Before we look at social media strategy, let’s first look at what is social media marketing? Put simply, it’s the act of promoting your business through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There are many benefits to using social media marketing for your business – you can attract new customers, increase brand awareness and boost sales.
We all know that in order to make something successful online, you have to adapt to the changing social media landscape. Even if you are an experienced marketer, it’s still important that you are aware of how your chosen social channels are performing in order to gain a better understanding of how to engage with your audience.
“Okay,” I hear you say. “But what does that mean in practice?” Well, let me tell you.
It’s a good idea to use tools to track your KPIs and see how well your posts are performing compared to those of your competitors. The tool I recommend is called Simply Measured – at the time of writing, it offers a 7-day free trial which you can cancel anytime if you want to continue using the free version. You can set up keywords to monitor and also track mentions of your brand by competitors’ customers, which will help alert you to any weaknesses in your social strategy.
There are many case studies that prove it is effective, including a recent one by Hilton Hotels: they found that after just one month of using social media marketing, they saw a 42% increase in bookings which led to a 2% rise in revenue.
It’s also important to make sure you are monitoring your competitors’ posts too. This will provide valuable insight into not only the content they are posting but how often and when. It’s amazing what information you can find out just by looking at your competitors’ accounts. You can even use tools like Social Rank to find out who your most engaged followers are, as well as identify top influencers.
Are you starting to see the potential of social media marketing for your business? I hope so! But don’t get too excited yet…
It’s important to use social networks for your business, but without a plan in place it can be hard to stay on track. You need to know how often you should post, what type of content to put out and when…it can get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly! That is why I always recommend having an overall strategy for all of your channels.
Here are some tips to help you create a social media strategy that will work for your business:
• Create a content calendar
– Plan out which types of posts you’ll be posting on each social outlet, as well as when and how often you’ll post them. If you have an editorial calendar set up, it will help to be consistent with your posts too.
– Try to post around the same time each day so that people know when you will normally post new content – it makes it easy for them to engage with you!
• Stay up-to-date on industry trends and use popular hashtags
– You can’t create engaging content without staying up-to-date on what’s popular in your industry. Trending hashtags can help you do this – use websites like Trends Map to find out what hashtags are trending and include them in your posts!
• Respond quickly to comments, questions and other engagements
– When someone reaches out to you on social media, it’s best to respond as quickly as possible even if you can’t answer right away – this will encourage them to continue posting about your brand!
– Try not to leave too many unanswered comments because people might think you aren’t monitoring your social channels…and they’d be right.
• Use visuals
– Visual content is more engaging than text-based content, so make sure you are including plenty of images in your posts.
– Don’t only use images that are your own – share high quality images from other people that are related to your industry or brand to encourage engagement with others too.
