Social marketing tip #5: How to accomplish your social media marketing goals

bysmartketeer

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Updated 6 years ago

to accomplish your social media marketing goalsToday I'm going to share with you ...

7 power-tips that will help you to accomplish your social media marketing goals

1. Content still reigns – and always will reign – even in social media

Social media is mostly about free exposure and probably this is one of the main reasons why many marketers fail to meticulously plan and develop the message they want to convey, as they would have normally done for any other expensive paid advertisement campaigns.

And that’s wrong! Social marketing is not about posting or sharing twopenny-halfpenny patchworks and low-grade sales pitches! Every single post and message must be clear, concise, politically correct and prudently constructed. Also, a professionally crafted social media content will always be free of any gimmicks or attached strings and any form of impulsiveness or effrontery.

So, don’t forget: it’s free and it’s social, but if you want result, you’ll have to provide real value. Constantly. The secret to creating great content is stepping into your customer’s shoes and figuring out what are their biggest problems and needs. Do your research, check out what questions are they asking, figure out how to give them the best possible answers in a better way than others already did and try to imagine which platform and format will work best for the particular message. This is the best and simplest way to create relevant, helpful and shareable social media content.

2. Having impeccable, exemplary social media profiles is a MUST

The very first and most viewed page on every social network is the profile page. Nonetheless, very often this aspect is completely ignored by many social media marketers and that’s another colossal mistake. Every single element including background, colors, graphics, messages, voice and style should be consistent with your brand and your corporate image! Across all your social networks! Believe me, if the very first thing your potential followers will see is a rough-and-ready, inconsistent and poorly designed profile page, most likely they will simply click away from your page without even checking out your valuable messages. We are going to discuss this important topic in the next chapter.

3. Each social channel should be properly manifested on every media platform owned by you

If you are interested in social media marketing – presumably – you already have some sort of online presence in form of a particular owned media, such as a website, blog, etc. If so, you’ll have to make sure that all your social media accounts and streams are consistently lined to all your web pages through nice, eye-catchy social media buttons placed above the fold or at least somewhere in the footer section.

4. Social media is about establishing long-term relationships, not about sales

Social media is about being helpful and social, not about being a pushy salesman! If your social presence is nothing else but an endless, aggressive promotion of your own products or services, sooner or later your followers will hit the “Unfollow” button. It may sound a cliche, but the practice of sending a pushy, persuasive direct message to a new Twitter follower for example, is much more common than you may think …

5. Your main goal is to cultivate engagement, not to build up an impressive follower count

Having a huge an continuously growing fan base is obviously very important, but those impressive figures won’t help you at all in your social media marketing efforts if your followers are lifeless or indolent. What I am trying to say here: the size of your social networks is not an authentic performance indicator! There is a much greater value in building and maintaining a smaller follower base with actual active engagements and regular interactions over time. Define your main target audience and don’t try to cater everyone just to cultivate your figures. Focus on power users and decision makers …

6. A clear social media policy is a must for any business

If you are not running a one-person business you are going to need a clear and concise social media policy to offer an easy-to-follow code of conduct for the way your business and your employees will behave online. A straightforward, easy-to-understand social media policy should focus on the following aspects:

• Setting the tone for your online persona and business culture. You need to clearly define the applicable and acceptable tone, language and behavior for all your mediums and online properties (website, blog, customer forum, social channels, etc.

• Defining the mandatory community standards that should revolve around respect, transparency, honesty and responsibility.

• Being clear about whether or not you moderate comments and what are the actual criteria for removing them.

The point is to keep it simple and descriptive. No one will ever read a 25-page social media policy. Just use your common sense to create a clear, easy-to-digest social policy in a such way that your staff and community will want to read it.

7. Social marketing is always on, even when you are not

One of the biggest challenges in social media marketing is to be there in people’s faces all the time. You need to be consistent and active. Uninterruptedly. You’ll have to find the best ways to become – and to remain! – a constant source of valuable content without overwhelming them or boring them with your constant presence.

Professionalism, consistency and continuity are vital in social marketing. This is why is so challenging and time consuming. Fact is, once you get going in social – with all those new networks, tools, services, applications etc -, it’s ridiculously easy to get distracted. You should try to find the healthy balance between being a short-sighted stick-in-the-mud marketer and a tools-obsessed maniac. Doing two or three things efficiently is far more better than doing too many things ineffectively.

Also, you need to understand that growing your social networks will take time and most likely, you won’t see the results overnight. Social media marketing is not a 100-meter sprint. It’s an endless marathon. No matter if you are an individual marketer, a small business owner with a dozen employees or a mid-size company with a few hundred employees, during this endless marathon there always will be moments when you are going to realize that you don’t have the time to give social media the attention it needs. Unfortunately, very few businesses can afford the luxury of a dedicated, full-time social media team, but regardless of the route you take, you will always have to find the necessary time and resources to continuously feed the social beast!

In other words, you’ll have to find a healthy, profitable balance between wasting your valuable time to come up with new ideas, to create content, to build relationships, etc, and spending too much money to get certain jobs done. Every situation is different and evidently, you’ll have to make your own decisions depending on your needs and the size of your business, but you should always keep in mind, that social media marketing is about consistency, continuity and endless ongoing conversations. If social marketing is an important component of your overall marketing mix – and guess what, it definitely should be! – and you have problems keeping up with all the requirements and ongoing tasks, you should consider hiring a freelancer, a community manager, an agency, etc to outsource the most difficult or time-intensive tasks to dedicated and skilled professionals.

Paying a few bucks for outstanding, professionally crafted content pieces, for an efficient, user-centered community management, etc is far more better than ruining your social marketing efforts or loosing the trust of your followers. Whether you are going to build from within or to hire externally, these people will help you to grow your business and to efficiently engage your customers.

Conclusion

The most exciting and also, the most scariest thing about social media: is an endless two-way conversation. When it’s done right, social media marketing will humanize your business and will bring you unimaginable benefits over time creating almost unbreakable bonds between you and your customers. On the other hand, when it’s neglected or done wrong, can seriously damage your brand, or even worse, … can send you back into the total online anonymity. This is why I strongly recommend you to pay a great attention to the above unwritten rules, otherwise all your social media marketing efforts could go in vain.