Everyone is online. What your Social Media Marketing Strategy should be? According to Google, people will spend over 5 years of their lives using Social Media.
That is 40 minutes on Facebook, You, as a business owner, just can’t afford not being there! We did some digging on our own and we ranked 5 strategies that are really effective if you want to grow your business on social media platforms.
You have probably seen other blogs and videos that your content that should be high quality, unique, relevant, and appealing to your audience.
But Doc, how do I create and curate content like that!
If you want to position your brand as a thought leader in your industry maybe you should take a look into what the successful brands are already doing.
So I have 5 tips to help you with your Social Media Marketing Strategy.
The first is the 40-60 rule.
That means that you should create 40% of all the content and curate 60% of all your postings. That helps you to focus on creating high-quality content and still maintain consistency.
The second is Shareability.
Better than original, high quality, and relevant you should focus on shareable content. If you want to know what is shareable, just go to your competitor’s timeline and write down what kind of content receives the most number of likes, comments, and shares.
Go back to your workstation and start creating and curating content with those same elements. Have a higher rate of shareability and help you increase your credibility.
Now that you got good content in your hands, wouldn’t be amazing if you could find if that content will hit or crash?
Using tools like Feedly should help you to find and organize RSS feeds that are relevant to your business.
Once you find the topics, using Buzzsumo will show the total engagement achieved by any post.
You can also check what is the total engagement of the content that you are creating. And then, to automate the delivery, you can use a tool like Statusbrew.
The second strategy is to BE PRESENT on social media platforms.
This is the easiest way to talk directly to your customers and you can do that without spending any money.
Apart from liking, commenting, sharing, and answering content relevant to your brand you should focus on listening, monitoring, and engaging.
The challenge here is to optimize the time you’ll spend on this activity.
The good news is that you don’t need to monitor all the social media channels all the time. And that’s great because there are thousands of social channels out there.
A good way to start deciding where to be present is to look where your competitors are.
If they are posting like crazy on Instagram Maybe it’s a good idea to start paying attention to that platform too. Another way to reach the relevant audience is to be on industry-specific social media.
And after defining where to be present It’s time to decide what kind of content you would like to engage with. Remember to engage where you can add value and try to not hijack the conversations.
This takes us to the next point
Define your style and principles, and stick to them.
If you are funny while engaging don’t turn to a scientific speech overnight.
And if you post pictures 3 times a day don’t spend 3 weeks without posting anything on social media! Consistency is key here Guidelines set, time to get into practice.
You can use tools like Hootsuite listening to track conversations. That enables you to engage without having to scroll down and visit different pages where your brand is present.
The third strategy is to tackle Influential Marketing.
This is something that will dominate the market in the coming years and is the cheapest way to gain scale and even go viral if you do it in the right way!
Influential Marketing is to use Influencers to market your brand and you probably already know some big influencers like GaryVee and Nathan Allen but there are also niche influencers like Sam Hurley and Mary Smith.
These guys are known for publishing great content, having a huge audience, and always adding value while they engage on social media.
Now consider the benefit of getting those guys to advocate for your brand. If they share your content it will automatically leverage your visibility to all the audience that is listening to them.
And because their engagement is high on social media, your content will probably be shared by loads of people.
But now, how can you make them listen to you?
The first thing is to identify real Influencers. See, only because one Twitter profile has 100k followers doesn’t mean they have real engagement.
Engagement is a really better metric to define influence.
Now, once you identify the right people on social media, you can try to talk directly to them presenting yourself, presenting your brand.
Be honest about your intentions. It is also a good idea to do your homework.
Search their background and tell them why it makes sense for them to interact with you and with your brand. And also prepare for paying them for collaboration.
This takes us to the 4th step.
Prepare to spend money on social media marketing.
“There is no free lunch” Yeah, also applies here.
The fact is that Organic Growth is dying. Social media platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have recently updated their apps to prize even more the paid content and even less the non-paid content.
That means that it is harder to gain space in your customer’s timeline. Now, you and I agree that it doesn’t make sense first spending a lot of effort on producing content if nobody is going to see it!
However, understand that before paying you should prepare, otherwise you’ll be just wasting money and just to make sure you don’t miss the point Your competitors are already doing it.
Now, how much should you spend?
20% of the marketing budget should be a good way to start on social media.
Also, remember that Makes sense for you to go to a paid campaign because platforms like Facebook knows much more about your customers than you can imagine.
They do a great job while targeting. But, once started, control your anxiety because it will take a while for the results to come.
Deliver value online.
Actually, interacting offline with your customers is the best way to keep them for life. It is even better if you can mix the offline with the online experience.
See what PriceWaterhouseCoopers did, (the auditing company that is taking care of the Oscar briefcase for the past 82 years).
They have sent an actual briefcase to celebrities before the 2016 Oscar ceremony!
The celebrities went crazy and posted tons of pictures on their social media profiles boosting the brand awareness to the sky.
You can do something similar by sending a special gift to your customers. The most important is to make sure that this is part of the customer’s experience so they can remember you forever.
I hope you find this guide on social media marketing strategy useful and if there is anything I missed let me know in the comments.
