Every business should be looking ahead to 2017 and figuring out what they are going to be doing for marketing in the new year. One of the things you should be evaluating is your social media presence and how that is affecting your current marketing. This will help you determine what changes need to be made in the new year. Here are some tips for upping your social media marketing game in the new year.

Assess your social media accounts

The first thing you need to do is assess what you currently have going for you. According to Forbes, one of the biggest mistakes people make is having too many social media accounts, many of which aren’t being attended. Figure out exactly which social media platforms you currently have accounts set up on and whether or not you are keeping up with them. Just being logged in on one account is not good enough, whereas seven accounts with different companies might be too many. If you have a lot of accounts with social media platforms you are no longer using, such as Vine, then you might want to consider deleting them.

When choosing the networks that work best for your business, you’ll want to consider that Facebook is a must for every business. It is definitely the place to start. Your business will also have a lot of success if you use pictures for advertising using Instagram and possibly Pinterest. Twitter tends to be more of an opinions site, so it is the place to go if you have more services than goods to sell. Snapchat has become a really great resource, especially for Generation Z. Choosing which ones to use will depend on your target audience and what you are trying to sell.

How much can you do?

After limiting your social media accounts down to around 3 really great ones that work well for your business, you will want to figure out how much you can afford to do on social media. It is important that you interact with customers on a regular basis and are posting on your page a few times a week. On top of that, you should be keeping all of your information updated including your profile picture and all contact info. While text marketing might seem like all you need to keep your customers engaged, it is important that they have multiple platforms to contact your business.

It is common for businesses who feel they need some sort of social media presence to create social media pages but do nothing to keep them updated. If you’ve done that, you’ve missed the point. The whole concept of social media is to give people a platform to easily communicate with each other, so if your business isn’t posting regularly and interacting with customers, then you are missing a huge potential market of people and you may lose business to customers.

Paying for ads

One question to ask your business is whether or not it is going to be worth your time or money to pay for ads. If you can do it, I would recommend doing so. Customers are spending more time on social media through their smartphones than ever before, which means you are very capable of reaching audiences you never thought you could before through targeted advertising.

Source: Forbes