A well-planned, social media marketing strategy will help you and your business navigate the social media “wild west.” Where should you be focusing your efforts? An effective social media strategy will map out
- your target audience
- how you plan to communicate your brand value effectively
- what content needs to be developed and re-presented
- how often content should be syndicated and how
- goals for building a quality platform (audience of qualified followers)
Content Strategy
Content is key. The first rule of content for social media is to create content that informs and adds value, or content that is interesting or funny. Good content gets shared and that helps grow your brand and entices folks to follow you! So educate, entice and entertain! Once you build a relationship, you can sell. But only after you’ve built the rapport.
It’s critical to plan out your content, considering your desired audience and their interests.
Good content = Larger, More Qualified Audience
Social Media Audience Building
Building your platform (or your audience) is essential in digital marketing. You need to build relationships through email marketing, social media, and even your blog. Once you build a quality audience, overturn you earn the right to sell to them as a trusted resource… they’ll actually WANT you to sell to them, if you do this effectively. Audience building, done properly takes time. Some tactics that can be used are an effective use of hashtags and call-outs, social media advertising and email list redirection.
Create a Consistent Brand in Social Media
Your branding is critical. A strong brand helps your audience associate a look/feel/style to your brand. Make sure that each of your social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc) and business profiles (Google+, Yelp, etc.) all carry the same look and feel, colors and logos.
Social Media Profiles Working in Tandem
Your social media profiles should work together. As part of your social media marketing strategy, you should create a content flow chart. Do all your tweets feed to Facebook? Does your blog automatically feed to all your social profiles? How much should you auto-post and how much should you manually post? Should you only post your own content, or do you mix in content from other media sources, such as bloggers, news sites, etc
Engagement! Engagement! Engagement!
Social media is SOCIAL! Be Social! In order to effectively use social media, you need to engage with followers and with those you follow. It’s those conversations that drive your brand awareness and get folks talking about you and to you.
Track Your Results
Keep track of your results. Keep a tally of how your audience is growing and how much traffic your website is getting from your social media efforts.
These are just a few things to consider when creating your social media marketing strategy. If you’re serious about your results, a game plan is highly recommended! Trumpet Marketing provides expert social media marketing and consulting to clients. We can help you create a custom social media strategy that is right for your audience.
Trumpet Marketing is a Germantown, Maryland based web design and Internet marketing company that provides professional services to the local Maryland area as well as to businesses throughout the United States.