An essential element to running any business nowadays is online presence. That’s why you need to invest some time planning an effective social media marketing strategy. A surprisingly high percentage of small businesses have a good social media presence, but simply aren’t interacting with their clients and customers to the appropriate degree.
The reason to bother with social media is to connect the customer and the company, essentially working towards humanising the business and making it that little bit more personal. With just a little planning you can drill down what can seem like a myriad task into a straight-forward half-an-hour-a-day job. Ideally the overall goal is to get every post, like, Tweet and follow geared towards the same primary aims. Literally anyone can learn to do this, as long as you follow a sound social media marketing plan, and stick to it.
How’s it going Right Now?
A beginner step in managing your social media is taking inventory of your various accounts. Making notes of followers and likes, as well as noting successes and failures. For example, look at a post or Tweet you wrote featuring a new service or product, how well received was it? How many likes or shares? Was there a difference in response between different social media platforms?
Take this data and use it to your advantage. Find the best way of appealing to your current audience, as well as working on expanding via other communication methods, such as in-store signage, or email. Once you’ve found where success lies for your particular service or product, by all means keep it up, but also experiment on it; people are very wary and quick to turn against anything perceived as spam. Avoid wasting time by optimising notifications and making sure your account is notified for every comment, mention or share.
But Which One’s Best for my Business?
It pays dividends to have a wide online presence across as many social media platforms as possible. You want to be available on the same platform as the vast majority of your customers, the issue being that people have never been more split, plenty of people have Twitter, but don’t use Facebook, and the reverse. There is an abundance of guides online for setting up Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. With relative ease, you can have professional-looking accounts up and spreading the word in no time at all.
All the Best Plans Feature….
Quantifiable goals! Without setting solid, meaningful goals on your social media marketing plan, how will you know whether you’re succeeding or merely treading water? I’d suggest something like two plus posts per day, replying to all messages daily, and making sure to always acknowledge people commenting on your page or sharing your articles and posts. Essentially, set yourself two or three basic goals, to keep everything focused.
Replying to likes, shares, tweets and comments will encourage more people to get involved, because it’s still something of a novelty to most people to see a big or small company getting involved with discussions or simply liking relevant things. Obviously the major pitfall is accidentally spending too much time monitoring and responding to people on social media. You have to achieve a balance that’s both cost and time effective and makes sure your customers aren’t being neglected.
Keeping People’s Attention
If you’ve ever wasted any time on social media, blankly scrolling and refreshing, you’ll know what it is that grabs your attention. Humour, interesting photos, video and content shared by your friends. This means that it’s absolutely essential your business goes beyond simple text updates, and goes the extra mile. You post interesting, funny stuff, people will share it, and more people will be drawn back to your business’s page. As ever, make sure you keep up with replying to comments, and shares, making yourself, the business, as visible as possible.
