What do you want to achieve?
Developing specific outcomes for your business and what you want to achieve is the first step to your success in Social Media Marketing. If you don’t see profit from the end result, then you need to go back to square one and re-evaluate your method of social media involvement.
Will providing online customer assistance via Facebook help? Will a “Call-to-Action” on Twitter improve sales? What about fostering better brand awareness on both social networks? These simple goals you set for yourself and your marketing plan will put you on the right track to achieving social media greatness.
Establish your name!
Stay ahead of your customers and learn what’s hot, what’s not and where your customers are spending their time online. Imbed your company’s name in as many groups and pages as you can and create profiles even in the most unlikely places. Because soon, these may start to be the “most likely” places people are seeking information, asking questions, and looking for help.
Continue to scour Facebook and “Like” pages that have to do with your company, industry or that you see has a lot of “Likes.” Go “Follow” people in your niche market on Twitter, in hopes that they’ll return the favor and follow you. The more people hear and read about your company, the more likely their interest will be sparked.
Assess your results.
Do you know what social media tactics are working for you? What content is driving traffic to your website? Learn this valuable information through the implementation and analysis of Google Analytics. This free tool is easy to set up and highly accurate to measure results. HootSuite is another excellent social media tool that provides a Custom Social Analytic Report to help you measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts.
How is your social media presented online and on printed material?
If you’re going to pour all the time and money into Social Media Marketing, then don’t hide your name and information. Add links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to each employee’s email signature and put your company website or blog on your business cards, flyers, and printed materials. Add any of your social marketing networks to anything you hand out.
Ever see your local pizza shop window sticker, menu or even on their pizza boxes, “Find Us on Facebook and LIKE Us”? It is more effective than you may know to create brand awareness and customer loyalty.
People thrive on going to other people’s pages or posts to see how they’ve set it up and maybe hope to find some pointers. You need to make it easy for people to find you, explore your networks and keep up with your latest news and/or promotions.
Don’t be afraid to outsource.
Unless you are a large company who can afford to hire someone full-time to focus on all of your social media efforts, you should be willing to outsource some, if not all of it to an affordable and professional social media marketing company. Yes, any employee could probably learn the tricks and trades of social media marketing, but you definitely do not want that to take away from the actual job they were hired to do.
