For the most part, social media marketing is about connecting with the right audience. Once you connect, you can engage and develop business relationships that make way to sales and of course, customer loyalty. Now, post-COVID, more than ever is the time to be online for your brand and make sure you are connecting and engaging with your peeps.
Otherwise, your competition will do it instead, and you will be left in the lurch.
So let’s get you started on how to be (more) successful at social media marketing:
Define Your Target Audience
Who is your target audience?
Who are the people you want to read your content, and maybe respond to it?
Once you define this group of people, you can move onto the next steps of your social media plan.
Here’s a hint: if you are selling a software designed to protect any computer network from cyber threats and attacks, your target audience will be business owners, C-level executives, IT professionals (who are the decision makers and potential buyers).
And of course, your competition (because you want to keep track of your competition free of cost!)
Decide the Content
You don’t have to post about everything under the Sun. Just remember to post something meaningful, related to your niche, while still keeping things interesting enough for others to feel the need to read your posts. Tricky, huh?
There’s no formula to strike the right chord with your audience. With a little practice, you will find the right path.
Choose the Right Medium
There are many social media marketing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, SnapChat, Instagram, Medium, and the list goes on. But you don’t have to be on everything. You just have to choose the right ones for you.
Think about how much time you can invest every day on social media. Are you handling social media yourself? Or hiring someone else to handle it?
Just 15-20 minutes a day (per account) can help you make a huge difference in your marketing efforts.
Moreover, what is your competition doing? Which platforms are they using to connect with the audience?
When you have the answers to the above questions, you can choose the right tools in social media marketing.
Make a Timeline for Implementation
So you have set your target audience. You understand what to post about. And you have chosen the right tools. Now you have to begin your implementation process. You have to start doing what you have planned.
Start with an hour a day on the different social media accounts you have chosen. Along the way, you might reduce or add to this timeline.
Measure your Success
No plan is complete, until you measure its success.
For Facebook, you have Facebook Insights. Twitter offers Twitter Insights. There are other analysis tools from Hubspot, Semrush, etc. to track your social media marketing success.
Track and measure your success every month, or by every campaign you conduct.
Are you connecting with the right crowd?
Is there anything negative about you in the social cloud?
Which posts are most popular?
What the best times to post online for you to get the maximum engagement?
These are some of the questions you should track to understand if your social media efforts are making any difference for the success of your business.
ADJUST..
There are instances when measurement tools might show you that whatever you have been doing are completely WRONG.
Yes, utterly and completely WRONG.
And that’s when you have to adjust your social media plan to be more successful at social media marketing.
Don’t waste any more valuable time to fight this. Accept the change. Move forward.
Listen to the Noise
If you do have to adjust your social media plan, you have to start listening to the noise. And by noise, I mean what others are saying about you, your work, your line of work, and so on. You have to analyze what works, and what doesn’t from other people’s success (or failure) stories.
Try tools like Google Alerts, Mention, etc. to listen digitally.
Don’t try to re-invent the wheel!
Listen to the noise and pick up the best practices for social media from successful campaigns of businesses similar to yours.
Now, over to you..
Social media marketing is an evolving process. Even if you are following the “right” formula for your business, you have to keep on evolving so that your audience never gets tired of the same old routine. That may be the only formula to be successful at social media marketing ;)
Changing tactics once in a while is as important as adding fresh content every day. So look around, and use best practices from other success stories.
And you’re all set.
Stick to the above plan, and watch your social media efforts create a difference in the way you do business.
Read my other articles on Digital Marketing for more success online.