Nowadays social media is the most widely used media for
propagating and consuming information. As per a survey, social media activity
has become the top daily activity among most people in the US. As per the
survey, 93% of marketers in the US use social media in promoting their
business.
In
the current market dynamics social media is emerging as one of the biggest
tools of promoting businesses. You stand to lose big chunk of prospective
consumers if you are not actively marketing on social media.
Following
are some social media marketing strategies that can be used to further develop
your social channels and make them standout and generate more loyal followers
in the year 2015.
1: Creating and sticking to a game
plan
For your marketing plan to see the light of the day there has be
a well sorted out creative and execution strategy. Lapse at any level even if
the content is unique and engaging can make your whole effort redundant. You
need to set benchmark or limits to the no. of tweets you have to post on daily
basis. Though this figure can be modified as per the need, but once you have a
target set it keeps you involved with your social profile even if you are
posting 2 or 3 tweets per day.
Keep
an eye on your competitor’s activities, monitor their posting behavior. Carry
out industry research to find out what kind of content is doing rounds and what
is the ideal amount and no. of times content should be published on your social
channels per day. The idea is to be active on social media and not overly
active.
Collect
and put all your content in an editorial calendar. You can start off with
Google excel docs. Create a share-able weekly calendar segregated on basis of
different social channels on a weekly basis. Here also make sure that you
provide columns where members of your content team can put up their feedback
before posting any content. Move ahead in this manner but keep an eye for any
important additions as and when required.
Make
use of social media management tools like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, Buffer etc. These
tools are quite helpful as they enable you to schedule your posts ahead of
time. It also provides you access to performance analytic and helps you
overlook and manage your social feeds in an efficient manner.
2: Treating every social channel as a separate
entity.
Another important point that marketers fail to give required
emphasis is not treating each social media channel as a separate channel or
entity. Generally here the content should be the one that is propagated
across all social channels – for instance if you have appointed a new Director
or VP of sales, then you want to share this news across all channels, but your
communication strategy will need tweaking as per the audience of that
particular social channel.
For
e.g., Pinterest, Instagram or Flickr tends to have audience who have an eye for
content that is visually engaging whereas viewers on business platforms like
LinkedIn will have an appetite for a more business-focused, in-depth, and
educational content. You need to lay emphasis on the demography and taste of
your audience on each channel and feed content that interests them.
3: Strive for moving both above & beyond
in servicing your customers and viewers.
Extra caution is required while engaging with your visitors.
Suppose a visitor posts a comment on your Facebook profile or tweets on your
twitter handle and you forget to respond back this leads to loss of trust and
confidence. Since there is no communication from your side it leads to
dissatisfaction and may turn this potential audience to a competitor. On the
contrary, if you deliver a timely and a thoughtful response it flatters that
visitor who will stick with your brand for some time. A timely response not
only gives the feeling of being cared to the prospective user but at the same time
also helps you in building your authority.
Along
with good responses you will also get negative feed-backs. You need to be swift
and cool in addressing these feed-backs with patience and respect. You
should think of these as an excellent opportunity to display how well you treat
your audience.
Make use of these 4
steps to enhance the experience of your followers:
· Start
with first assigning a first res-ponder for the purpose of posting and monitoring each
social channel your brand has a presence on.
· Creating
a troubleshooting library comprising of common complaints or bugs that arise during
operating, and the way to handle such issues. This ensures that any issues that
are part of the library get addressed timely and in a proper manner.
· Being
creative– Strategic use of
giveaways, discount coupons, opinion pools, sharing humorous content for e.g.
memes goes a mile in engaging your followers and converting them into free
promoters of your brand.
· Make
sure never to IGNORE any comment posted on your social accounts: Any comment whether critical or stellar. An
lead to creation of brand detractors.
4: Accepts mishaps
All of us are bound to make mistakes as humans, so committing
mistakes is perfectly natural and unavoidable. This is true even in the dynamic
world of social media. It is better to accept the mistakes rather than ignore
them. No need announce small mistakes like missing a full stop or a comma, but
make sure no to delete the tweet. If there is a continuous re-posting it is
more likely to caught the attention of the audience. In case of bigger mistakes
for e.g. wrong brand communication or product errors, be proactively in quickly
accepting the mistake, respond swiftly and send out a message apologizing and
communicating how the issue is being sorted to keep the customers aware and
informed.
5: Tracking & Talking
Tracking activities on social medium is very important but often
it is perceived as time-consuming and tedious. No doubt it requires time and
effort but taking out few hours per month gives you an idea of what you are
doing, what are the drawbacks and takeaways to improve your strategy. Take out
time monthly for reviewing metrics which are important for your business.
Following are few stats which can be of use for e.g. Growth in number of
followers, total no. of posts, CTR(click through rate), no. of page-views, no.
of likes, shares, comments, impressions etc. You need to analyze each channel
separately and compare the results with your biggest competitors.
If
you are short on time and it is difficult to analyze all the data individually
then you can take help from various tools to track data. The most widely used
tools are Hootsuite, Google Analytics, bit.ly etc. This can help you in tracking
which content or post received the maximum likes or shares. This can help you
in planning your posts/content for future.
Sharing
your findings with your team members helps in setting up the right tone and
concentrated efforts towards your social targets. Brainstorm and take feedback
from departments especially the sales and customer service as they are the
people who are in direct and regular touch with the customers.
