Digital has become an integral part of every self-storage operator’s modern marketing strategy. An important part of digital marketing is those all-important social media channels, with their incredible audience reach and diverse content driven across multiple platforms.
So, how do you manage your facility’s social media accounts to maximize their benefits, namely communicating with your target audience and building your business? Consider these six steps.
1. Identify Your Audience, Choose Your Platforms
First, who is your audience and on what social media channels do they engage? Make sure you’re using the right mediums to connect with your target demographic.
Next, cut any channels that involve time and investment but don’t have much reach in terms of your desired audience (more on how to know this below). Concentrate your efforts on the right platforms, and then you can proceed with your content strategy.
2. Build a Brand Persona
An important step in successful social media marketing is to build a brand persona, one that isn’t always seeking to make a sale. Your goal is to build a relationship with your audience, and that requires actively engaging them through an authentic voice that truly speaks to their interests and needs.
This takes careful pre-planning and execution. Your brand persona must permeate all elements of your business. You can’t afford to be inconsistent with your voice or message.
3. Involve Everybody
No one person or department is responsible for your social media success. Sure, the marketing team may have primary responsibility; but to have an effective online presence, you need buy-in and occasional contribution from everyone. Ensure tasks are divided through your workflow systems. This will be made considerably easier in the next step.
4. Use a Scheduling Tool
This makes social media marketing simpler because you can automate all your activities, ensuring you save precious time and resources. With a scheduling tool, you’re able to map out your content for the week, which allows you to post automatically at the time you select. Not only does this save time, it brings consistency. You’ll still need to respond to audience questions, but in terms of content creation and posting—even across multiple accounts—this can be the answer to your prayers.
5. Regularly Audit Your Practices
Perform regular reviews of your organization’s social media practices and involve everyone who has a connection to your accounts. Also, think about expanding that base. You want a broad cross-section of employees to play an active role on your social channels.
Find out what can be improved, and regularly check what your competitors are doing. Likewise, look at what’s trending in the world at large and then link it to your business. This is an incredibly effective way of reaching out to an ever-wider audience.
6. Use Analytics Tools
Setting up your social media accounts and schedule, diversifying your content, reviewing your approach, and keeping tabs on the competition won’t amount to much if you fail to analyze results. There are loads of tools at your disposal that can easily show how your intended audience is engaging with your digital marketing, particularly on social media channels.
How many engagements is your average post getting, and what content is getting the most attention? You can use this detailed information to make informed decisions about where to take your social media approach in the future and how to maximize your return. These results should be the basis of everything you do on social media, so don’t neglect this essential element.
With savvy management of your social media content, your self-storage company will thrive long into the future. Just make sure you know your audience and to what they respond. Change with the times and always be aware of what’s trending, especially within your industry.
Social media marketer, website developer and communications expert Aimee Laurence is an integral part of the team at EssayRoo and AustralianHelp portals. As a builder of a self-storage facility websites, she’s well-placed to comment on the art. She additionally creates online writing courses at Paperfellows a professional research paper-writing service.
