The potential reach of social media is a marketer’s dream, and light-years away from the old approaches of TV, newspaper, and radio.

But there’s also a downside. You have find ways to break through all the clamor to get your product or service noticed.

If you have a small business, you don’t necessarily need to develop a 500-page marketing plan before you start posting on social media. But you do need to have a concrete plan, complete with specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals, a budget, and an approach that will increase engagement.

Our social media management experts can help you create a concise, targeted marketing plan that will focus your message and provide real results.

Once you have a solid plan in hand, you’ll need to create compelling content to share on social media.

Mind your brand’s image

As we’ve stressed before, there’s a vast difference between your personal social media use and your business accounts. When you’re communicating with friends, you can just post anything that pops into your head or comes across your feed, because your purpose in that case is to entertain or inform them. You can toss together funny videos or create a cute meme and not worry about your image.

Of course you also want your business posts to entertain and engage your fans, but they should have a more professional-looking image that matches your brand’s aesthetic. While your photos, videos, and posts don’t need to look as though they were produced by an advertising agency, they should be of a higher quality than those you might dash off to your friends.

Tone is another important part of image. If your online “voice” is sometimes playful, other times clinical, and still others serious and filled with jargon, you run the risk of coming across to fans as insincere or worse, untrustworthy. A mix of tones can also be unsettling to followers.

Tailor your message

Another key to creating scroll-stopping social media content is knowing your audience. Is your potential customer wealthy or a gig worker struggling to get by? Do they have kids? Which platform(s) are they most likely to be on? Do they prefer words, or are they most likely to share images and videos? Are they young, old, in between, or all of the above?

This is known as creating a “customer persona,” or a picture of a particular person that you can address when you’re crafting your social media posts.

Besides using the various analytics, you can get a good idea of your ideal customer persona by paying attention to their texts, comments, and questions. To help complete the picture, you could also do a survey of current customers, potential customers, or both.

When we break it down like this, you can see that content crafted for one type of audience may not appeal to other demographic groups.

So it’s important to know whom you’re trying to reach with your posts, and what’s most likely to capture their interest.

Relieve their ‘pain’

And remember when you’re posting to spend at least as much time giving as trying to get. In other words, don’t make every post an ad for your products or service.

A cardinal rule of successful advertising is to provide solutions to problems people have. Once you know who your typical customers are, you should have an idea of what their “pain” or need is.

For example, say you sell organic dog treats. Your typical customer is millennial age and younger, single or a couple with no kids, with an annual income over $120,000, and a high-powered job. Their preferred platform is Instagram, but they also check out Pinterest and LinkedIn from time to time.

Their “pain” might be finding a reliable sitter or trustworthy groomer for their pooch. Or they may want hints on how to make the life of a senior dog easier or how to spot early signs of illness. If they have a rambunctious puppy, their greatest pain might be how to gently keep her from wrecking their apartment.

While they may enjoy the occasional cute puppy video, they’re more focused on their dog’s happiness than their own.

So show them ways to make that happen, with helpful hints and tips. Then you can remind them of how your dog biscuits contain the highest-quality ingredients from local sources, and the ways this can please their dog while helping to maintain his health and energy.

We hope this helps you see that effective social media marketing takes some planning, some research, and a bit of brainstorming.

For more ways to create compelling social media content, talk to our marketing and social media management specialists. We know how to help businesses like yours stand out from the rest.