Be social with your target audience
Social Media Benefits
- Branding and awareness
- Marketing campaigns
- Content marketing
- lead generation
- Link building
- Customer service
Social media strategy
The beginning of an organised social media strategy is to review what you are going to base it on – for most companies it will be new content added regularly to your website. This will give you something to talk about and a reason for visitors to visit your blog or site. So the first stage is to consider what you wish to promote and produce a content strategy or plan for the year. This should reflect your marketing objectives, key holidays such as Easter or Christmas (if your product or service has seasonal aspects), new product launches or developments and any key industry events. (See more on content here >>)
Choose the right social media platform
Next you need to select you social platforms. Not all of them will be a good fit so choose according to where you target audience likes to be. Do some research and find out where people are tweeting or posting about your industry, products or services. Sign up and start an account in your company name. NB Do not mix up personal accounts with your business presence online – nothing worse than some blurry party pictures getting mixed up with your new product announcement. Make sure you fill out all the information sections and add the right images.
Armed with this calendar you can then start to plan your social media support. If you need help to do this get in touch >>
Compelling Stats
Social media is now a fixed part of the marketing mix however there are a large number of companies who are not using these free platforms to their full advantage. Given that there is no cost to joining in it is usually a lack of time or resources that holds businesses back probably combined with little knowledge on how to use these channels effectively. If you need persuading have a look a these statistics:
- Look at the huge volumes of users for these channels: Facebook (2.320 billion users), YouTube (1.5 billion users) and Instagram (1bn users) followed by Twitter (326 million users) and LinkedIn (610 million users)
- 81% of all small and medium businesses use some kind of social platform
- 76% of Facebook users check it every day
- There are 60 million active business pages on Facebook
- The average Twitter user follows five businesses
- Tweets with images get 150% more retweets
- 73% of consumers using social media want to see posts about discounts and sales
- 60% want to see posts that showcase new products and services.
- 59% want to see posts that teach something.
There are many other compelling statistic that could be added to this list however you can see that social media is effective and probably a place where your business should have an active presence. Another good reason to be part of the online conversation is that your competitors or alternatives to your product or services are already there! Don’t get left behind.
Social media tip: Start small and grow. Only take on what you can continue to support on a regular and consistent basis. Do not make many posts in the first week then dry up by the following month