Tips to Help You Retain your Social Media Audience

If you’re an SME owner, chances are that you run a social media account under your business name on at least one social media platform. Your decision to choose these particular platforms may have come down to a few reasons such as; it may be one you have used personally and you are therefore familiar with the layout, and more importantly, it’s where you believe your target audience hangs out online. Of course, there could be platforms where your target audience does frequent, but it may not be relevant to your business, which is where you need to find a common ground. It may seem logical, but business owners commonly make the error of using platforms which are not suited to their business.

It comes down to understanding your target audience. Which social platforms do they like to use? How do they prefer to interact with your brand? The Social Media Hat reported that:

• Facebook has 1.39 Billion monthly active users
• YouTube has 1 Billion monthly active users
• Google+ has 540 Million active monthly users
• Instagram has 300 Million active users
• Twitter has 288 Million active users
• LinkedIn has 187 Million monthly active users
• Pinterest has 70 Million monthly active users

*Source Social Media Active Users by Network, 09/03/15

With so many obsessed with the numbers reported above, business owners are concerned with attracting new followers and invest time into seeing these figures grow, but retaining the people you have invested so much time into attracting should also be a priority.

So why do some people make the decision to ‘unlike’ or ‘unfollow’ your business on social media? Go back to when you set up your own social media profile via any number of platforms you are signed up to. What was your main driving reason for signing up? Many of you will site reasons such as wanting to stay in touch with family and friends, while others may use social media to stay up to date with current and breaking news. The reality here is that people do not sign up to social media platforms so that they can keep up to date with your business; your business updates are merely a convenient addition. In a recent Hubspot article where people were surveyed their sentiments towards brands or businesses online, it was reported that, “…respondents were actually very picky — 50% of those surveyed followed only one to four brands on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter” (Lehr, 2015). Herein lies your challenge; your business must stay relevant or risk being forgotten about.

As people are using these platforms for reasons other than your business, this puts pressure on you to create interesting content. If it is too promotional and doesn’t encourage engagement, why will people bother? You’ll be seen as an annoyance which is why people click ‘unfollow’ or ‘unlike’. So, again, create content which is going to strike a chord with your audience. If you own a music store which sells equipment and instruments, make sure you talk about the instruments of a big band that is coming to a town near your audience (which you can easily find out via your Insights for any social media platform). You’ll be seen to have a vast amount of industry knowledge, and you’ll be engaging your customers on a common ground.

Most likely your audience does not want to feel as though you are advertising to the masses. Customers want to feel special, unique, wanted; they want personalisation. If you bombard your social media platforms with automated content, you’re not going to achieve any of the above. Instead, take a look at your followers and see who they are and what demographics they fit. Once you have ascertained this, you can tailor your content to suit that audience and target them specifically, so they’re getting the personalisation that they want. Practice makes perfect, as we have all heard before. So practice incorporating your key message, otherwise known as your unique selling proposition, into your ad copy. Better yet, learn how to incorporate this into a relevant image, which is known to gain higher engagement than text on its own.

So remember, while attracting new likes and followers will always be a priority for your business on social media, you must also work at retaining the audience you already have. If you want to speak with someone from our Digital Strategy team to learn more about how Social Media Management can help your online business presence to flourish, make sure you get in touch today on 1300 859 600, or, visit our website here.

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