Essential Elements of a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Goals and objectives guide your social media strategy to help you successfully connect with your customers. social media marketing job description In this article I’ll share what you need to include in your social media marketing strategy so it works from day one. We are humans, so mistakes are unavoidable. This is especially true when it comes to the fast-paced world of social media. Rather than flat out ignoring these hiccups, embrace them. I am not saying that when a comma is missed in a tweet you should announce this small grammar error, but DO NOT delete the tweet. It has already been published, and followers are more likely to notice if you are continuously re-posting. For larger mistakes, like a product error or multiple overcharges to customer credit cards, you’ll want to proactively respond in an apologetic, actionable manner, and send out content from your social accounts apologizing and addressing how the error is being handled so customers are aware.But what happens if a BIG, truly embarrassing mistake is made? Personally, I love how Pamela Vaughan, a HubSpot employee, handled her baby bump mishap.
Pamela accidently posted a picture of her growing pregnant belly to HubSpot’s company Twitter account, social media marketing news which has close to 350,000 followers. Instead of crawling into a hole of embarrassment, Pamela embraced her faux-pas and created this awesome blog post. The post has received a lot of love, with several shares and comments mostly showing respect for HubSpot’s human element – a key that makes them one of the most loved marketing companies out there.Tracking is often perceived as tedious and time-consuming. It can be, but it only needs to take a few hours each month. Set aside time to review metrics that are important to your business on a monthly basis (preferably the first day of the month). Here are some stats to focus on: number of posts, follower growth, clicks to your site/products, pageviews, post likes or shares, impressions, etc. Look at each channel separately, and compare to your largest competitors to get a sense on how you’re matching up (or how you’re CRUSHING them!).

Choose Channels and Tactics

Many businesses create accounts on every popular social network without researching which platform will bring the most return. marketing through social media You can avoid wasting your time in the wrong place by using the information from your buyer personas to determine which platform is best for you. If your prospects or customers tell you they spend 40% of their online time on Facebook and 20% on Twitter, you know which primary and secondary social networks you should focus on.When your customers are using a specific network, that’s where you need to be—not everywhere else.Your tactics for each social channel rely on your goals and objectives, as well as the best practices of each platform. For example, if your goal is increasing leads and your primary social network is Facebook, some effective tactics are investing in Facebook advertising or promotion campaigns to draw more attention to your lead magnets. If you’re crunched for time and analytics is not your thing, invest in software to help track data. A lot can be tracked using free social media tools like bit.ly, Google Analytics, and Hootsuite.
Diving in to see which content received the most clicks, shares, etc. social media marketing certification will show you what to repurpose in the future. Look for common themes in your analysis, for example if advice posts with numbers in the title perform wonderfully on Facebook then up these on that platform. Share your results and set monthly strategy meetings with your different marketing forces within your company to plan for the future. Working collaboratively and taking a step back to brainstorm and reevaluate your strategy can drastically improve your social efforts. Also leverage other departments within your business. Various teams like client services and sales might have stellar ideas for social since they are the people who communicate with prospects and customers on a daily basis. You might hear people say that customer experience is the future of marketing--and they're not wrong. If your company makes any kind of impact on a customer, good or bad, it's highly probable they're going to share about it.

Create a Content Strategy

Content and social media have a symbiotic relationship: Without great content social media is meaningless and without social media nobody will know about your content. social media marketing consultantUse them together to reach and convert your prospects.There are three main components to any successful social media content strategy: type of content, time of posting and frequency of posting.The type of content you should post on each social network relies on form and context. Form is how you present that information—text only, images, links, video, etc. Context fits with your company voice and platform trends. Should your content be funny, serious, highly detailed and educational or something else?There are many studies that give you a specific time when you should post on social media. However, I suggest using those studies as guidelines rather than hard rules. Remember, your audience is unique, so you need to test and figure out the best time for yourself.Posting frequency is as important as the content you share. You don’t want to annoy your fans or followers, do you? Finding the perfect frequency is crucial because it could mean more engagement for your content or more unlikes and unfollows.
Use Facebook Insights to see when your fans are online and engaging with your content. social media marketing ideas Notice when I do a search for Salesforce not only does their Google+ follower number display, but there’s a call-to-action to follow their brand, as well as recent posts on their Google+ page, on the right side of the SERP.According to a Moz.com survey, leading marketers believe the number of Google +1’s plays the second largest part in determining search engine rankings. This isn’t proven to be true, but clearly marketers are seeing that Google+ is affecting the visibility of their content on Google.Google+ is also integrated with YouTube, so users are unable to comment on the platform without being opted into Google+. Essentially Google is making having a Google+ account pretty much essential. Before social media, folks would voice their experience to their inner circle of a few friends. Now customers have platforms to give their opinions to millions of other potential buyers.