Social media marketing has changed from when it first began. We can thank IPOs for making the once free to play into the freemium model it now is. There is still lots of opportunity on social media and setting strategy can help you get it right.
Social Media Objectives
There are plenty of great reasons to be on social media while there are certainly reasons to not to be. Defining the objective for an online presence within social media channels can help you determine whether you should have a presence. Objectives will vary from business to business but here some goals your business may utilize social media for marketing.
- Brand engagement
- Build awareness
- Customer service
- Drive traffic to products and or services on a website
- Generate leads
- Promotions for special offers
Depending on the goals of your marketing will determine how you use social media. Small-mid sized brands embark on social media without the actual stated goals, which often result in failed campaigns, minimal followers, and no results for the company.
Connect Your Channels to Your Audience
Once you’ve defined the objective you want to identify the audience to the channel. At this point, you may discover that your audience is not using social media or they do but on a specific channel. Now if you’ve built out your customer demographics, you may already know this and recognize the need to use a specific social medium over another.
Defining channels is important as it can impact where you spend your time and resources. Some questions to ask on your targeted channel is what resources do I have to tackle this specific type of marketing.
- How much time will it take to post?
- Do you have the personnel to handle posting? If not, do you need to hire a person or find an agency?
- What expenses will you need to manage the account?
- What budget is there to help promote within the various channels?
Messaging
You social media marketing needs to consider the message and frequency. I’ve found with many businesses that there is not a strategy to help optimize the effectiveness of posting.
- Brand engagement – Brand engagement can be great for businesses that have a community or a specific cause. In this messaging should be created to improve conversations, shares, and likes. Part of the management of this is the brand interacting with engaged individuals.
- Build Awareness – Being aware your brand can be challenging. Build content that can be promoted through advertising to leverage awareness. In many cases, this can lead to sales but need more touchpoints before that happens. Consistent posting of content can help you be memorable and provide the kind of awareness you want.
- Customer Service – Brands use social media to be accessible in realtime to their customers. Communication should be used to help foster openness both from the brand as well as the customer. Utilize reviews and chats, asking questions, and survey can be used to help improve customer relationships.
- Improve Sales – Sales from social media can be powerful but also challenging. The mistake of many businesses is to use a constant call to buy, which can be off-putting to many customers. Content should revolve around an interest that can segway into offers later. Also, a brand can target potential customers and advertise to gain awareness and sales.
- Generate Leads – Social media also has evolved into lead generation ads. Requests for quotes, informative posts that lead to white paper downloads, or even a direct outreach to customers through social media should be u.
Frequency
Timing is everything. That is why setting a schedule on how and when posts should arrive. The reality is that social media has so much noise that differentiation can be difficult. A calendar can help produce content in a timeframe people that will help you plan on how to improve the outcome of your social media campaigns. Also, a calendar can help provide consistency so that you don’t miss various times and dates for specific content pushes.
Measurement of Social Media
Measurement will help you understand the success of your campaigns. Some metrics are more important than others, and so setting the right measurements based on objectives can help you get the most out of your social media campaigns. There are a great many social media tools that can help you measure.
Conclusion
A social media strategy can help your business succeed with this powerful marketing outlet. You will need to consider the resources, audience, messaging, timing, and measurement in order to help optimize your campaigns. The more you do this, the better your campaigns will be.