Your social media strategy should be unique to you and support your brand story. Attract the right crowds by following these three rules:

Develop Your Brand Story

First ask yourself, why do people read stories? Perhaps to enjoy a good laugh or cry. To gain knowledge or feel empowered. They want to gain something that enriches their lives in a meaningful way. They want to feel connected.

And that’s what your brand story should do. It goes beyond telling people what you do and listing how you do it. It purposely connects your audience with a brand that is run by real people who not only bleed like they do, but understand what they’re dealing with and exist to ease the burden.

Create Native Content

As important as the story you tell, is how you tell it. Each social media platform has its own distinctive vibe. Creating native content, or content that looks and feels like the content one would expect to find on that platform, enables you to deliver your message to an audience already primed to receive it.

The native content you create shouldn’t change your brand story. It will, however, give you the flexibility to highlight the many facets of your brand as you create content specific for the uniqueness of each platform you share it on.

Pick The Right Social Media Platforms

Know where your audience is. Even producing native content may not help you if the people you’re targeting aren’t on the platforms you’re using.

Equally as important is being realistic about the number of platforms you can manage. As a small business owner, you may not have a marketing professional on staff to manage your social media, so the burden may fall solely upon your shoulders.

So pick the platforms you know your audience is using. And of those, zero in on the one or two you feel comfortable with. Having five social media icons on your website that lead to platforms with no followers or sites that haven’t been updated in over a year isn’t the impression you want to make.

It’s better to master one or two social media sites, then to strike out on four or five of them.

Make Peace With Social

Hang in there. Surviving social is tough, even for marketers. But try taking your focus off just getting “likes” because by now, you’ve probably realized that they don’t always turn into sales.

Instead, use your brand story to disrupt the endless flow of stale sales pitches everyone else is posting. Use social to connect with, listen to, serve, and befriend your audience by sharing bits and pieces of why they should care about your brand, and most importantly, why your brand cares about them.

With a little effort (alright, a lot of effort) and a lot of patience, you will survive social media and be the better for it.