This is a guest post by Trainual Certified Consultant Suneet Agarwal.

Social media is one of the most popular ways to connect with friends and family today. It can be a stream of endless entertainment or a social force for change. But more than that, it’s a great tool for building a relationship with your clients.

In this social media breakdown, you'll learn how to create and maintain a social media presence that will help you reach your business goals. You'll also learn how to measure the success of your social media campaigns and adjust your strategy accordingly.

The goal here is to outline actionable steps that you can take to kickstart your brand's social media rise so you can grow and scale your business organically — the right way.

Why does social media matter?

As a business owner, you know that word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. You also know that in order to get people talking, you need to give them something worth talking about.

Social media is the perfect platform for doing just that.

With over 4B active social media users worldwide, there's a good chance that your target market is spending at least some time on social media every day.

In the past, marketing meant relying on friends and family to spread the word about your business. If you were lucky, maybe you'd scrape up enough cash to run print ads in the local paper. And if you were really lucky, you'd get TV or radio spots. Today, social media gives you the ability to reach a much wider audience with your message almost instantaneously…for FREE.

The biggest difference between traditional print ads and social media is timing. Where a message only lasted a short time in print, now, a video can live on YouTube or Facebook forever and continue to generate leads for your business long after it's been posted.

This is why social media is so important for businesses today. It gives you the ability to connect with more people than ever before and to build relationships that last.

Creating engaging content

Now that you know why social media matters, it's time to start creating engaging content. This is the key to building a successful social media presence — if you're not putting out content that people want to see, they're not going to stick around for long.

So what makes for good, engaging content? That's a tough question to answer because it varies from person to person and, in our case, business to business. But there are a few general rules that you can follow to ensure that your content is engaging.

First, make sure that your content is relevant to your audience. This might seem like common sense, but you'd be surprised how often businesses post content that has nothing to do with their products or services. If you're a pet store, for example, post content about pets, not politics. If you're in real estate, you want to create content that focuses on buying or selling a home.

Second, keep your content fresh. No one wants to see the same thing over and over again. If you're posting daily, try to mix it up a bit so that you're not just regurgitating the same information day after day.

You also want to focus on creating quality content, not quantity. It's better to post one great video per week than four mediocre ones. Your audience will appreciate the effort, and you'll be more likely to keep their attention.

Finally, make sure that your content is visually appealing. People are more likely to watch a video or look at a picture than reading a long block of text. So if you can, include images or videos in your posts or create a catered grid that's pleasing to the eye.

Managing social media accounts

Now that you’ve created some engaging content, it's time to start managing your social media accounts. This is where things can feel a bit overwhelming — there are various different platforms out there, and each one has its own set of rules.

Good news: You don't have to be on every single social media platform. In fact, it's often better to focus your efforts on one or two that are most relevant to your business. For example, if you're a B2B company, LinkedIn might be a better platform for you than Snapchat. Or if you're a visual business, like a photographer or a baker, Instagram and Pinterest might be better choices.

The key is to find the platform or platforms where your target audience is most active and then focus your efforts there.

Once you've selected your platform (or platforms), it's time to start posting! But before you do, there are a few general rules that you should keep in mind:

1. Make sure that your content is relevant and engaging. No one wants to see a bunch of sales pitches or irrelevant information.
2. Keep your posts short and sweet. People's attention spans are shorter than ever these days, so you want to make sure that you're getting your point across quickly and effectively. This means avoiding long, rambling paragraphs and instead opting for shorter, punchier sentences.

And finally, be sure to interact with your audience. Social media is all about building relationships, so don't just post and then disappear. Make an effort to engage with the people who are commenting on your posts and respond to any questions or concerns they might have. If you skip this step, you're missing out on a key opportunity to connect with your target audience and are also creating a negative interaction, which can have a detrimental effect on your social media accounts.

Measuring your success

So you’re feeling confident about creating and managing your social media account — it's time to start measuring the success of your campaigns. Otherwise, you won't be able to tell if your efforts are working or not.

There are a few different metrics you can use to measure the success of your social media campaigns. First, take a look at the number of engagements, such as likes, comments, and shares. This will give you an idea of how much reach your content is getting — this is called your engagement rate.

Second, look at the number of clicks on any links that you include in your posts. This metric will tell you how effective your call to action is. If you're not seeing many clicks, then you might want to rethink your strategy. A good way to experiment with this is through A/B testing, which is essentially trying out two different versions of something to see which one performs better. Try switching up titles or images to see if that has an impact on the click-through rate.

And finally, measure how much traffic you're getting to your website from your social media accounts. This will give you an idea of how many people are actually taking action after seeing your content.

Installing a tracking pixel on your site is a good way to track this data and see how people are interacting with your website after coming from a social media post. A pixel is a small piece of code that you can add to your website, allowing you to track conversions or the number of people taking a specific action on your site.

Keep track of these metrics over time, and then adjust your strategy accordingly. If you're not seeing the results that you want, don't be afraid to experiment until you find something that works.

Adjust your social media strategy as needed

The most important thing to remember when it comes to social media is that things are always changing. What works today might not work tomorrow, so you need to be willing to adjust your strategy as needed.

One great way to stay on top of the latest social media trends is to follow some of the top marketers and businesses in your industry. This way, you'll always be one step ahead of the competition.

Keep up with the latest social media trends, and experiment with new platforms and strategies. And most importantly, don't be afraid to fail. You'll never know what works until you try it. See what videos performed well for you, dive into the analytics and see where people were watching the longest, and think about WHY. Why did that video work? What was it about the content, the delivery, or even just the day that you posted it that made it successful?

Use those insights to create more videos that your audience will love, and before you know it, you'll be a social media superstar!

So go out there and start experimenting! With a little bit of trial and error, you'll find the perfect social media strategy for your business.