For as long as social media has been around, there are still many small and medium-sized businesses that have not fully embraced social media marketing. It was estimated in 2017 that 81 percent of the US population has a social media profile, and globally people spend more than 3.7 hours per day on social media. Furthermore, it was estimated in 2015 that Facebook influenced 52 percent of consumers, which was a 36 percent increase from 2014, and that was three years ago… Social media has become so influential for better or worse, and it now plays critical roles in presidential races across the world. It has shown no signs of slowing down and has continued to grow exponentially over the years. It has begun to absolutely dominate the way people perceive brands and make purchasing decisions. With all of this in mind, it is absolutely critical for businesses of all shapes and sizes to develop a social media marketing strategy. In this article, we’ll cover some of the key tactics to developing a social media marketing strategy—more of a Social Media Marketing 101.
Before we get into tactics, the first thing to emphasize is that social media success does not happen overnight. Too many times we run into business owners and executives that believe social media can be turned on like a light switch; this couldn’t be further from the truth. Although social media is a free marketing channel, it takes time and effort to develop a true impact… However, social media marketing does have a snow ball effect, as over time, the effectiveness of the efforts put into social media marketing will continue to grow and yield better results. In some cases, we’ve seen social media become the number one traffic generator for websites within a year’s time, however, overall success depends on effort and strategy.
Here are a few key tactics to ramping up your social media marketing strategy:
Channel Selection
The first step to developing a social marketing strategy is to identify what social media channels your business should participate in. Yes, there is a very big difference between social media channels depending on who your ideal buyer is. An organization that sells to consumers should be focused on channels such as, Facebook, Pintrest, Youtube, and Yelp, and organizations that focus on businesses focus more on LinkedIn, SlideShare, and YouTube. It comes down to understanding who your ideal buyer is, and what social media channels they actively use.
Profile Setup
Once you’ve identified the channels, it is time to set them up. This happens to be an area where we see most organizations make their first key mistake. Essentially, we find that most do enough to get by; this means they set up their accounts, add a profile picture, and maybe an address, but that’s about it. Since so many potential customers are on these social channels, it is best to think about your profile page as a digital billboard—or better yet—an extension of your website. With this in mind, it is important to share as much as possible about your business, products, and services. The end goal of any social media profile should be a virtual representation of your business.
Monitoring
Another key social media mistake businesses make is that once they setup their social media profiles, they walk away thinking their jobs are done. This couldn’t be further from the truth as prospects and customers will find your business’s profile and will interact with it; they’ll ask questions, look for additional information about your business and/or products, or post about their experiences with your business. This is a key opportunity to take advantage of the channels to directly interact with customers and prospects as they are researching for a possible purchasing decision. Indirect communication via social media is quickly becoming one of the most popular methods consumers are now using to learn more about businesses, products, or services before making a final decision.
Furthermore, what most businesses do not know is that regardless of whether an organization sets up their social profile or not, social media channels allow people to comment about these businesses. This means by not setting up and monitoring your social media presence, your business is missing out on possible customers wanting to learn more about your business and/or solutions—or worse—allowing them to complain about your business without a response. Quite honestly, you are missing out on business if you do not monitor these channels.
Sharing
Now that you’ve set up and started monitoring your social media profiles, the next item on the list is to start sharing content. Content can be anything from showcasing your products and/or services to providing opportunities that go beyond these things. We recommend sharing information about the industry, highlight. The key is to be social and educate customers and prospects while attempting to not be disingenuous. Almost all purchases today start with some type of online or social media search which means, if you are not educating your buyers, most likely someone else is (quite possibly, your competition).
Another key thing to understand is that social media posts have a very short shelf life; this means that from the minute you make a post, it becomes less relevant as others post their own content. For example, since there are so many people on twitter, the shelf life of a tweet is only minutes. With this in mind, it is important to post content several times a day. As a rule of thumb, we suggest posting at a minimum of once an hour in your respective social channels. We also recommend taking advantage of tools available (some for free) that make this task easier. We at 3Sixty Insights use HootSuite.
Company Involvement
One social media marketing tactic that we’ve seen used to significantly enhance a strategy is to get the entire business involved. Social media is a numbers game, and there is only so much one person can do. As an example, one organization we worked with had a main corporate twitter profile with roughly 2,000 followers. However, due to the work we did with the rest of the organization, their CEO grew their own twitter profile to more than 14,000 followers. This led the organization, as a whole, to having more than 28,000 followers. This meant that as a company they had an exponentially higher follower count and reach that was far greater than the corporate profile alone.
This strategy required the person responsible for social media to create “lazy posts” and share them with the team daily. A lazy post was essentially a set of pre-canned social posts that the team could simply copy and paste into their own profiles. This guaranteed that, even at the basic level, the team was posting content. However, some took their social media profile to the next level and grew their follower base significantly by posting their own content as well.
Social Effectiveness
Once your organization has the basics down, it is important to find ways of improvement. This is done by measuring the effectiveness of all the social media effort by testing different tactics. There are some paid tools available, but even at the basic level, you can track follower and traffic levels month-over-month. Follower levels are easily captured from the channels themselves, and with Google Analytics, you can see what referral sources brought traffic to your site. Tracking both of these statistics month-over-month can give your team a fairly good indication of success from your social marketing. After a few months of developing a baseline for follower growth and website traffic, it is then important to try new tactics to improve the performance of your campaigns.
Again, in order for a social media marketing strategy to be effective, it’s important to remember it does not happen overnight. It takes a true commitment of time and effort in order to be successful. However, as mentioned earlier, when successfully deployed, we’ve seen it take as little as a year’s time for social media to become the #1 traffic generator for websites. Social media has become a marketing channel that just cannot be ignored; halfhearted approaches to this channel will not help your business be successful, and it must be approached with the same effort put into it as other more traditional marketing efforts.
Good luck, and we look forward to hearing about your tips and success stories regarding your social media experiences.
Sources:
https://www.dreamgrow.com/21-social-media-marketing-statistics
Pingback: Five Tips to Quickly Help Get Your Business Online, Before It’s Too Late