When you first set foot in the world of social media marketing, you have some “company soul searching” to do. You have to reassess what is important, which services you want to promote most prominently, and perhaps most important, what you want your customers to remember the most about you and your team. All of this is of course conveyed through the written word in all the fields that the social media platforms provide.

This is the time to start talking about yourself. Every company needs to make sure their social media profiles are optimized with the most relevant, updated, and essential information so a customer does not have to make an effort to find the information needed to interact with your brand and in the long run, make a transaction.

Fill In Every Field.

Creating a social media profile for your company from scratch will force you to go back to the drawing board for certain items such as “mission statement” and “company objective.”  Other times, you will (and should) have all the information immediately available. It’s important to fill out every single field the platform offers. Some sites such as Instagram will require very little information to achieve a 100% optimized profile. Others such as Facebook will have request quite a bit of writing. Additionally, others may have certain functions hidden behind a paywall or only allow so many details before you have to upgrade to a premium account. Regardless of platform, be as thorough as possible.

But here is the good news – a lot of the heavy lifting may be already done for you through pre-existing marketing and general information you have created for your company for other purposes.

However, if you are writing from scratch, ask yourself what you would want to know about your company if you were stumbling across it as a customer for the first time. What is your team’s work ethic? What do you hope a customer can take away from their experience with your company? What products are your pride and joy? Consider these questions when trying to define your business and what makes you stand out.

Keep in Mind the Keywords!

In the world of social media marketing, we often talk about keywords when referring to content. Yet keywords also help you when you are in the early stages of page optimization. When you are filling out your company’s About section, Company Overview, Mission Statement, etc., keep in mind the words that people would use to search for a business like yours.

For example, if you run an auto repair shop in Miami, you should definitely incorporate “auto repair,” “Miami,” “Florida,” “automotive,” and other relevant words in your copy. You may want to even consider some top-performing hashtags. Just make sure you don’t overuse them and ensure they are evergreen. In other words, make sure they are hashtags that stay relevant and do not depend on the time of year or a temporary element of your business.

Set Hours and Mark Your Location

Consider social media your online “open / closed” sign. Many people use company’s social media pages as resources for information and perhaps one of the simplest requests is to figure out if a location is open or closed. Simple, but very effective.

Another vital aspect of optimizing your social media pages is to set a location. Yes, this may seem obvious. But I cannot tell you how many companies I have interacted with that have not added a location to their Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram pages. These companies miss out on location service and targeting audiences. This is particularly useful for mobile users because they will be able to see what companies are in the area that offer a particular service or product. This is also very helpful when companies who wish to delve into more advanced advertising techniques, as locations, zip codes, and regions are all instrumental in finding the right audience.

Time Travel and Stockpile

Let’s face it – no one will like or follow an empty page (except for Apple, which hasn’t shared a single tweet, but manages hundreds of thousands of followers thanks to its name). You will want to create a ton of content and, if the platform allows, backdate it. This is only a function offered by Facebook and a select other platforms, but it proves to be useful when you are trying to position your business as legitimate and modern.

You should also stockpile content that you can start sharing, including tweets from industry influencers that are available for retweeting and quote tweeting, news articles you want to share and comment on, and ideas you may want to later talk about in the form of a blog or note.

Pin Your Spotlight Content

After you have been created content for some time, create a piece of content that you are particularly proud of and pin it to the top of the profile. This will be the first post that your followers see when they visit your page. This should be a piece of original content that expresses just what your company is all about, whether it’s a promotional piece or a useful piece of content that can be used a resource.

Later down the road, you can use this prime piece of real estate as a spot to promote a sale, holiday greetings, or other time sensitive information. Yet when you are just starting out, pick your best content and start pinning. This post should be switched out on a weekly basis.

Invite Your Regulars And Start Following Prospects

Now that you have your social media page fully optimized, you are ready to invite followers. Think of it this way, you have cleaned up the house and set up decorations, now it’s time for your party guests to come by and enjoy what you have prepared! There are many ways to start gathering a large following on social media, many of which will come as you start sending out relevant content and generate a large amount of user-generated content and feedback. However, when you are first starting out, you need to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Offline, you need to ask your loyal customers to like your pages and share them with your friends. Encourage employees to do the same. Have social-media-exclusive incentives and sales only to be found online and make it known at your location. Train your employees to tell customers and clients about your pages. Most importantly, your content and copy should be a homing beacon for these people to come because of the “takeaway” they will receive. This is why you cannot just write promotional posts. You need to become an informative, educational, and entertaining resource that people will welcome into their social media sanctum.

Online, you can start following major influencers and those who follow them. This will introduce your newborn pages to new people and social circles. Try to be selective about who follows your page, but do not be too picky because you never know who those people will know and they will be able to see your content if and when they share it.