3 Pro Social Media Marketing Tips for Service Businesses

It’s difficult to escape the idea that social media is taking over marketing for good. Everywhere on the internet businesses are buying into the trend of memes, inspirational quotes, kooky videos, and perfectly filtered images of the products they sell.

But what happens if you’ve got nothing tactile to show off? How are you supposed to buy into the social media boom if there is just an office or simple shop front?

In fact, there are a number of ways for you to engage with your customers online if you aren’t a photogenic brand.

Identify What Makes You Special

First off, you’ll need to understand what it is you want people to gain from your business. You already have the tools to build your online persona in the aspects of your business. Like any marketing strategy, you should approach your social media as an opportunity to show off.

"Think about your strengths as a business. For services, this is often reviews and testimonials, so it might be worth asking a few of your clients if they’d be happy showing their faces on camera, either as an image with a text or in a video interview. This acts as ‘social proof’ to your other potential clients," says Lucia Chung, business adviser, and writer at Last Minute Writing and Researchpapersuk.

You need to demonstrate how you approach the particular problem or issue that only your company can solve. Your purpose should be to educate the viewer on the unique ways in which your company works.

Of course, one of the most important assets of your business is your team. Trusted businesses know the value of putting a human face to a brand. People will buy into your mission if you show that you are prepared to promote your team as a professional, happy team. It would be a pretty boring video if you just showed them sitting at their desks for ten minutes, so find something unique to interview them about, take photos and videos of them out of the office, laid-back and smiling.

Create an Engaging Social Media Brand

It’s a good idea to pin down a dynamic brand image before you start taking to Twitter and Instagram. People like consistency, so spend as much time as you can getting it down before you launch your social media campaigns.

For imagery, this means choosing a decent yet minimal palette of colors. Over-the-top can appear slap-dash and chaotic, so decide whether your business image should be fun or professional. With this in mind, you might also want to invest some time getting to know how to take decent photos. It isn’t too costly these days to get a decent camera, so there’s little excuse not to take professional-looking photos on a budget.

"If your social media strategy is going to include blog posts, make sure you find a decent writer who knows your brand story inside and out. Bad content can talk volumes about a company, and a long-winded blog post can make your brand seem lifeless and boring," advises Michelle Woodcock, social media specialist at Draftbeyond and Writinity.

Be Relevant

It can be tempting to think that if you just recycle content that no one will notice. But they do. Each time a user sees that you have nothing new on offer, the closer they are to unsubscribing. Therefore maintain a regime of documenting exciting updates to your business. There are also unlimited possibilities in tying your posts in with national holidays to extend your brand's reach.

Finally, show your followers things they might not normally expect to see from your company, ‘behind the scenes footage’, explainer videos, and even staff parties. You can even use your social media accounts to recruit.

Manoj Babal is a Software Engineer & digital marketer of Axis Web Art, using his vast business and personal experiences to help digital entrepreneurs build bulletproof businesses and reach the freedom they desire.