Social media is an area of the web which has grown massively over the past decade and is a prime area for organisations to advertise their products and services as well as using the platforms as a form of engagement and interaction with customers or potential clients. In this blog post we will show you what an active social media presence can do for your organisation.
Through advertising and having an online presence on social media, your Studentpad website can improve its SEO (search-engine optimization) positioning, increase awareness and generate sales.
SEO
By positing original, fresh content and ensuring the use of keywords and hashtags in your posts, your SEO position will be slowly increasing, meaning that your website and social media links will be ranking higher and higher on search engines such as Google.
Connect
Connections on social media platforms can be the difference between a low brand awareness to a high brand awareness. Being active on social media is one thing, connections are another. Whichever platform your organisation is focusing on, whether that is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc, it is important that the connections and the interactions are suitable. Connecting with councils and professionals in housing and tenancy can be important on professional social media such as LinkedIn. For the likes of Facebook and Twitter, it is important to be more personalised and connect with customers/potential customers to your organisation.
Searching for trends, hashtags and local areas can help to be more specific with your connections – meaning that you aren’t wasting your time connecting to those that are not interested or don’t live anywhere near your vacant properties.
Engage
Once connected, it is time to engage with those connections, raising brand awareness. Engaging on the likes of LinkedIn can be done through sharing and commenting on post updates, connecting with groups and joining in with posts. On twitter, interaction can be through posing ‘tweets’ relevant to the organisation and interacting with customers personally with ‘retweets’ and ‘replies’. By connecting on a personal level, the brand reputation of customer service will rise and will be another point of contact for customers with a question or feedback. Likewise to Twitter, Facebook interaction can come from posting a ‘status’.
Engagement of any form should be professional and show the face of the company. This will lead to a heightened online presence as well as a positive reputation among customers.
Increase Traffic
When it comes to advertising your Studentpad platform through social media, there are many different ways in which this could be done. First of all, try posting relevant content with links to your website in order to attract "clicks", i.e. persuade users to visit your platform and make use of its services. If students should request help with finding adequate student accommodation, you can repsond to them in private messages and explain how they can access your Studentpad platform. Posting "how-to-register" and "how-to-use" guides can also increase traffic to and thus usage of your platform. Building a brand ‘personality’ online is key to social media success. Offering competitions and offers online is also a great way to build relationships and further sell in the future.