Now is a good time to spring clean your social media to boost results

How often do you review your social strategy, process and outcomes? asks Elise Balsillie, Head of Thryv Australia. Now is a good time to thoroughly spring clean your social media to set your business up for success.

Small businesses have a window of opportunity to connect with customers (and even make direct sales) via their social media channels every day. This is almost two hours, according to We Are Social’s Digital 2022 report. The leading social media agency’s research indicated that Aussies spend, on average, 1 hour and 57 minutes per day on social media alone.

As we leap into spring, take the opportunity to spring clean your social media channels and set your small business up for success. Here are my suggestions on where to start.

Address negative reviews

A negative review can leave a small business owner feeling very distressed. First and foremost, resist the urge to act when you’re feeling this way and feel comforted knowing there are actionable steps to minimising the impact of a customer voicing their less than desirable experience with your business.

Once you’ve regained composure, draft a response that addresses the reviewer’s concern. In my experience, this is one of the most effective tried and tested structures for a response to a negative review:

• Greet the reviewer by their name
• Acknowledge their concern or complaint
• Apologise (sincerely!)
• Make it right by offering to make it better or ensuring that it’ll never happen again

Spring clean your social media strategy

One third of Aussies will check out a business’s social media pages before making a purchase. Why? Your brand’s presence on Facebook, Instagram or similar instils a level of confidence in consumers. Develop a strategy to ensure that you’re leveraging your social media platforms effectively.

Start by defining your social media objectives. For most small businesses, this is normally to increase brand awareness and grow community presence. Consider also that your social media strategy will help you develop a long-term relationship with your customers.

Then, create a clear roadmap by using the SMART framework:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely

This will provide you with the structure to best meet your social media objectives while strategically aligning them with your business goals.

Measure your ROI

It can be difficult to identify the impact of social media efforts without the provision of metrics. Because of this, social media related tasks slip towards the end of a small business owner’s to do list. Or worse, placed in the “too hard basket” entirely.

To effectively spring clean your social media, you therefore need to consider what ROI your strategy is bringing you. Some ways that a small business can effectively measure how their social media efforts are impacting their bottom-line include:

• Impressions – the number of times your post was seen (even if seen more than once)
• Reach – the number of people who see your post
• Engagement – the number of likes, comments and shares on your post

If you want to keep your ROI high, remember that a ‘spring clean’ of your socials should be an ongoing thing. Don’t just leave it as an annual review. To really stay on track, you should be going through this ‘deep clean’ process at least quarterly.

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