When you break it down, social media is all about the connection. You are connecting with your audience in the hopes to build a community and develop a loyal following for your products or services. Quickly we are seeing social media as a fundamental element of the product research strategy, this means that people are using social media as a tool to determine their buyer behaviour. Being engaging, posting relevant content and demonstrating thought leadership in your industry is the best practice of beginning in social media.
The major perk here is developing a refined set of best practices that are established through what actually works. The return on investment of social media is difficult to prove, but in concert with an inbound marketing strategy it is certainly an element of the strategy that is worthy of investment and attention.One of the most attractive elements of social media marketing is the consumer intel that you gain as a marketer. You know more about your audience than ever before... hello power! In addition, you can easily map the success and failure of your efforts. It is transparent marketing because you have the numbers as evidence of your success with every move.
The strategy should begin with establishing your social media channels. Not every business will benefit from the same cocktail of chosen channels, so you will have to evaluate your market and decide what works. The most popular channels that we use are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. That being said, we have industry specific clients on GoodReads, Houzz and others.
Make sure that what you're doing online is cohesive with what is happening offline. This is integrated marketing and often this is where things fall short. The voice you use online should match the voice you are using in your other marketing pieces, visuals should be consistent, quality of content should be comparable, etc. It all needs to match.
This is where social media becomes something more. You do not want to share only the content that you find online, you want to share content that is written by your company as well. Content development is not social media marketing. It is, however, an important part of the puzzle and you should not embark on a social media strategy if you are not taking your content seriously.
Here is a general snapshot for a great content layout:
Now you have to schedule your content calendar. Plan a few weeks in advance to make execution easy. This is a best practice that we consider non-negotiable when we embark on social media marketing for our clients. You have to know where you are heading to ever get there, it is easy to muddy a great strategy with bad planning.
The other piece of the puzzle that you need to plan for is when things go awry. So somebody said some mean stuff about your business online, how do you handle that? So one of your staff was involved in a car crash and found at fault and they quote your company name... what happens next. So you have been involved in a business deal that has resulted in embarrassing negative publicity... time to spring into action! All of these things need to be considered. This is when your content direction really matters.
When you have staff managing your social, lay it all out in black and white. What is allowed, what is not. What is appropriate, what is not. Don't let anybody guess, take the time and make sure it is obvious with no possibility for misconception.
This is where everything can fall apart. Despite what purists say, it is better to schedule than to not play ball. Fire your social media into a scheduling tool (we use HubSpot) and then manage the interaction as it comes. That is the easiest way to make it all happen seamlessly.
We understand that your business is busy, we do. In fact, ours is busy too and so you can imagine that creating great content for 35+ companies and then bothering with our own and managing our social media can get... challenging. But we do it because it earns us business and it helps us retain our position in the marketplace as leaders of our industry.
So there you have it, our high level overview of social media marketing. Often to save on our strategies we have clients that manage their social on their own. And that is great, it is the easiest element of the digital marketing process that you will have to embark on to generate success. If the rest of your digital strategy needs isn't on par with your social media game, let us help.