Using social media to promote your business ... the right way

More and more businesses have shifted much of their advertising thrust into social media posting. Where traditional media used to be the dog and social media was the tail, that analogy has flipped. That is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. Now sole proprietors and small/midsized business without huge media budgets have a money-saving avenue to promote themselves. Posting on social media platforms is basically free. That’s the good thing. However, precisely because it costs nothing to post a message, perhaps businesses are also devaluing the importance of the message itself.

Rather than engaging skilled creatives to thoughtfully craft their messages for these platforms – as they would for paid media placements in traditional media – many businesses simply do it themselves. While some do it well, some don’t. When scrolling through LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms, we can see that many businesses are posting creative content that isn’t helping them stand out, engage the people they’re trying to attract or elevate their brands. They constantly push out content for content’s sake and may actually be giving their prospects reason to ignore them. Without the care and skill that professional designers and writers bring to the table, too many businesses are posting messages that, unwittingly, work against their desired goals.

These two factors – free cost of posting and do-it-yourself messaging content – have also turned posting platforms into minefields of clutter. In the social media posting frenzy, businesses are expending posting effort to create the very clutter they used to try to rise above. If they want their posts to have any effect in this environment, it is all the more important to expend effort and possibly bring in help to make the posts stand out. As potential customers quickly scroll past scads of posts, a business’s post has a fraction of a second to catch prospects’ eyes and stop them from scrolling. This means that the stopping power of the post’s main graphic is all the more important. No one will ever get to the small text in the post or click a link to additional content if the main graphic doesn’t first stop them in their tracks or intrigue them into engagement. Too many businesses are content to use same-old-same-old images for the main graphic. Or they don’t use intriguing words. Far fewer invest in custom motion animations that bring imaginative imagery and thoughtful words to life. Yet these are the very things that can help posts win the competition for eyes and minds.

Does this all mean you shouldn’t use social media platforms to promote your business? No! It means that if you do use social media, you should do it well to avoid the pitfalls described above. Let your competitors fall into those. If you have people on staff that have the experience, creative skills and tech tools to craft powerful, scroll-stopping custom animations for your posts, give them the time and resources to knock it out of the park. If you don’t have this skillset on staff, consider engaging an outside contributor – yes, like FocalCraft – to help you create your posts. It is likely faster and less expensive to rent our experience, creative skills and tech tools than to develop them in-house. Since you’re saving media dollars posting your messages for free, why not reinvest a small portion of your savings to bring your posts to life?