Lee Kenny column: Kickstart your social media for 2016

So a big thank you to John Kenealy and the Halifax Courier team who’ve been extremely supportive and thanks to you for reading the column, it’s been great fun.

So how have these first three weeks of 2016 been for your business? Next week one 12th of the year will have gone. Are you on track to achieve 8 per cent of your annual sales by this time next week?

Probably not.

In truth if you got started today it may take you a week or two to get up to speed at which point you may be have lost a whole 10 per cent of the year. To help you along here’s a quick start guide to get you back on track.

#1 Remember the basics

Make sure you are posting 2-3 times a day on Facebook and 4-6 times on Twitter. Use Scheduling software for messages that aren’t topical. This leaves you free to react and respond in real time

Make sure 20 per cent of your messages are Sales related and 80 per cent should be of interest to your typical social media follower

#2 Schedule fixed time to manage social media

This needs to be a fixed and unbreakable short amount of time each day. Spend 30 minutes once a week planning and scheduling your Facebook and Twitter posts. Then spend 10 minutes each day responding and replying to your customers. You can also use this 10 minutes to post or respond to up to the minute topical stories.

#3 Keep score

You keep track of your sales figures. Keep score of your followers, tweets and interactions. It’s amazing how quickly you forget where you came from. Seeing growth will help you keep the momentum going. Likewise static numbers will let you know when things need to change

#4 Reward your followers

Make it worth their while to follow your page or Twitter account. Exclusivity always breeds loyalty and that’s a two way street.

#5 Take the journey away from social media too

Encourage your followers to share their preferences, suggestions and most importantly of all their contact details with you as soon as possible. This is not so you can spam them, but to ensure you can communicate with them effectively. When you have a sale that your customer would love, often only 6 per cent of your Facebook followers will actually see the message, even less on Twitter.

#6 Ask for the sale

Too many businesses do a terrific job of posting interesting stories and information but forget to actually ask people to buy something.

Still feel like you need help? Well I’d love to help your business. Feel free to visit snowflakemedia.co.uk or visit SocialSnowflake on Twitter or Facebook and I’ll be happy to help!