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When you need to make your social marketing strategy bigger, bolder and more effective you need some tips from the experts. Get it wrong and you run the risk of wasting time, effort and of seeing very little in return for your hard work.
Don’t run the risk of being left in a social media shadow. Check out these seven social media marketing hacks to make your product pop.
1. Know Who You’re Talking To
Customer segmentation is key to a successful social media campaign. Without knowing who it is you’re talking to, it’s almost impossible to make your pitch accurately. Take time to sit down and create your ideal customer profile. Think who your customer is, where they live, work, how old they are, and so on. Use your imagination and knowledge to pin point exactly which social media they hang out on and take it from there. Don’t be tempted to try and engage everyone, it just doesn’t work.
2. Choose The Right Channels
While it might be tempting to sign up to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, if you’ve done your customer research right you won’t need to waste your time working on platforms that your customers don’t use. Instead spend your time working out how your customers use Facebook, for example. Knowing what time of day they’re most likely to access this channel will play a role in the content and timing of your own marketing campaign.
3. Make Content King
Find out what your audiences do when they’re using social media, which news stories do they read, who do they follow and which pages do they comment on most often. Once you have this level of insight you’ll be able to tailor your content accordingly and strike a chord with all the issues that are important to your audience. This targeted content will draw in quality customers rather than time wasters.
According to Janet Lowe, a Social Media Expert at 1day2write: “What you say is as important as who you are saying it to. Test your content before you send it out, so you know you are hitting just the right mark. There aren’t many second chances on social media so make your words count”.
4. Set Goals
Communicating with your audience is just half the battle. Once you know where they are and what you want to say, you need to set realistic goals and objectives within your social media marketing strategy. How do you want customers to respond to you? Create a measurable target to compare your performance to and update it as often as needed.
If you’re asking customers to respond in a certain way, such as completing a survey, make sure both your call to action and your measurement of this activity are clear.
5. Plan To Plan
Set aside room in your strategy for further planning. The point of social media marketing is that it is not static; one set of messages, sent occasionally is just not enough. To keep your presence relevant you need to plan ahead and have clear follow ups and the next set of messages ready to go.
Failing to plan sufficiently will put you on the back foot, always playing catch up and that’s not a strong position to be in.
6. Who’s Who
When you draw up your strategy, make sure that any action points are clearly allocated to your team members. Don’t leave anyone having to guess who is responsible for which items.
Similarly, make sure that whomever is allocated is a strong player in that field. Recognising your team’s strengths and weaknesses and allocating roles accordingly is smart management and a good part of your strategy.
7. Set Budgets
In days of squeezed budgets and resources, plan how you will spend yours. Set aside sections of your budget for staff pay, as this is likely to be the largest cost. Consider too, how you will plan ahead and pay for any advertising you undertake on social media platforms.
Josie Ellie, a Blogger at Writemyx, said: “Setting budgets is really important. Decide how much you want to spend on your social media strategy and stick with that. Otherwise, you might spend a lot more than you wanted, which is ultimately terrible for your business.”
Not everyone is a natural social media marketer so spending time to carefully plan your launch and subsequent campaigns is crucial. Don’t be tempted to jump straight in, nor use social media as your own private platform. Keep a clear distinction between your personal and professional social media engagement.
With these guidelines in mind, you’re all set to conquer social media with a killer strategy that will send customers racing towards your website.
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
