Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to get away from social media. Social media has become completely ingrained in our culture. The hash tag is everywhere from media to sports, television shows, big companies in ads; they all use social media.
They may be sending you to a web site for more information, or sports announcers may be tweeting live during the action or pretty much anything you can else you can think of.
If you have a business, you need to have a social media presence. It’s no longer an option. But it’s not a case of ‘if you build it, they will come’ anymore. If you want your social media to be a success, as far as building your business, you need a social media marketing strategy.
Step 1: First of all, you need to know your customers and clients. So start with figuring out their challenges, needs and wants. Consider putting together a simple survey using a service like Survey Monkey to find out more about this.
The better you know your audience the more targeted you can be with your social media content. By knowing your audience you can share content that they’ll find enjoyable, or educational, or profitable, depending on your business, and they’ll also share it and engage with your business.
Step 2: You’ll also need to decide what you want to accomplish with your social media campaign. Do you want sales? Brand awareness? Brand loyalty? These are the three major ones and yes, brand awareness and loyalty can lead to sales but focus on one for your social media marketing strategy.
If brand awareness is your goal, you’ll want to measure things like ‘likes’, ‘subscribers’ and ‘followers’, etc. depending on your social media channel, such as Facebook, Twitter or You Tube.
Loyalty would be similar but you’ll also want to analyze things like sentiment and influence so you’ll want to be aware of comments and you can use tools like klout.com and edgerankchecker.com for this type of information.
For sales, you’re looking at click through rates to products, total sales, conversion rates and where those sales are coming from.
For example, if you have both a Facebook Fan Page and a Pinterest account, which one is driving more sales and would it make sense to focus only on that social media channel instead of spreading your business resources thin by using both?
Step 3: In order for you social media marketing strategy to be effective you’ll need to be adding content to your media channels on a regular basis. This means having a content calendar that you follow.
This should include the following:
Who is responsible for creating the content?
Who will be posting the content?
What kind of content will be posted (articles, pictures, videos, PDF reports?)?
When will the content be posted?
Having a content calendar makes your social media marketing strategy run much smoother. Adding new content consistently is crucial, whether your main goal is awareness, loyalty or sales. You must keep an active presence on your social media accounts.
Be sure to encourage visitors to your web site to follow your social media accounts by integrating social media on your site with the correct plugins and icons. This way, they can follow you and also like or share the content on your web site as well.
Include content and information that is exclusive to your social media. Provide your Facebook fans or Pinterest followers or You Tube subscribers with content they can’t get from you anywhere else on the web, including your own web site.
By following the above simple steps to get started, you’ll be well on your way to growing an effective social media presence that will positively impact your business online.