Whatever your company designs, social media offers you a fantastic opportunity to show your work and demonstrate your professionalism. With a website and one or more social media platforms, your web presence can attract new business.
Here are some excellent tips on how to use social media to promote your design company. They should help you avoid some common pitfalls and make the most of your company’s design abilities.
Be Where Your Audience Is
You don’t need to be on every social media platform all the time. As a small business, this can spread your resources too thinly. And it’s not a wise move for big businesses either. It’s more effective to target the social media platforms your ideal customers use the most.
Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr are image-focused social media platforms that may lend themselves well to your design company. But note that market research into where your customers spend their time is essential before you invest time and effort into creating or boosting your presence on any particular social media platform.
For example, Snapchat and TikTok tend to have younger users than Facebook. And Pinterest users are primarily but not exclusively female. Knowing the demographics of each platform will help you decide where you should prioritize promoting your design company.
Learn About Your Customers
Whatever kind of marketing or promotion your business performs, it’s key to understand your customers first. Since customers are at the core of modern businesses, it stands to reason that knowing your ideal customers and what they want should inform all you do.
Nuwber can help you learn more about your customers and potential customers. Useful information includes but is not limited to their locations and their occupations, which can help you understand your audience and adjust your marketing efforts accordingly. Knowing a little more about your visitors and leads may also help you communicate with them more effectively and convert more of them into loyal fans and paying customers.
Different analytics tools are also available nowadays for those purposes.
Make Content Specific to Each Platform
Creating content once and publishing it to all of your chosen social media platforms is a time-saving hack. However, it does not lend itself to getting great engagement. To attract more viewers and inspire them to action, tailor each post to each social media platform.
Instagram is focused on images, for example, so while it’s possible to publish a short essay there, it’s generally not the kind of thing its users expect or want to consume. Facebook users, however, will be accustomed to text running to several hundred words. Twitter, on the other hand, has a severely restricted length for posts.
Each platform, and not only those mentioned, has its own user demographic, language, and etiquette. It’s wise for any business to learn how people use each platform and then tailor content for each platform.
Make It Interactive
Remember that social media is two-way communication. Whereas traditional marketing was typically one way, such as a print ad in a magazine or a radio spot, internet marketing offers businesses opportunities to engage in dialogues with potential and existing customers.
Start a conversation by asking questions. Or share an opinion that’s topical and exciting. Don’t hesitate to respond to comments and feedback. Show that your business is not only able to design, but also able to listen and respond professionally.
Create a Brand Style Guide
A brand style guide describes the look of your brand, whether in print or online. It should contain information about the fonts you use, the colors, the style of imagery, the language, and more. Ideally, any professional designer or content creator should be able to pick up your style guide and emulate your brand style across social media.
This is useful because consistent branding helps new customers trust you. When you have a consistent look and feel across different social media platforms, people will be more likely to have confidence in your business.
A style guide also means that you can hire outside designers and content creators as your business grows, without losing the feel of your branding.
Schedule Your Posts
Scheduling is a top tip for social media content creators. Each social media platform has optimal amounts to post and optimal times of day to post. It’s worth looking into this for every social media platform you use. Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms have facilities that help you decide the best times to post for the most active engagement with your customers.
For some platforms, such as Facebook, posting regularly is more important than posting frequently. People get used to content coming out on a certain day at a specific time, like tuning in to regular TV or radio. By posting at the same time or at least on the same days each week, you build an expectation, which can turn into a following.
Use Hashtags
Twitter and Instagram were forerunners in the use of #hashtags to help users find content that interested them. When posting on these platforms in particular, make sure to use hashtags to boost the potential reach of your design posts.
Use a tool like BuzzSumo or TweetDeck to research the most popular hashtags for your platform. Include them in your content when possible to attract more views and inspire more engagement.
Experiment with Your Content
As a design company, the ability to try different approaches and compare the response quickly is probably exciting as well as illuminating. Facebook has a facility that allows content managers to create several versions of the same post and run them concurrently to see which performs best.
You can run similar tests with other platforms, of course, even if there is no official A/B testing facility. The ability to get your work in front of people in minutes and receive almost immediate feedback is one of the great advantages of design firms that use social media.
Tell a Story
Designers know how to tell stories with images. Fortunately for design firms, storytelling is a key component of a social media campaign. Go ahead and create posts and series of posts that tell stories about your brand, your origins, your vision, and why you do what you do.
Be Authentic
It can be tricky for design firms to show anything but highly polished, finished material. However, being a little unfinished or even messy can help a design firm engage with clients. This might involve showing a work in progress, asking for feedback on various creations, or a short video exploring the highs and lows of a design process.
By allowing people to see “behind the scenes,” you can tell the story of the people that work for your design company. This can help the firm connect more strongly with the people considering doing business with you.
Follow Relevant Users
The dialogue of social media isn’t only with customers or potential customers. Get involved by following people and brands that align with your goals and values. Comment on other content and get involved in conversations to demonstrate that you do not think your design work exists in a vacuum.
Don’t Focus on Selling
Seeing social media solely as a promotional tool is short-sighted and can come across as tacky. Avoid the selfish, hard sell. Rather, aim to provide valuable content that your ideal customers want, whether you are entertaining, sharing something beautiful, or providing useful ideas and information.
Sometimes, of course, you will want to sell something, such as offering a time-limited discount or simply banging your design drum pretty hard. This is fine, but prioritize providing value. This is the way of modern marketing and should have better results for your business.
You might consider aiming to create fans rather than aiming to create customers. Customers will buy your designs. Fans will follow you and share your content with their network, providing access to even more potential customers.
Use Localisation
While social media is accessible pretty much globally, it is fantastic for connecting you with local customers. If your design business has a street address or works with customers in particular geographical areas, you can use social media to hone in on those people.
Facebook offers sophisticated tools to help you market to people according to location, as well as other information, such as interests, age, and gender. By using such resources, in addition to local SEO (such as local keywords), you can connect with more people near you. Incorporating a few hashtags that announce your location can help you pick up business that would otherwise go to a nearby competitor, so local SEO is worth taking seriously.
Promoting your design business gets easier and more effective with social media. It can help a design firm get its work in front of an audience and create excitement. Use the tips above to optimize your presence online and attract more business and engagement.