When you first create your business pages on social media and are all ready to go, it can be a bit daunting about what to say.  Here are some hints and tips for different types of posts.

• Selling your business

Although a lot of people will tell you that you can’t sell, sell, sell on social media, as a small business you need to sell your business – that’s the whole point, right?!  A good way of doing that is to limit a sell, sell, sell post to once a week.  These are good to share to Facebook groups, to use for ‘paid for’ advertising and to highlight how amazing your business is.

When writing the post think of your potential customer.  How can you help them?  What problem can you solve?  Why should they use your service or products? How do they contact you – message, ring, email?

Highlight one of your services or products. Share a review from one of your customers. Highlight a promotion, discount or offer. Talk about why your business is so great e.g., quick response, after service care, personalised service, etc.

• Informative posts

These sorts of posts are really useful and beneficial for your business. People buy from people, so if you can show that you know what you are doing by sharing your knowledge, then you can build that trust.  It may feel like you are giving your services away for free, but by getting something for nothing, people stay interested and engaged in your posts. In addition, it builds awareness of your business and brand. A great way of doing this is buy offering a weekly hints and tips post. Just share a snippet of what you can offer.

• Background posts

As mentioned above people want to connect with you and to trust you before they buy from you.  Therefore, it is important to share about yourself on your social media. YOU are your business.  This can be hard at first, but it doesn’t have to be intimate details of every part of your life.  Share things that relate to what you are doing for your business.  For example, why are you so passionate about what you do?  Have you done any training to achieve your position?  Has something inspiring happened this week?  Have you achieved something for your business this week?

• Questions/polls/competitions

Getting people to engage with your posts (comments, likes and shares, etc) can be hard. This is not because you aren’t posting great stuff, it is just because people are lazy.  So, give them a gentle nudge now and then by asking them questions – ask them if you can offer a new service or product to help them. Create a poll – ask them if they like this one or that one.  And finally, how about running a little competition to win a free product or a sample of your services?

• Other people’s posts

If you see a great article or post from somebody that you follow that relates to your business, why not share it on to your social media.  Obviously, you don’t want to be sharing your competitors posts, but if you belong to any business societies or groups etc, they can be really useful posts to fill your feed and add interest.

• Fun posts

Adding a bit of fun, a bit of your personality and maybe a bit of inspiration to your feed is important.  We wouldn’t suggest doing this all the time but do think of doing something not business related once in a while.  It could be a picture of your dog, or a picture of a beautiful sunset or a joke you have seen.  It just adds a little bit more of you and keeps people interested.

Hopefully these ideas will have inspired you.  A great way of getting focused and knowing what to write, is to plan ahead for the week.  Plan a salesy post for Monday, a background post for Wednesday and a fun post for Friday. Once you have that in your head, you can start looking for an image to use and putting together the words to go with it. Good luck!

This article was written by Fiona Service of Litus Digital.