An Entrepreneur's Social-Media Plan for Success

Social media can give entrepreneurs the same opportunity to build community and engage customers as their better funded competitors. But when time and resources are limited, it’s crucial to laser focus social-media efforts to achieve goals: Do you want to drive sales, social media marketing chicago generate qualified leads, build relationships with current customers and bloggers in your industry? And of course figure out how you can measure it.For entrepreneurs needing a little help developing their social-media plan, here are a few tips.Too many marketers obsess about the raw data and forget that the average business colleague doesn’t love the data the way marketers do. They need the key insights pulled out, they need charts and trend lines for context. Tableau is a great tool for empowering everyone on the team to get in the data and use it.Social ROI For the win! Marketers today are expected to build and share content that helps grow our businesses. To do that effectively you need to understand your most successful posts, channels, content and identify the influencers that matter most. Awe.sm is great for that. I’d also throw a hat tip out to the team over at FollowerWonk, because they are also really diving into social analytics and making waves.Hopefully this was a helpful list. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of analytics tools pop up and some have faded away, while others have made it into our daily routines. There is a very clear trend toward centralizing our analytics and making a marketer’s day more efficient. The result is we have single log-in dashboards with really rich, effective data. I love this.As Pinterest has rapidly gained popularity since its rollout in 2010, it has also had to adapt to users and marketers who are utilizing the social network in different ways. social media marketing blogs A few months ago, it revised its usage policies that could land users in hot water.Unlike so many other social media and online outlets, Pinterest has always wanted its users to find what they need or want on their site and then go use that knowledge offline.

Be crystal clear on who your target audience is

Determining your target demographic is imperative for success (without customers there are no sales). Make sure you have a clear image of who you exactly what to reach. Make sure you know them inside and out and are familiar with their interests, needs and biggest challenges. real estate social media marketing How does your product or service solve their problems? Also look at influencers in your industry, as they can play an important role in reaching your audience.It’s a unique concept that accounts for the incredible popularity of Pinterest. You can find a recipe, but Pinterest wants you to get offline and go make it. You can find a party theme, which Pinterest then hopes you’ll have all the useful tools you need to then go create. The whole point is for Pinners to find useful and relevant ideas and tools that they can then use in the “real world.” The most recent change to its usage policy concerns the common practice of Pinner compensation. Like Twitter before it, as Pinterest has expanded, more and more brands have began pursuing and compensating influential Pinners to promote their products, and often that compensation hasn’t been front and center to the Pinterest community. The update usage policy from Pinterest says that compensating Pinners in any way is now strictly prohibited.ShareRoot co-founder and CEO, Noah Abelson, which creates holistic marketing campaigns on Pinterest for their clients, says the change is in line with the philosophy of the social network.Each member of the ShareRoot team understands the importance of Pinterest’s policies and continually ideates around creativity balanced with strict compliance,” Abelson explains. social media marketing podcast “This recent change is about making sure the authentic nature of the Pinterest communities stays intact.Since one of Pinterest’s founding pieces of etiquette states, “we think authenticity is more important than getting followers,” it does seem natural that this ban on compensating for pinning has come to a formal policy. While that may have been implied before, it’s clearly stated and required in the updated acceptable use policy.

Which social-media sites are they on

Determine where these people like to socialize and stalk them. If you’re tightly staffed and have limited funds to contract help, it can be difficult to actively engage in a variety of sites. social media marketing plans In that case, pick two or three sites preferably the ones that are used most often with your audience to do well. You can always add more sites later. While Pinterest policies on contests have existed for some time now, the recent FTC violation ruling against Cole Haan’s “Wandering Soul” campaign has brought increasing awareness to the importance of disclosure compliance. When you think about these changes, they are intuitive to the Pinterest brand of organic, relevant content for its Pinners. It really make sense,” Abelson says.If you’re looking to get into video, the time is now on Facebook. Since Facebook began autoplaying videos, video plays are up 785 percent year-over-year, according to the report.If your brand is paying for Facebook ads, that's good news for you. Click rates are up 70 percent year-over-year and 48 percent quarter-over-quarter. This is especially good news since click rates often slow after the holiday season.Facebook is the only social channel that did not see a dip in referred revenue per visit to retail sites over last quarter. Tumblr however, had a strong showing with 55 percent increase in year-over-year referred revenue traffic.The major takeaway? Facebook is king, but don’t count the others out. More and more social networks pop up everyday. Prioritize. Focus on what is most important and test what works best for your specific audience and message. How will you measure what success looks like? Assess regularly and tweak what you do based on your results. Monitor website traffic to see which social media sites are driving traffic. What patterns drive your website, e-commerce and sales stats? Watch for which days of the week and time frames you post and which kinds of content seem to work best. Don’t get too caught up in any one social-media site or tactic unless it’s giving you fantastic results. b2b social media marketing Keep an eye on changing trends and how you might take advantage of it, such as if a new social-media site is growing in popularity with your customer segment. And lastly, tie in your social media strategy with your other marketing efforts.