A little while ago, frankie teamed up with General Assembly on an exclusive social media workshop. If you missed out on the online class, though, don't fret – we've compiled a few pointers from host and digital consultant Karen P’ng to get you on your way to social media stardom, whether you’re a small business owner trying to grow your brand or a hobbyist wanting to make the most out of your craft. 

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DO YOUR HOMEWORK Before jumping in to ramp up your social media game, start getting this stuff down on paper (or in some spreadsheets).

• Take a look at what your competitors and audience are up to and jot down a little SWOT analysis.
• Outline your top-line objectives and set realistic ways for social media to help you get there.
• Make sure your website is ready to give customers a great experience on mobile and desktop.
• Fill out all the dynamic fields when setting up your social profiles and get everything looking schmick for mobile. Link back to your website wherever possible.
• You don’t need to stretch yourself as thin as vegemite on toast, just try to give the best experience on a couple of platforms.
• Get set up on Facebook Business Manager, Ad Manager and Creator Studio, and convert your regular old Instagram account to a business profile.
• Prep some FAQ responses to help you engage with your followers.

SKETCH OUR YOUR GOALS What are your social media objectives and how will you measure success? Remember you can’t possibly achieve everything at once, especially if you’re starting from scratch. And people aren’t likely to jump straight into buying – it’s a journey.

You might want to drive more traffic to your website or make people think of your brand as a top name in your area. To grow your community, you could aim to improve post engagement, which will increase your organic reach and make sure people keep seeing your content.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE Create detailed customer profiles so you know exactly who you’re trying to reach. Look for inspiration in related spaces — you might want to target people who love frankie, so have a scroll through our socials to see what readers are loving.

If you already have a customer list or followers, you can ask them directly. Send out a survey to find out what is important to them and pick out common words, themes and values from the responses.

PLAN YOUR POSTS Once you’ve visualised your customers and goals, you can create content that matters to you and your community. Posts should fall under different themes — like testimonials, products, education, motivation — each with its own strategy.

If you want to share some sweet customer reviews, jot down which channels you'll post your shout outs to, when and how often you will post them, how you'll find the content and what hashtags you'll use. Do this for all your themes and pop your themed posts into a four-week content calendar for each social channel. And if creating new content every day isn’t realistic for you, start with three to four posts a week.

BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE You’ve put so much work into getting ready to post, so don’t forget these best practices for nailing all that gorgeous content:

• Authenticity, clarity and context are more important than having the most aesthetically pleasing posts.
• Shoot near natural light with clean backdrops for clear and bright visuals that highlight your products.
• Human elements will make your shots more accessible, so consider hand modelling your crafts.
• Using distinct creative styles for each of your themes will help followers find the posts they are most interested in.
• Multi-image posts get people swiping and engaging with your content. Pop a call to action or question in your captions to get those comments flowing.
• Use Instagram stories frequently to share extra content like behind-the-scenes vids.
• Set aside time each day to chat with your followers, perhaps with your mid-arvo cuppa.

TARGET, TEST, LEARN, REPEAT Each week, make notes of what posts performed best so you can pick out the trends in creative style, time of post, hashtags, colour and more.

Have a little fun with testing out what your audience likes the most. You can use Facebook Ad Manager to target paid ads or save dosh and see what you can do with organic posts. Track your posts over a couple of months see what works for you. Then just target, test, learn and repeat. Good luck, pals!