Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing / By Susannah Smart
Looking to enhance your social media marketing practices, but not sure where to start?
Strategy, strategy, and more strategy!
As tedious as it might sound, setting your goals and objectives is a must if you’re looking to start and grow your social media and brand presence. It is where you can identify what you want from your social media accounts and the ways in which you are going to get there. To do this, like with all areas of your business, make sure your tactics are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-specific. With this, we also recommend formalising your social media strategy by writing your goals down and setting deadlines. This is something you can then refer back to, to increase the likelihood of success.
First and foremost, before creating your social media strategy, you need to make sure you know who you are targeting. It’s all well and good deciding on where you would like to take your business digitally, but if you don’t know who you’re promoting yourself to, you will have a more challenging journey to achieving those objectives.
Research is key
Understand what your audience searches for and which social media platforms they will be on. By doing this, you can look at particular hashtags they use and follow, what they engage with (perhaps on your competition’s content), and look at their overall demographics. Utilising Google Analytics on your website, as well as on your chosen social media platforms, will be greatly beneficial and provide you with such information.
As a result of this research, you will then be able to tailor your content accordingly and understand how to stand out from the crowd.
Content
Content creation for your social media can take some time to formulate, but it’s important and each piece should be crafted specifically for each platform, particularly as image/video sizes differ on each. This is where keeping an eye on your competition comes in handy – have a look at what others in your industry are putting online and what aspects you like and don’t like, such as tone of voice and imagery/graphics used. You want to come across as professional, but with personality, to show that there is a real life human behind the screen!
We always ask our clients what the selling points of their business are and how can these benefit their audience. The message that we always reiterate is that as consumers and users of social media, we’re selfish souls that really just want to see how a brand can benefit us.
For example, is your establishment dog friendly? Or will your product save your customers ‘X’ amount of time? Let your audience know! Just make sure you’re avoiding empty, and continuous sales pitches – if you click on a business’s feed, what would you want to see? Surveys and polls are a great interaction technique, just make sure you’re engaging back and replying to comments and queries. It shows you’re there with them.
You don’t want to be continuously sold to. Remind your audience of your services and the benefits of such, yes, but don’t annoy your followers. Have a piece of content on your website that you want them to see that might be of interest? Direct them to it, adding an enticing description within the post. You should make sure that a good number of your posts drive traffic to your hub – your website.
Be Present
When it comes to social media marketing, keep your content coming. Consistency shows care and that you’re an active brand with something relevant to say. Daily posts are an ideal that not everyone can meet and in some sectors, it’s not always necessary. 3 times a week can be sufficient as long as it is of quality and in keeping with your brand. There are numerous scheduling tools out there, so have a look at what could be best for you. Also, whenever you possibly can, have a second or even third-person review your post before sharing as you don’t want anyone to be put off your business because of a simple spelling and grammar error – it looks a bit lazy.