The motivation for all professionals to use social media more effectively is universal: to increase awareness of their brand.

Just as a sleek website is a requirement for every business – or risk looking like a fly-by-night entity – social media isn’t an option for professionals anymore, it’s a necessity.

Simply activate an account with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, Instagram or Pinterest, post a few motivating memes and new customers will start coming in, right? Wrong. Unfortunately social media is much more complex than that and users are growing savvy to disingenuous content and excessive sales pitches. Need to improve your social media marketing? Here are five tips:

1. What’s the Plan? Any successful business has a business plan. Invest no less in your social media efforts. If you want successful social media channels, you need a plan or else waste a lot of time/money. For starters:
   • Choose your goal.
   • Decide your target audience (Be specific. It’s not “everyone.”)
   • Choose the social media channels most appropriate for that audience.
   • Decide how much money/time you are willing to spend each month on social media; that will help determine how much content creation, posting, engagement and analytics you can plan to conduct regularly.
   • Choose your social media style: Serious? Playful tone?
2. Turn Print Content Into Video – Increase your brand with the power of video. Turn your written articles into short video blogs. The printed article should still exist on your website and social media pages for the readers of the world.
3. Visual Content Should Drive Users Back to Your Website or Social Media Page – Optimize and link your video on your social media page back to your Youtube channel – let your Youtube grow! There is no reason to share a video that steers potential clients away from your social media channel or website.
4. Optimize Your Hashtags – You can invest in LinkedIn Publisher to write long posts for your followers, and browse Hootsuite Labs Resource Library for created content that is good for sharing, but will anyone see it? Optimizing hashtags is done so users can find your informative content. Choose hashtag words wisely. Do searches of the words you are hashtagging and see what comes up. Monitor the hashtags of competitors to make sure you are on the same page. Keep them short, monitor the conversation, and have a crisis plan in case something ever goes wrong. Preparation is key. Reputations can be damaged by posting the wrong content – even hashtags.
5. Leave it to the Pros – You have a friend who made a great tomato sauce, so he decided to open an Italian restaurant. With no business experience, it failed. Your employee posts daily photos of dogs playing with cats on his personal Instagram page and now has 50,000 followers – maybe he can manage your social medial channels. Like the friend who had no business experience to create a successful restaurant, you want to choose your social media manager wisely.

PR and Marketing agencies have experienced professionals deeply immersed in the digital world. They live and breathe social media. Social media marketing professionals are there to help get you started, analyze your current channels or manage the whole campaign – so you can stay focused on the important work of your business.