As the social media landscape gets increasingly competitive (even amongst the platforms themselves) and brands partake in an ongoing battle royal for our limited (almost goldfish like) attention spans, social marketing has received a bad rep for being a time drain with limited ROI.
While time is precious and to an entrepreneur with limited resources, essentially the difference between success and failure, social media is handled creatively, has the potential to reach insanely wide audiences with limited spend.
So here are a few tips to help you navigate those waters and hopefully help you extract as much value from these mediums as possible.
1. Don’t use every platform!
Definitely not because everyone else is on there. Between all the mainstream ones themselves, all it’s going to do is spread your time really thin and inhibit your ability to succeed on any given one. Instead…
2. Go where your audience is
And invest your time here. How do you find out? Use industry reports for higher level demographic insights, look at where your competition and others with similar audiences are present (pay attention to engagement stats as well here) and follow industry influencers. You’ll need them soon anyways (see point 8).
3. Find Your Value Add
Nobody’s on Facebook is there to see you brag about your mind blowing product, we’re on there to engage, learn or be entertained. Remeber how annoying that one pyramid scheme pushing friend was? Exactly…So if you want to succeed, give them what they want.
Goes without saying it should be relevant to the industry, otherwise, we’d all be doing Kardashian make up tutorials now wouldn’t we.
4. Study Each Platform
While certain social channels are going holistic *cough* Facebook, they are quite different for the most part, with varying expectations from users. Instagram, for instance, is primarily pictorial, used for showcasing the perfect visuals, while Snapchat is a allows for a more natural and unfiltered form of connection. Not suitable for all brands though.
5. Reply & Engage
And ddon’t rely on automated responses, no matter how sophisticated the software promises to be. People know, they always know.
6. Keep Networking
Identify and join Facebook & Linked in Groups, share your content on there and ”always be prospecting”.
7. Integrate With Other Channels
A huge mistake, but a common one, is tunnel vision. Your social efforts should be tied to and amplify those in PR, advertising, events, etc to ensure consistent messaging across the board.
8. Find Ways to Curate Credibility
No easy feat, and effectively what separates the great from the not so great pages. You build this by following the point above, linking up with relevant influencers, magazines, and online platforms.
More info on getting people to trust your content can be found here.