Thursday 3 December 2015

Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

There are many reasons social media can be a productive marketing channel or platform. Rather than emplying it as a tactic du jour, social media marketing packages the purpose should dictate strategy and the tactics used for reaching desired goals.You can run all the customer surveys you want, but some of the most interesting and progressive market research can be found within the social communities where your customers interact, share information and make recommendations. Tapping into the streams of dialog is a great start to engagement and social participation with your brand.You’ve heard it before, “Conversations are happening online about your brand, with or without you.” You might as well participate and do so in a way that pays close attention to the interests and needs of your customers – providing them with information and interactions that further support your brand. Providing information to educate customers about your products in the formats and media types they prefer can go a long way towards building the kind of buzz that results in new business.
You can use that formula on all of your competitors’ social profiles (e.g., on Twitter you can calculate retweets and favorites). social media marketing proposal Keep in mind that the calculation is meant to give you a general picture of how the competition is doing so you can compare how you stack up against each other. By promotion, I mean advertising on social media sites. Creating linkbait and promoting it to social media news and bookmarking sites can attract a slew of links from bloggers that read them. However, sustaining high levels of promotion to the same site or with the same user accounts will quickly be outed as social media spam. Creating value for the community is not the only rule, creating value and behaving according to formal and unwritten rules is what sustains social media sourced link building.Becoming a power user of several social communities involves consistently contributing quality content, rewarding those who vote positively on that content as well as growing a large base followers.

Allocate Budget and Resources

If a business is suffering from low engagement on their social profiles, it’s usually because they don’t have an accurate ideal customer profile. social media marketing for dummies Buyer personas help you define and target the right people, in the right places, at the right times with the right messages.When you know your target audience’s age, occupation, income, interests, pains, problems, obstacles, habits, likes, dislikes, motivations and objections, then it’s easier and cheaper to target them on social or any other media. And this is one minuscule example – if you haven’t heard the Morton’s Steakhouse story about delivering a joking tweeter a free steak at the airport, I suggest you use this as a prime example of BOMB social media customer service that led to a ridiculous amount of free press.Negative feedback needs to be addressed as well, preferably with patience and respect. But think of your social channels as an opportunity to display how awesome you treat your customers.
According to recent data from Google, 30% of respondents say that social media has its own new and distinct budget. social media marketing definition Of those respondents, 8.7% say their social media budget is pulled from traditional marketing media (i.e., TV, print and radio).I found it interesting that 2/3 of respondents say they plan to increase their social media budget during the upcoming cycle.To budget for social media marketing, look at the tactics you’ve chosen to achieve your business goals and objectives.Make a comprehensive list of the tools you need (e.g., social media monitoring, email marketing and CRM), services you’ll outsource (e.g., graphic design or video production) and any advertising you’ll purchase. Next to each, include the annual projected cost so you can have a high-level view of what you’re investing in and how it affects your marketing budget.Many businesses establish their budget first, and then select which tactics fit that budget. I take the opposite approach. I establish a strategy first, and then determine the budget that fits that strategy.

Go above & beyond in customer service

If a visitor tweets at your handle or posts on your Facebook page and never receives a response, trust is lost. social media marketing firm Due to your lack of communication, the dissatisfied potential lead is now turning to your competitors to seek answers to their questions. On the other hand, when you deliver a thoughtful response in a timely manner that visitor is flattered and intrigued by your brand. It’s humanizing to take the time respond to a personal inquiry, and it builds your authority.Alexa, a friend of mine who formerly resided in NYC, commented on a picture on Instagram posted by her favorite city dive bar. The social media manager quickly responded by offering her a free T-shirt for the positive feedback. A few weeks, when later Alexa drove six hours from Boston to collect her free shirt (and visit a few friends), the bartender realized, “Wow! Social media does work!” She has in turn become a free promoter for the bar, and encourages her large network that still resides in New York to check out her former go-to spot – essentially free PR for this small, neighborhood bar.
When it comes to social media marketing, researching your competition not only keeps you apprised of their activity, social media marketing firms it gives you an idea of what’s working so you can integrate those successful tactics into your own efforts.Start by compiling a list of at least 3-5 main competitors. Search which social networks they’re using and analyze their content strategy. Look at their number of fans or followers, posting frequency and time of day.Also pay attention to the type of content they’re posting and its context (humorous, promotional, etc.) and how they’re responding to their fans.The most important activity to look at is engagement. Even though page admins are the only ones who can calculate engagement rate on a particular update, you can get a good idea of what they’re seeing.For example, let’s say you’re looking at a competitor’s last 20-30 Facebook updates. Take the total number of engagement activities for those posts and divide it by the page’s total number of fans. (Engagement activity includes likes, comments, shares, etc.)

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