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You’ll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there are a few that all companies should include in their strategy—increasing brand awareness, retaining customers and reducing marketing costs are relevant to everyone.
I suggest you choose two primary goals and two secondary goals to focus on. Having too many goals distracts you and you’ll end up achieving none.
2: Set Marketing Objectives
Goals aren’t terribly useful if you don’t have specific parameters that define when each is achieved. For example, if one of your primary goals is generating leads and sales, how many leads and sales do you have to generate before you consider that goal a success?
Marketing objectives define how you get from Point A (an unfulfilled goal) to Point B (a successfully fulfilled goal) You can determine your objectives with the S-M-A-R-T approach: Make your objectives specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Using our previous example, if your goal is to generate leads and sales, a specific marketing objective may be to increase leads by%. In order to measure your progress, choose which analytics and tracking tools you need to have in place.
Setting yourself up for failure is never a good idea. If you set an objective of increasing sales by1,%, it’s doubtful you’ll meet it. Choose objectives you can achieve, given the resources you have.
You’ve taken the time to refine your goals so they’re relevant to your company, so extend that same consideration to your objectives. If you want to get support from your C-level executives, ensure your objectives are relevant to the company’s overall vision.
Attaching a timeframe to your efforts is imperative. When do you intend to achieve your goal(s)? Next month? By the end of this year?
Your objective of increasing leads by% may be specific, measurable, achievable and relevant, but if you don’t set a deadline for achieving the goal, your efforts, resources and attention may be pulled in other directions.
3: Identify Ideal Customers
If a business is suffering from low engagement on their social profiles, it’s usually because they don’t have an accurate ideal customer profile.
Buyer personas help you define and target the right people, in the right places, at the right times with the right messages.
When you know your target audience’s age, occupation, income, interests, pains, problems, obstacles, habits, likes, dislikes, motivations and objections, then it’s easier and cheaper to target them on social or any other media.
The more specific you are, the more conversions you’re going to get out of every channel you use to promote your business.
4: Research Competition
When it comes to social media marketing, researching your competition not only keeps you apprised of their activity, it gives you an idea of what’s working so you can integrate those successful tactics into your own efforts.
Start by compiling a list of at least3-5 main competitors. Search which social networks they’re using and analyze their content strategy. Look at their number of fans or followers, posting frequency and time of day.
Also pay attention to the type of content they’re posting and its context (humorous, promotional, etc.) and how they’re responding to their fans.
The most important activity to look at is engagement. Even though page admins are the only ones who can calculate engagement rate on a particular update, you can get a good idea of what they’re seeing.
For example, let’s say you’re looking at a competitor’s last- Facebook updates. Take the total number of engagement activities for those posts and divide it by the page’s total number of fans. (Engagement activity includes likes, comments, shares, etc.)
You can use that formula on all of your competitors’ social profiles (e.g., on Twitter you can calculate retweets and favorites).
Keep in mind that the calculation is meant to give you a general picture of how the competition is doing so you can compare how you stack up against each other.
5: Choose Channels and Tactics
Many businesses create accounts on every popular social network without researching which platform will bring the most return. You can avoid wasting your time in the wrong place by using the information from your buyer personas to determine which platform is best for you.
If your prospects or customers tell you they spend% of their online time on Facebook and% on Twitter, you know which primary and secondary social networks you should focus on.
When your customers are using a specific network, that’s where you need to be—not everywhere else.
Your tactics for each social channel rely on your goals and objectives, as well as the best practices of each platform.
For example, if your goal is increasing leads and your primary social network is Facebook, some effective tactics are investing in Facebook advertising or promotion campaigns to draw more attention to your lead magnets.
6: Create a Content Strategy
Content and social media have a symbiotic relationship: Without great content social media is meaningless and without social media nobody will know about your content. Use them together to reach and convert your prospects.
There are three main components to any successful social media content strategy: type of content, time of posting and frequency of posting.
The type of content you should post on each social network relies on form and context. Form is how you present that information—text only, images, links, video, etc.
Context fits with your company voice and platform trends. Should your content be funny, serious, highly detailed and educational or something else?
There are many studies that give you a specific time when you should post on social media. However, I suggest using those studies as guidelines rather than hard rules. Remember, your audience is unique, so you need to test and figure out the best time for yourself.
Posting frequency is as important as the content you share. You don’t want to annoy your fans or followers, do you?
Finding the perfect frequency is crucial because it could mean more engagement for your content or more unlikes and unfollows. Use Facebook Insights to see when your fans are online and engaging with your content.
7: Allocate Budget and Resources
According to recent data from Google,% of respondents say that social media has its own new and distinct budget. Of those respondents,8.7% say their social media budget is pulled from traditional marketing media (i.e., TV, print and radio).
I found it interesting that2/3 of respondents say they plan to increase their social media budget during the upcoming cycle.
To budget for social media marketing, look at the tactics you’ve chosen to achieve your business goals and objectives.
Make a comprehensive list of the tools you need (e.g., social media monitoring, email marketing and CRM), services you’ll outsource (e.g., graphic design or video production) and any advertising you’ll purchase. Next to each, include the annual projected cost so you can have a high-level view of what you’re investing in and how it affects your marketing budget.
Many businesses establish their budget first, and then select which tactics fit that budget. I take the opposite approach. I establish a strategy first, and then determine the budget that fits that strategy.
If your strategy execution fees exceed your budget estimate, prioritize your tactics according to their ROI timeframe. The tactics with the fastest ROI (e.g., advertising and social referral) take priority because they generate instant profit you can later invest into long-term tactics (fan acquisition, quality content creation or long-term engagement).
8: Assign Roles
Knowing who’s responsible for what increases productivity and avoids confusion and overlapping efforts. Things may be a bit messy in the beginning, but with time team members will know their roles and what daily tasks they’re responsible for.
When everyone knows his or her role, it’s time to start planning the execution process. You can either plan daily or weekly. I don’t advise putting a monthly plan together because lots of things will come up and you may end up wasting time adapting to the new changes.
You can use tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab to manage your team and assign tasks to each member. These tools save you tons of time and help you stay organized.
Already added well by lots of colleague, would like to add below,
1. Focus on the new followers
2. Develop an engagement model for the existing as they are prone to generate more business than the new comer and cost saving also.
Hi,
Build a very effective content plan, your content is the connection key between you and your fans/followers
Think the value that every post will add to your customer life
use videos to engage more fans
avoid over posting
use Social Ads to deliver your marketing message to maximum number of your target (if your content deserves to be promoted)
Thank you for the invitation
You can't market using social media channels, it is only to advertise your products and connect with your followers.
Those followers need a product Web Site to review your product and services, to know who you are, are you trusted,
all that if the those followers use the internet in your country to shop online.
In addition to the answers I would like to add these tips:
1. identify your values and mission
2. Survey your market/customers
3. Share and listen to your customers
4. use the right tools of media and marketing
5. Follow and update !
Thank You
If audio wasn’t part of your foray into social media, it may be time to embark on a new adventure. Recording audio entails choosing your message, selecting a program that permits recording and editing, finding a microphone that fits your budget and needs and deciding where to host your finished product.
There are myriad ways to blog—long-form, short-form (micro-blogging), image-only and more. Your regular blog is a good place to write longer-form posts when needed. To get the most out of your efforts, make sure your blog is mobile-friendly. You can test it with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Evergreen content is your friend. Find your most popular posts and those that rank highly and update them as needed. Then re-share them across your social channels to draw new attention to those articles.
It can be difficult to keep up with customer questions, especially if it’s just you trying to answer. Why not let your community help? f appropriate for your business, consider creating a forum where more experienced users can assist new visitors.
If you’d like to have more customer feedback on your product or service, give your customers a reason to help you out. Incentives can run the gamut here, and most are simple and straightforward.The key is to offer customers something of value that fits into your business model. For example, discounts and a chance to win a prize usually serve as great motivators.
People have come to love and rely on infographics for explaining information clearly and concisely.
If you want people to share your images, it’s essential to make it easy for them. By installing the Pin It button, users who like images in your post can share them on Pinterest and spread your visual content in a matter of seconds.
When you look at your business from an outsider’s perspective, you’ll have a better understanding of your customers’ experience and gain important insights into what matters to them. Then you can decide what to do to meet their needs.
If you’re like most marketers, in the past few years you’ve had to extend your reach into unfamiliar marketing terrain. Social media requires constant learning and mastering new skills.
Millennials are digital natives. They’ve grown up in an online world where content is easy to access and is available 24/7.
Text and links are important parts of communicating online—they give context and drive traffic. Of course, they can’t work alone. Visual content, especially photos, has quite an impact on audiences. Done well, images allow you to tell your story simply and quickly.
customer service can share success stories or ways they meet customers’ needs. Sales can tell you what was particularly hot this season. Product development can give you updates on new releases.
Tap into those resources as much as possible. Not only will you make your job easier, you’ll be sure to share the most important information.
Want to keep your business top of mind and meet customers’ needs? You can do both—and become a trusted resource—by offering added value.
If you want to connect with prospects, you have to engage with them. And to do that effectively, you need to know where they’re engaging most frequently on social media. When you know where your prospects hang out, start connecting with them. If they’re onTwitter, add them to a Twitter list. Add Google+ users to a circle. Reach out to leads on bayt. Read and listen to their content, and comment when you have something to add.
Organic reach has experienced a nosedive, especially in the past year. Businesses now have to pay to play. It’s time to assess where to spend your precious ad dollars. Facebook ads have dominated the scene for a long time, but they aren’t the only game in town these days.
Vine’s short looping videos have won the attention of businesses and fit the bill for a cost-effective and innovative way to promote products and services. To get your own creative juices flowing, check out how other businesses have been using Vine.
Why pour money and resources into campaigns that aren’t effective? A/B testing (or split testing) is the best way to find out what’s working and what’s not. You can use Google Analytics to run a test to discover which social media tactics are working best. Then you can run further tests on your most popular platform to see whether images, links or text affect click-troughs and comments. For example, are your Facebook ads doing the best they can?
Creating brand awareness with quality videos posted on YouTube has been a go-to social marketing tactic for a number of years.
Conclusion
Social media marketing has come a long way. There are many new avenues to explore and places where businesses can stand out.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-improving-social-media-marketing/
Being a certified Social Media and Digital Media Marketer has given me insight into how things truly work on the social media platform. In all honesty, the answers given above are textbook, taken from online sources. I will make it easy for you and simple. Yesterday I answered a similar question with a numbered list and simple wording. I will attach it below. One point I always emphasize is to remain consistent. Let your team know (if you have a team) that whatever you decide upon is the final decision and nothing is to be altered until and unless you have given the instruction to do so. I hope my list helps you, and if you need additional information, please contact me any time.
Strategy1: Put together a style guide for your team to follow.
When you do this, you decrease the chances of inconsistencies in your marketing strategy as a whole. The team can just go in and apply whatever content you need them to, then they simply send it out and it looks just as organized and put together as the previous campaign you output a week or month ago.
Strategy2: Timing is everything!
When you're using Social Media to market your products and/or services, you need to make sure that you time your posts perfectly! There is virtually no room for error. You have to follow specific rules for posting on each social media platform. Twitter is a good platform to use for quick, relevant information that you believe your consumers/clients will need to check out. Utilize the character allowance wisely, though, by only using characters for what you need to say, a bit.ly link to the site, and a photo that's relevant to the message you're trying to relay. With LinkedIn and Facebook you can go nuts, but you still need to follow social media best practices in regards to word/character count, images, and links to blogs or eBooks, etc.
Strategy3: Apply a benchmark and a way to measure the success of your posts.
Take a look at your metrics from time to time. Always know your click-through rate, and do your best to keep up with how many people are actually staying on your company site. Then, you can take a deeper look to see how many people are becoming actual customers/clients. Your conversion rate is important, and then that will tell you just how successful your social media campaigning truly is.
Strategy4: If you see something is not working, change one element at a time. NEVER, EVER change the entire thing!
I have seen so many companies go in and just completely alter the appearance and the purpose of their marketing campaign. That is the biggest mistake you can make with any online marketing campaign. Change one simple element at a time. You may not be getting a good enough conversion rate or click-through rate because of the color of your background on the CTA (Call-to-Action). Or may your CTA is not attractive enough in regards to the wording. Perhaps your page's background needs to be changed as far as where your content is being placed. I emphasize again, do not ever change everything all at once. Lay your bricks one bring at a time, and take them down the same way so that you can properly rebuild if necessary.
Strategy5: White space is your friend!
The white space on a page is important. It allows readers to take a break and the content doesn't seem so overwhelming when you do that. Leave a small gap in your text, place it appropriately so that it is appealing to the reader, use images to fill blank spaces rather than more text. Remember, the point of Social Media Marketing is to keep it simple, concise, and informative all at the same time. Say what you need to say in enough words for someone to read in a matter of5-7 minutes. Time yourself when you're reading it prior to posting it. This, of course, in reference to blog posts, articles on your site, or even simply pages on your site. If there's more information that you feel your customers needs to see, that is what eBooks are for.
Source:
Shaikha Ali - years of experience in marketing;5 years experience in online/digital/social media marketing.
Define what do you want to achieve (e.g. is it brand/company awareness or sales increase?), who is your audience, what is their profile. Make sure actions on all social media platforms are consistent with each other. Treat your followers like you want to be treated, bring useful information instead of promoting the brand directly. Be always one step further in thinking, create desire and make sure people are not bored with your activity.
Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.
It's vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and -- perhaps most importantly -- your bottom line.
1. The Law of Listening Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
2. The Law of Focus It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
3. The Law of Quality Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
4. The Law of Patience Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
5. The Law of Compounding If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.
This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
6. The Law of Influence Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.
If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
7. The Law of Value If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
8. The Law of Acknowledgment You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
9. The Law of Accessibility Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.
10. The Law of Reciprocity You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others. This is one of the best social media marketing strategy to follow.
Source: Entrepreneur
If audio wasn’t part of your foray into social media, it may be time to embark on a new adventure. Recording audio entails choosing your message, selecting a program that permits recording and editing, finding a microphone that fits your budget and needs and deciding where to host your finished product.
There are myriad ways to blog—long-form, short-form (micro-blogging), image-only and more. Your regular blog is a good place to write longer-form posts when needed. To get the most out of your efforts, make sure your blog is mobile-friendly. You can test it with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Evergreen content is your friend. Find your most popular posts and those that rank highly and update them as needed. Then re-share them across your social channels to draw new attention to those articles.
It can be difficult to keep up with customer questions, especially if it’s just you trying to answer. Why not let your community help? f appropriate for your business, consider creating a forum where more experienced users can assist new visitors.
If you’d like to have more customer feedback on your product or service, give your customers a reason to help you out. Incentives can run the gamut here, and most are simple and straightforward.The key is to offer customers something of value that fits into your business model. For example, discounts and a chance to win a prize usually serve as great motivators.
People have come to love and rely on infographics for explaining information clearly and concisely.
If you want people to share your images, it’s essential to make it easy for them. By installing the Pin It button, users who like images in your post can share them on Pinterest and spread your visual content in a matter of seconds.
When you look at your business from an outsider’s perspective, you’ll have a better understanding of your customers’ experience and gain important insights into what matters to them. Then you can decide what to do to meet their needs.
If you’re like most marketers, in the past few years you’ve had to extend your reach into unfamiliar marketing terrain. Social media requires constant learning and mastering new skills.
Millennials are digital natives. They’ve grown up in an online world where content is easy to access and is available 24/7.
Text and links are important parts of communicating online—they give context and drive traffic. Of course, they can’t work alone. Visual content, especially photos, has quite an impact on audiences. Done well, images allow you to tell your story simply and quickly.
customer service can share success stories or ways they meet customers’ needs. Sales can tell you what was particularly hot this season. Product development can give you updates on new releases.
Tap into those resources as much as possible. Not only will you make your job easier, you’ll be sure to share the most important information.
Want to keep your business top of mind and meet customers’ needs? You can do both—and become a trusted resource—by offering added value.
If you want to connect with prospects, you have to engage with them. And to do that effectively, you need to know where they’re engaging most frequently on social media. When you know where your prospects hang out, start connecting with them. If they’re onTwitter, add them to a Twitter list. Add Google+ users to a circle. Reach out to leads on bayt. Read and listen to their content, and comment when you have something to add.
Organic reach has experienced a nosedive, especially in the past year. Businesses now have to pay to play. It’s time to assess where to spend your precious ad dollars. Facebook ads have dominated the scene for a long time, but they aren’t the only game in town these days.
Vine’s short looping videos have won the attention of businesses and fit the bill for a cost-effective and innovative way to promote products and services. To get your own creative juices flowing, check out how other businesses have been using Vine.
Why pour money and resources into campaigns that aren’t effective? A/B testing (or split testing) is the best way to find out what’s working and what’s not. You can use Google Analytics to run a test to discover which social media tactics are working best. Then you can run further tests on your most popular platform to see whether images, links or text affect click-troughs and comments. For example, are your Facebook ads doing the best they can?
Creating brand awareness with quality videos posted on YouTube has been a go-to social marketing tactic for a number of years.
Conclusion
Social media marketing has come a long way. There are many new avenues to explore and places where businesses can stand out.
source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-improving-social-media-marketing/
