When getting started on with social media marketing, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. There are so many different platforms and options. Plus, every site has its own best practices and techniques. Advice flies everywhere about the best pieces of content to post and the best times. But whom should you listen to and who should you ignore?
The most common mistake when first starting out is to try to be everywhere and do everything. Most think being everywhere is the best way to achieve success. But more often than not, it leads to burnout and abandoning a social media strategy all together.
Your company needs a presence on social media, but it doesn’t need one on every single channel. Spend your time researching where your target audience spends their time and be an active member on those platforms. Then, post the content that will develop trust with your potential buyers.
If you’re still intimidated, read the Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Social Media Agency to learn how to vet a potential agency before hiring them. These same questions are good to consider asking your own team if you choose to keep your social media marketing in house.
Understand Your Audience
Stop fooling yourself into believing that your target audience uses every single social media channel. Even though it might seem like it, they aren’t. Use that to your advantage. Research the different platforms and search for company mentions to find where your brand is discussed most often and study the demographics of each social network. Finding your target audience on social media helps increase the odds of your content creating engagement and leading to sales.
Don’t Be Everywhere
Once you research the different platforms and your target audience, there’s still plenty to more information to sort through. Each of the social networks are most active at different times. And on some sites, your target audience may be active at odd hours. The best approach is to perform your own tests.
Just because many charts will tell you not to post to LinkedIn on weekends, doesn’t mean that it’s a bad strategy for your company. Perform A/B tests to see when you get the most engagement on individual platforms and perform tests with individual posts over time. Try subtle word changes of your post and the days and times you post. Remember, only test one change at a time to properly gauge results.
Provide Social Media Content
Your social media content can’t always be about you! If it is, you’re turning your potential buyers away. You wouldn’t walk around a networking event only talking about yourself, never asking questions about others. So stop doing it on social media!
Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on providing current, relevant information to your community. You come across this content all day long as you perform your own research and engage with your community. Share those articles, infographics, and other pieces of content with your target audience.
By sharing useful content, you’ll present your brand as a thought leader and show your expertise. It also develops trust with your target audience. Now, eClincher has a content curation tool so that you never have to leave your social media dashboard to find the perfect content to share with your audience.
Posting Social Media Content
You have to be an active contributor to social media, no matter which platforms you use. That means sharing news, articles, blog posts, photos, facts, and quotes. And don’t forget to share the posts of your followers too. That type of engagement promotes them to do the same with your content. And the more engagement your posts have, the more impressions you’ll get. The more impressions you get, the more recognizable your brand becomes.
Create Content Queue
Once you begin actively sharing content on social media, it can be hard to track which articles you’ve shared and when. If you only post your own content, people will ignore you. That means you need a way to keep track of the different articles you’re sharing.
One way to do that is to make a chart in Word or Excel. All you need to include is a link, the article’s headline, your tweet or post, and when you posted it. That way you can go in and simply copy and paste when you want to share the article again and change the date. Now, you’ll always be up-to-date on your shares.
But the least time-consuming method is to use a social media dashboard. With eClincher, you can set up different queues, fill it with different articles, and schedule a time to post from each individual queue. That way your accounts are always active and you’re not posting the same content over and over.
Create Content Schedule
You can’t be on the social media platforms important to your business all day. You have too many other responsibilities.
That’s why you need to find a social media tool to create schedules and one that has an auto post feature. This will save you time, allowing you to take care of all those other responsibilities. And if your social media dashboard has a content curation tool, you’ll be able to easily find more articles to add to your queue without leaving the site.
Goals of Social Media Content
Don’t go into social media marketing blindly. That’s the quickest way to ensure failure. Take your time and perform the necessary research beforehand. Then, set goals for your overall campaign, as well as long-term and short-term goals. Setting goals will help you define and determine whether your campaign succeeded or failed.
What are Your Objectives?
How do you define the success of your social media marketing strategy? When beginning a social media marketing strategy, brand awareness is a good place to start. However, it cannot be your only objective forever.
Eventually, you’re going to need leverage social media to generate leads and grow your business. But once you’ve switched the goals of your social media strategy to creating more revenue, you’ll still gain more awareness because of your engagement and activity.
Metrics to Monitor
Once your goals are set, use data and analytics to determine if your campaign was a success or a failure. Your KPIs can include a number of different options. Are you focused on creating engagement such as likes or shares? Or you more concerned about driving click-throughs to your website?
Make sure your chosen KPIs and metrics are in-line with your goals. And don’t quit simply because of failure. Social media marketing is fluid and you’ll need to restructure your strategy as needed. Even campaigns that start out successfully will need to be tweaked to ensure continued success.
Leveraging Content on Social Media
Take the time to learn the best practices on each of the different social media platforms to maximize the return from your social media marketing strategy. But before committing to a platform, make sure your potential buyers are active and engaged on that site. Experiment and research with your posts, schedules, and what types of content generates the most engagement important to your company.
Once you find your target audience on social media, be there! Be an active member of your community. Engage by providing your own content, sharing relevant articles in your field, and liking and sharing your followers’ posts. However, don’t try to be everywhere. You’ll end up spreading yourself too thin and won’t find success anywhere. Instead, hone your message to the specific platforms where your target audience is most active.
Continue reading to find out why your Social Media Success is Worth Waiting for.
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