As a B2B business investing in your social media enables you to connect and communicate with your clients and potential markets directly and turn into growth. But realising the impact and ROI is more than creating content and regular posting it is also about driving engagement. So how do you get the most out of your social media?

Social media optimisation (SMO) involves raising awareness of a brand, product or service through the use of social media outlets. Similar to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), effective SMO means that you need to really consider your audience and your key words, hashtags and content to get engagement.

Creating a social media presence is just the start of the process. But rather than spending time scatter gun on social media, which can take up a lot of time, do your research and understand what will engage your audience and then formulate a plan to maximise your social media strategy. This will help to increase awareness, strengthen your brand, increase engagement and, when done well, generate leads. SMO should also work as part of an integrated communications plan to achieve the best ROI (return on investment).

So, how can you make your social media activities become an effective part of your marketing strategy? Here are some of our top tips:

• Optimise your social media strategy – Social media requires forward planning and strategy development just like any other aspect of marketing. Your social media strategy should consist of clearly defined goals outlining what you want to achieve through the use of social media, and deciding on what content will help you get there. Think about where your audience are and what social channels you’ll use to reach them.
• Keyword research – Similar to planning for SEO, it’s important when planning social media content to understand what topics, hashtags and possible phrases your target audience use or search for across social media.
• Don’t forget your profile – It’s important to optimise your profile just as much as you optimise your content. Make sure you have a relevant username, profile photo and set aside some time to carefully plan your profile biography. Remember, some social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter, have a limited number of characters for their profile biographies, so it’s worth spending some extra time carefully planning what you would like to say.
• Creating content – When creating your content schedule, it’s important to consider the following:
  – Use relevant headlines and call to actions
  – Add images to your posts – this increases engagement
  – Consider post length – you don’t have to use all the characters
  – Use hashtags – this makes it easy to track trending topics

• Timing matters – It’s important to consider when you schedule your posts to ensure you’re reaching your audience when they’re online. For example, if you’re posting at 5pm on a Friday, you’re more likely to be caught in the weekend’s socialising posts, rather than engaging strategic, commercial mindsets.

Monitor and Evaluate – As with all your marketing activities, it’s essential that you monitor and evaluate your social media activity to achieve the best ROI. Keep an eye on what’s working and what you need to change to achieve your goals.