Start the year off with these 6 basic social media strategies for more successful marketing.
Before working on specific strategies, make sure you’ve answered the following questions:
Who: is your target audience?
What: will you share online?
Where: does your target audience spend time?
Why: do you want to create an account on a specific site?
Once you’ve answered each question, then you are ready to move on to some basic social media strategies:
Strategy #1: Make sure your Profiles and Bios are completely filled out on all networks.
Optimize the space available with keywords and live links (if available), so it’s easy for your target audience to find you and connect with your website or landing page.
Tip: Make it a quarterly task to review your social media profiles. Mark it on your calendar and then spend 15-20 minutes updating any necessary information, adding new keywords/links, uploading a new photo, etc.
Strategy #2: Be consistent in your Branding.
Use a company logo and color scheme on all social networks. Or use the same headshot if you are the brand. Unique color combinations, catch phrases or images that are used across all social sites will help your brand stand out.
Tip: Social networks have varying sizes for background images, cover photos and profile shots, and these sizes can change several times throughout the year. Find a good source (here’s one to save now from HubSpot ) and then bookmark it – or use Pinterest to save it to a “resources/tools” board, so you can quickly refer to it.
Strategy #3: Have a Content Plan in place.
You should have two types of “helpful” content for your sites: original and curated (other people’s content you have found, and shared). Create a content calendar and schedule blog posts, free reports/whitepapers/ebooks and themes that reflect your brand. Don’t forget to include images/visuals in your content plan.
Tip: You may find it useful to create a separate plan for the visual component of your content marketing (photos, infographics, slideshares, videos, etc.). Delegate or outsource the creation of your visuals if you don’t have the time to do it yourself.
Strategy #4: Create a Promotional Calendar.
In addition to the helpful content mentioned above, you will have content that promotes your products or services. The 80/20 rule is a great way to start: 80% of the content you share on social should be helpful, useful, or educational. The remaining 20% is promotional or advertising.
Tip: Create several posts/graphics that you rotate on a monthly or weekly basis that promote your products or services. For example, I would create a Facebook post (with an image and live link) that promotes my weekly newsletter. Then I would post it once every 2-3 weeks on my Facebook Page. I have this “newsletter promo” post saved on my computer/dropbox files or on Pinterest and don’t have to spend time each month creating a new one.
Strategy #5: Choose several time-saving tools and stick with them.
Don’t get distracted by every new tool or App that comes along. Find 2-3 that work for you and use them consistently. It’s okay to experiment with something new, but you need to put a system in place and then stick with it for several months before you know if it’s really working out for your social media marketing plan.
Tip: A few of my favorites include: the Buffer App (free and paid versions) for scheduling posts on numerous networks, Facebook’s built-in Scheduling Tool (free) for Page posts, PicMonkey (free and paid versions) for creating/editing simple graphics, Friends+Me (free and paid versions) for sharing G+ posts to other networks, Feedly (free version) for finding/saving blogs and websites for content curation.
Strategy #6: Update your social sites daily.
As more and more people use social networks, the “noise” gets louder. It’s becoming more of a challenge to get your content in front of your target audience. Updating your sites once or twice a week isn’t going to cut it any longer. Commit to posting on a daily basis, at a minimum. With your content calendar and promotional calendar in place, you should be able to schedule some of your posts so you don’t have to spend all day on social media.
Tip: While scheduling some of your posts is okay (how else can you reach people who are not in your time zone); make sure you spend time “live” on each site at least once a day to respond to comments, connect with new followers/Fans and keep up-to-date on breaking news or events.
Take it a step further and let your fans/followers know when you’ll be on the site to respond to them. Put it in your profile information or on your header/cover/background image: “We are live on this site Monday-Friday from 8-9 am so join us then for discussion and Q & A.”
Bonus Strategy #7: Monitor your social sites with a long-term goal in mind.
Your social media marketing plan should focus on the long-term: you are building relationships online and should concentrate on getting your target audience to know, like and trust you; which doesn’t happen overnight. Keep in mind that it may take several weeks or months for your social media marketing plan to produce specific results. So don’t get frustrated and give up after only 2 weeks worth of effort and data.
Tip: Schedule a time each month/quarter to look at the data from each network. Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, Twitter Following, Pinterest Analytics…whatever tools or data you are using, set up a system and a schedule so you can routinely check on your results.
These strategies should help you put an effective social media marketing plan into place that optimizes your time without overwhelming you or your team.
About Terry League