Are you considering creating an online community for you business? Or updating your social media pages? Ask yourself these important questions before starting:

Who is your target market?

Age, gender, location, social considerations. Understanding this will help you understand what platform will best suit your business - extremely advantageous if you are time poor.

Do you have a preferred platform?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, You Tube. Have a look at where your competition is, you don’t want to miss out on potential audience.

There are many new niche social media platforms today, as well as review sites and blogs that can be utilised as part of your social media strategy. Stay on top of these trends, being the first to jump onboard could give you an advantage over your competitors.

Do you have a budget for advertising?

This will help you build your community online, which puts you in front of more people. It can be done for as little as a dollar a day, ask us how!

How often should you post?

One post per day is ideal to start with and will help to establish yourself online as well as find your tone of voice. Once you have the hang of social media and you’ve built a following, consider posting two or three times a day.

Our best tip is to utilise the ‘Facebook Insights’ function, this shows what time your audience is most active online. Consequently, posting at these times means more people are likely to see your post.

What type of content should you post?

Whilst informative posts educate and create value for your followers, pictures and videos gain more interaction than standard text posts, as they cater to our visual desires and require less time to process.

What would you like to achieve through Social Media?

Decide exactly what it is you’d like to achieve through social media. It is now easier than ever to monitor your online presence with easily accessible statistics.

Try not to think so much about creating leads for sales generation, but rather aim to build brand awareness by promoting your business as industry experts.

And lastly, do you have the time?

Social media requires commitment and time. When not managed properly it can cause more harm than good. If you aren’t able to schedule time into your busy schedule consider hiring an agency to manage your social media channels for you, that way you can focus on working on what you love and leave what you don’t to the experts.

Social media is not a technology. It’s a conversation and it’s happening with or without you.