The emergence of social media as a global phenomenon has created quite a buzz in B2B and B2C communities. Cloaked under the guise of “free marketing,” businesses of all shapes and sizes hastily set up social media accounts expecting increased business overnight. Unfortunately, effective social media is not free, and it won’t bring immediate results.
Effective social media marketing requires sound strategy and diligent execution. Social media is most effective when aligned with your business and marketing objectives and offers relevant content to your best customers through the right channels and tactics.
Tips for Your Social Media
Social media for marketing is different than social media for personal use. Here are some tips to help your company market effectively on whichever social media platform you choose to utilize.
- Keep Your Overall Marketing Strategy in Sight – Though social media marketing is viewed by many as a “laid back and fun” way to attract and engage current and prospective customers, it shouldn’t be a rogue channel that doesn’t follow the same rules that apply to your other channels. Brand standards, goals, messaging, etc. still apply.
- Graphic Design Matters – Every social media platform has different requirements for posting photos, graphics and video. Make sure your graphic design team builds content to the correct specifications, or utilize a marketing agency to do it for you.
- Choose Your Platform(s) Strategically – Just because there are many popular social media platforms out there — Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to name a few — doesn’t mean you should invest time and money in them all. Only use the ones that offer the best ROI. You can determine this as you go through your social media strategy. Details on this are in the next section of this post.
- Integrate with Your Inbound Marketing – By integrating inbound marketing with your social media strategy, you can drive traffic to your social media sites, as well as push traffic from social media to your website and landing pages to complement more global marketing goals.
How to Create a Social Media Strategy
Here are 6 steps to putting together a social media strategy:
- Identify Company Goals — By clearly identifying the reasons for implementing a social media strategy, you will be able to identify the proper tactics and strategies to effectively exceed each goal. Common reasons for implementing social media strategies are: increasing brand awareness, customer retention, product awareness and generating sales leads.
- Define Marketing Objectives — For each company goal identified, set specific parameters so you know where the finish line is and when you’ve reached it. If your goal is to increase sales leads, identify the proper tracking tools and analytics needed to know when the goal is achieved.
- Find Your Best Customers — Identify your most (and least) profitable customer relationships. By creating a profitable customer profile (persona) you can use it to find prospects that have the highest propensity to become your next home run relationship. Armed with the results, you can go to market confident that your efforts and dollars are pointed directly at the right target.
- Research Competitors — Researching your competitors not only keeps you up to date on their latest activities, it also provides insight into what social media tactics are working for them as well as where they may be lacking.
- Select Channels & Tactics — By applying learned data from your customer research process, you can identify which social media platforms are most relevant to your customers and prospects. By focusing solely on those channels, you can then implement tactics and best practices to achieve company goals based on each specific platform.
- Create a Content Strategy & Messaging — For each platform, you must determine what type of content to post, when to post and how often to post. By creating content that supports your company’s brand and current platform trends, your messaging will stand out from the competition and help achieve your goals.
Need Help with Your Social Media?
Social media marketing can seem pretty simple, and its relatively low cost can deceive companies into wasting money as they aimlessly try different things to get results. Sometimes, they can get lucky. But more often than not, they won’t ever get maximum ROI with this approach. For best results, follow the tips and steps outlined in this post.
If you have questions or need assistance, Adventure Marketing Solutions can help. Our social media services include:
- B2B & B2C Setup
- Channel Identification & Analysis
- IDeal™ Customer Discovery
- Content Creation
- Content Posting Calendars
- Competitor Research
- Attract & Engagement Strategies
- Display Ads
- Retargeting Ads
- Backlinking
- Social Sharing Integration
- Analytics Evaluation
- Social Media Management
To learn more, contact us.
