Any business needs to have a strong social media presence. Particularly an independent one that’s just starting out. It’s the best marketing tool at your disposal and the cheapest! You can tailor your marketing campaign to suit you and your budget. As a new business, you will need to make as many people aware of your brand as possible. The easiest way to do this is through the power of your social channels. Depending on the brand or product, we believe that the best way to reach new customers are Instagram and Facebook. If you’re more of a corporate company, LinkedIn is great as you may need somewhere to share more content based posts, rather than something that is aesthetically pleasing.

As a creative agency, we love to experiment with social media. It is there with the purpose of encouraging creativity. It’s supposed to bring enlightenment to your brand and ethos. It should tell a story on a grid or a feed. If it’s not doing that, you’re doing it wrong! Social media can be overwhelming, particularly when you start out. It takes time to build up a genuine following and to get good engagement. Digitiv is based in Colchester and it is a town that is growing constantly. There are always new businesses popping up and they need the support – not the big, corporate companies who have billions of pounds! Social media is the way to reach new customers.

Here at Digitiv, we offer social media packages that can be customised for your needs and requirements. You can view them by clicking here.

Why have social media?

But what is the secret to success? How do you grow your social media channels? Lastly, how do you make it a safe space?

The road to success.

There is no secret formula, just certain methods that work for certain accounts/ industries. Growing your social media organically requires patience, time and quality content. Instagram is the most popular platform out there and it is this that many people struggle to grow organically. There are hundreds of websites out there where you can buy followers but whatever you do, DO NOT do this. It will destroy your engagement and algorithm. Instagram will recognise your account as spam and will delete your ‘followers’ and even have the power to delete your account. If this happens, you will not be able to recover it and you will be forced to start again. Buying followers will mean you lose credibility and potential customers won’t have any faith in you.

Growing your account.

The best way to grow your following is to invest time in your account. Paying for ads will get you likes, but you need natural engagement which means comments, follows and reactions to your instagram stories. You need to spend at least one hour across the day connecting and engaging with similar accounts to yours. Posting on your instagram stories and using their own stickers will help your own algorithm. Time is the most important tool when it comes to social media. If you don’t invest in yourself, how can you expect someone else to? We know that some people genuinely don’t have the time to spend sitting on instagram commenting on peoples posts, finding accounts to follow, and that’s fine. BUT, invest in someone who does have the time. Now, paying for a social media manager isn’t as expensive as you would think and you get that investment back through your brand and products. We can guarantee that the first thing people will check with a new business, is their social media pages.

Using social media influencers is a great way to get engagement on your account. If you’re a local company, it is best to use someone in the area – they are more likely to best honest, and purchase a product themselves if they like it. Rather than spending money on promoting your latest post, invest in someone. Send them a free product, give them a discount code. These methods have been proven to work. In the long run, this generosity and forward thinking, will pay off. Giveaways are also good for this. It will paint your business in a positive light and it shows you’re interested in sticking around, looking after the ones who have shown loyalty to you.

Make your social media channels safe.

Lastly, there’s been a large amount of negativity and hate towards social media lately, however we don’t find this is the case. Most of the hate and distrust comes from the media and it filters into our social world. Keeping yourself safe online isn’t just down to physical safety. It’s down to emotional safety. Unfortunately, there are some people out there who have simply not learned that if you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all! Online trolls are active, however you can keep yourself, business and employees safe against them by blocking them, ignoring them and customising your feed so it is full of positivity and accounts you actually want to follow.