SEVEN | Social media must-haves when you're launching a creative business (templates, guidance and insider hacks)

Over 40% of the world’s total population uses social media! And 54% of them use social platforms to research brands and products before making a purchase.

The takeaway? Getting your brand to cut through will really help realise your creative dreams.

Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn or Snapchat (we could go on…), social media platforms are the place to build up, and engage with, your audience.

But where should you start? 

Omnipresence is out — it’s time to be picky about your social platforms

Managing a presence on each and every single social media platform is a big ask.

That’s why smart and savvy business owners are now focusing their efforts on just one or two key social platforms for their core audience.

Prioritise quality over quantity and you’ll soon get to know the characteristics and capabilities of your preferred platform(s). Better still, you’ll be channeling your marketing spend into the places where your potential customers like to hang out — and what’s better than that?

Develop a social strategy and schedule

What and why are you posting? Who is your audience? Where and when should you connect with them?

Answers to these questions will inform your social media strategy and schedule — the must-have documents to keep you on track, keep you on brand, and (most importantly!) keep on delivering ROI.

While you should certainly develop a rough strategy before you start posting, consider this first iteration a work in progress. The more you post, the more you’ll learn about what your audience likes. When engagement is good, do more of that!

Hootsuite provides a few really handy strategy and schedule templates, and if you want to deep dive into the stats, Sprout Social and BuzzSumo provide top notch tools for analysing.

Grow your pre-launch following

Countdown to launch! But are you moving too soon?

To ensure maximum impact, you should start building your following months before the big reveal.

Harness any existing fans and personal contacts by inviting them to follow your brand’s social media page. Then provide lots of exciting anticipatory content. Build a buzz and you’ll be closing sales from the get-go!

Build a bank of (royalty free) images

Tweets with an image get 150% more retweets than pure-text shares. On Facebook, posts with a picture get 2.3 x more engagement. And on Instagram, Pinterest or Snapchat, visuals are a non-negotiable.

Do you see what we’re saying? You need eye-catching imagery for your social feed.

As a creative entrepreneur, you might be thinking: “But where do I get these images? My personal photography will only go so far…” And that’s where royalty free databases come to the rescue.

For artsy stock images that don’t follow the usual tired formula, visit Unsplash or Jumpstory. These troves of photographic delights are our go-tos.

Top tip: try searching image platforms for an adjective or an emotion. For example, “wanderlust” will throw out more interesting results than something descriptive, like “holiday”.

Make your posts pop with design tools

These days, you don’t have to be a professional designer to make your social media posts stand out from the crowd — you just need a few great tools.

Canva is an ah-mazing graphic design platform that you should 100% add to your social media tool kit. Just add in your free imagery, update the text and you’re good to go!

Save time with automation tools

If you try to be online at 8am, 10.30am, 2pm, 8pm — or whenever you want to post to social — your working day will end up seriously disjointed and disrupted. The secret? Automation.

Hootsuite and Buffer are top of the class for social media scheduling. Simply plan and upload a batch of content in advance and the platform will automatically post at the time and date you’ve chosen.

Don’t forget hashtags!

Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, hashtags make the social media world go round.

Include a couple of relevant hashtags with your posts and social browsers are more likely to come across you and your brand.

Unsure where to start? A spot of competitor stalking will help you to work out which hashtags are popular within your industry. You can also make hashtags specific to your products, brand and location.

For instance, something like #familyphotographybristol will get you fewer but more relevant views than #familyphotographyUK.

Work with micro influencers

Influencer marketing is still big news. Everyone — from huge corporations to little indies — is doing it! But while celeb endorsement used to be the it thing, micro influencers are starting to take over — and that’s great news for growing businesses like yours. 

Micro influencers have between 1,000 - 100,000 fiercely loyal followers. So getting them on-board can really help to spread the word about your brand — and to an audience that really cares.

Keep your engagement up

Social media is a two-way street. Your followers won’t engage with you, if you don’t engage with them. So answer their questions, like their posts, and keep them updated with what you’re doing each day.

Because real, authentic engagement doesn’t just generate excellent customer karma, it also impresses the complex algorithms that decide how often your profile is seen.

Simply put, more chat = more customers. And that’s what we’re after!