Do you have a social media business strategy? Are you tweeting sporadically or only using LinkedIn to stalk old colleagues? Doing social media the right way means interacting with customers and extending your brand message to a wider audience.
With what feels like a new social platform emerging every month, it can seem like a mammoth task to manage your online community. However, starting small and determining where your core audience are can help you find your social sweet spot. Follow these rules to create a targeted and effective social media campaign which will pay dividends in both reputation and bottom line.
1. Listen first, interact second
It’s imperative that you understand your audience before you attempt to reach them. Find the other channels they use and listen to their concerns, their likes, their dislikes. That way, when you come to engaging them, you can begin conversations both parties will find useful.
2. Don’t be all things to all people
Social media marketing campaigns work best when they are highly tailored, not to a specific audience but to a particular element of your business. Rather than proclaiming that your company is all-singing and all-dancing, define one characteristic all customers will relate to and promote that. It might be the lengths you go to to ensure data security or how your customer feedback is exceptionally high, for example.
3. Be original
If you want people to share your content (every SEO marketer’s dream) then produce original, thought-provoking content. This might mean presenting data in an innovative way, such as infographics which are often instantly digestible and easy to share. It could mean tackling a subject matter from a completely different direction. Either way, you want to produce content that can be compounded over social networks.
4. Work with influencers
There are so many compelling voices in each sector that it is always prudent to connect to the people who are singing from the same hymn sheet. Building great relationships with these people is a mutually beneficial process, opening both parties up to broader audiences and, with any luck, more business opportunities.
5. Words and pictures need value
However much your CMO might pressure you for an improved conversion rate, bombard your customers with the same calls to action over and over again and you’ll only turn them off. Instead, concentrate on producing genuinely creative content which will expand your consumer base far more effectively than the same old pushy sales pitch.
6. Talk, listen, REPLY
You send out your marketing message, you listen to the response, you make improvements. Great. But going one step further and actually engaging with your social media audience will have huge benefits. A single, personalized response to a query or complaint can be the difference between a disastrous peer review and a trust-boosting public display of competence.
