There's a difference between posting on social media and successfully using social media to promote your business.
What's the purpose of being on social media? It's a low-cost way for emerging brands to connect with brand fans, find new consumers, sell products, solicit user-generated content, and promote their brands.
However, posting pretty pictures is not enough. Brands must first understand each platform and develop a social strategy to make their posts successful.
Laura Rychlik, Engagement Manager at Hootsuite, recently presented a webinar focusing on the social media platforms that give companies the best return on investment. Click here to watch the entire webinar.
The first step is to understand each platform and its audience. For more context, visit our blog post "What Social Media Platforms are Best For Your Brand?"
Laura shared the following graph during the webinar:
For CPG Brands, Instagram and TikTok provide the most reach and impressions while LinkedIn is a great tool for professional thought leadership and sharing company wins with other industry experts.
For Instagram, Laura recommends the following based on desired objectives:
To reach new audiences: utilize Instagram features like reels, carousels, and collabs.
To convert audience members to followers, optimize your bio (what do you want people to know about your brand?), use the highlight feature (think of it as a website drop-down menu), and maintain a grid aesthetic on par with your brand's identity.
To build a community: Share, incorporate stories, and encourage comments on content.
For TikTok, Laura recommends the following to optimize that platform's algorithm.
Create high-quality content specifically for your ideal consumer persona e.g., a millennial woman who is into fitness, has kids, etc.)
Get to the hook within the first three seconds of a video.
Utilize text (specifically with SEO buzzwords) in captions and overlay in videos.
Post when your audience is online (use analytics or study similar CPG content on TikTok to determine when your desired followers or current ones are active).
Engage with other content creators by liking, commenting, and sharing.
For LinkedIn, here are Laura's tips.
Make sure your content delivers thought leadership type of value.
Tag people and companies as appropriate with subject-specific hashtags (#foodbusines, #socialmediastragety)
Post daily.
Utilize video.
Other platforms to consider, based on your and your brand's specific goals, are Pinterest, X, YouTube, and Facebook. Visit Hootsuite for more social media tools.
Bottom line: Social media is a necessity for CPG brands, especially with more consumers shopping online. While social media can be time-consuming, the phrase "work smarter, not harder" applies. Your brand doesn't have to be on all channels—the key to success is to excel on the platforms you decide to post on.
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