Social media has changed marketing rules. After being pulled into the social arena, companies now need to stay socially active, which is not so easy. A relevant social media strategy quickly became a must in every business plan, regardless of the industry or company’s size. With this in mind, here are 10 tips of the successful use of social media.
HOW TO BE SOCIAL (AND PROFIT FROM THIS)
1. BE ANALYTIC
The first thing is to analyze your company. Identify yourself and what makes you different from your competitors and make sure that is reflected in your social media campaign. Then identify your audience and your customers, actual or potential. Analyze who they are, what they do, and why they should get in touch with your business. Finally, identify your level of engagement and your official conversational style. How and how often will you interact with people on social media, in a funny or serious mood, and with what kind of “voice”. Have a clear idea on what conversations you’re willing to engage in, and which ones you’ll want to avoid.
2. BE WISE
Align your social media activity with your digital marketing strategy. Clearly define your marketing goals and the consequent social media priorities: increase brand awareness, generate new users, retain old and new users, affirm the brand as a leader in innovation, engage users in actions. These are some common goals for a social media strategy.
3. BE REALISTIC
Social media activity is time-consuming, and it takes a lot of work, flexibility, and consistency to be successful. Consequently, don’t kid yourself with the budget. You’re going to need time and/or money. Today’s spoiled audience wants to be amazed, and you don’t amaze anyone without some form of input.
4. BE A LISTENER
Social media is a perfect device for listening to the market’s voice. Before publishing content and engaging conversations, make sure you understand people’s moods and tones within the social media you are about to use.
5. BE AN AUTHOR
Quality content is what engages audiences. When people scoop good content, they often share it across multiple platforms and users’ groups. Can you think about something better for your brand? Quality content must be relevant to the audience, informative, shareable, and it should lead the user to an action. If you can’t find decent writing skills in your company, then it is mandatory to outsource this task to professional writers. Otherwise, you are risking people laughing about your company’s posts, or not reading them at all.
6. BE VISIBLE
Studies show that people are more likely to remember the content when it is accompanied by images. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in social media it is worth even more: about 70% of all Facebook activities revolve around images. Graphics, colours, fonts, everything visual must be distinctive and consistent as much as written content. When an article is posted on various social media, pictures and multimedia content should be slightly varied to help to keep up users’ attention.
7. BE ACTIVE
As we said, people are going to expect responses from you on social media. Also, consumers like to interact with a human being on social media, not with office automation software. With social media, the customer care burden is loaded even before the client has bought your product or service. Be prepared to actively engage your customer base.
8. BE MEASURABLE
Too many companies still don’t have any strategy or tools for measuring metrics. Your investment in social media wants a return, and the measuring metrics are there to evaluate it. Every business should keep track of these basic metrics: shares across all social sites, click-through rates, conversion rates, and traffic from social channels to the company’s website.
9. BE A TEAM LEADER
It’s hard to build and maintain a social media publishing plan alone. You probably need a trustworthy and skilled team to support your social efforts. Put together a variegated yet harmonious crew, and take care of them. They will provide your social media with a different perspective from yours. Then, when engaging communities, a team leader just poses thoughtful questions and is generous in responding to people’s queries with helpful information.
10. BE WATCHFUL
Fine-tune each one of your social channels and brands as time, technology, and experience change the game. Social media move fast, and your brands’ presence must be improved and spread accordingly. Watch out for new platforms, emerging trends, or changing behaviours in your audience. Have fun.
