Rules of play for your social media marketing strategy
Are you up to date with the latest social media tips and tools? Would you like to improve your social media marketing?
Most of us think we know a little bit about social media marketing. After all, we’ve probably posted something on Facebook at some stage, or made a tweet on Twitter, or put our resume on LinkedIn.
However, merely having used a social networking platform does not mean we’re expert when it comes to using these platforms to attract customers to our business. That’s a whole different ball game. Fortunately, like any ball game, there are some basic rules to help you understand what you have to do to get the best results.
Listen before you speak
The first step in coming up with a successful social media marketing strategy is to listen to what your potential customers are saying. Find out what online content your target audience is posting and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only by finding out what your customers like or talk about, will you know what matters to them? Then you’ll know how to create content about your product or business that will appeal to them.
Sharpen your focus
Unless your company is a big brand, it’s unlikely your customers are scattered across multiple social media channels. Therefore, to make the most of your limited resources, find the one channel that is densely populated with your ideal customers and inhabit it like no other.
Chances are you’ll also find your target audience is more interested in specific types of content, for example, they may want to watch a video rather than read an article, or vice versa. When you know what your audience wants, give them exactly that.
Having a focused social media marketing strategy will help you build your brand appeal more effectively than an approach that simply tries to be all things to all people.
Quality trumps quantity
What would you rather have: 10,000 followers on your social media site who ‘disappear’ after they’ve connected with you or 500 followers who read, share and talk about your content? We’d definitely go with the latter scenario.Why? See the rule below about ‘compounding your interest’.
We live in an age of information overload and short attention spans. So, when it comes to capturing your audience’s attention, it’s crucial to make sure you package your message in a way that they’ll engage with! So, instead of simply putting up lots of random posts, take the time to produce consistent, quality content that will really appeal to your audience. Remember, quality eats quantity for breakfast!
Visual content can act as a gateway to more valuable content. When planning visual content to post on social platforms, think in terms of how it can drive traffic back to your website, products, and services. For example, link a short video back to your website from your YouTube account and make sure you provide expanded content around the video.
Also, change you content format to maximize the full potential of your content and improve your overall reach and visibility. For example, you might turn one of your news articles each month into a video. This way, you’ll also be able to grow your YouTube channel.
Changing content formats doesn’t have to involve just videos. You can also convert snippets from your existing articles into images, for example, a Tip of the Week type image. If you’ve written a lot about one specific topic on your blog, you might want to combine those articles into an eBook and use it to build your email list.
Be patient
Just as it takes some time to build a good brand reputation, so too it takes time for social media to help you achieve the desired reach in the marketplace.
Unfortunately, too many businesses make the mistake of thinking if they throw everything they have at their social media efforts it will work miracles, but then give up after only a few weeks because it didn’t make then a selling sensation. It’s simply not realistic to expect any social media effort to generate an instant booming interest in your brand.
Time, effort and a fair bit of tweaking will eventually work wonders – you just have to stick with it.
Compound your interest
Investing legend and multi-billionaire Warren Buffett has been a lifelong proponent of compound interest as the best way to build fabulous wealth. Compound interest is when the interest earned on investments earns interest itself. It’s what causes wealth to rapidly snowball.
The same principle is true in the world of social media marketing.
When someone likes something you have posted on your social media site they are very likely to share it on their networks. Their action of sharing your content is the act of ‘compounding’ their interest in your content. The more they share it the more new entry points they help create for search engines, and the people using them, to find you online.
If you focus on publishing quality content that is relevant to your target audience you will build an online audience of quality followers who will, in turn, help you spread the word about your business.
Find third-party influencers
Its a fact that consumers generally trust recommendations from a third party about a brand more than they trust what a brand says about itself.
Success on social media is often simply about having a conversation with the right people. Look for some key online influencers in your industry who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your product or service.
If you can get them to see you as an interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers. This could be just the third-party recommendation that you’re looking for – and it could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.
Add value
People are pressed for time these days and content can be overwhelming, so make it valuable and easy to read. Another way to grow your following and increase engagement on social media is to be there consistently.
Build a content library of posts for your channels, so your content schedule never runs dry. Whenever you create a piece of content (article, podcast or video) for your blog or website, come up with a list of 10 to 20 social media posts at the same time that can be used to promote that piece of content. This will save you a lot of time over the long run.
Keep your posts relevant to, and interesting and valuable for your audience. You can’t simply devote all your social media activity to directly promoting your products or services. If you don’t give people something valuable from their point of view in exchange for the time they spend following you, they will simply stop paying attention.
Develop relationships
Building relationships are one of the most important actions in developing your social media marketing. When you add value by presenting content that is interesting to your audience, you build a relationship with them. They’re then more likely to convert to your business and become a powerful word-of-mouth channel for your brand.
For a relationship to work, it must be a two-way street. So be sure to always acknowledge any contribution on social media from a customer. Even a simple ‘thank you’ for sharing one of your posts will help strengthen your relationship.
Anything you do that will encourage customers to comment favorably about your business more often will help to create that snowballing effect of ‘compounding the interest’ that we discussed above.
Be accessible
One of the best ways to grow your following and increase engagement on social media is to be seen to be there consistently, by publishing new content and participating in conversations. (See tip in the ‘Add value’ rule above about how to build a content library of posts for your channels, so your content schedule never runs dry.)
Don’t publish content and then make like a submarine and disappear. Be available to your audience. Make it a rule that if someone posts a comment or sends you a message, that you’ll reply within 12 or 24 hours. If you disappear for too long, your audience will follow suit – except they probably won’t come back.
Return favours
If you want others to share your content, then you have to be ready to share theirs in turn.Spend some of your time on social media talking about content published by others. Another benefit of commenting about others post is that people will start to recognize your name – and it will give you material for your own posts.
And finally…
Remember, social media marketing is a long game. It’s about constantly meeting your target audiences expectations. If you do this consistently over time, you’ll develop a loyal and valuable audience and you’ll see visible results.
If you want to know more about how to make a success of your social media marketing, please don’t hesitate to contact Cathy Mellett at Net Branding.
