A quality social media plan engages your audience, elevates your brand recognition, and should positively affect your bottom line. However, social media marketing starts with understanding your audience. These 10 tips will help you build a solid foundation that will best serve you and your consumers.
Listen. You’ve heard the phrase that you have two ears and one mouth, so you should do more listening and less talking. They’re right – social media success relies on your ability to put this into practice. Read your audience’s content and join discussions to learn what is important to them. Then, use this information to drive the direction of your own content, sparking further conversation with consumers.
Focus. A tight focus on one area is more important than a broad strategy that attempts to touch all things. Specializing in one area on social media allows you to better reach your target group and maximizes the return on your time investment.
Quality. Its much better to have a smaller base of online connections that will spread your content than a larger group that does nothing to promote your brand other than adding to your number of “follower.”
Patience. You must be patient with social media. While possible, success generally doesn’t happen overnight. Your brand’s presence must grow right alongside the relationship you build with your social audience.
Compounding. If you publish quality content it has a greater chance of being shared by your audience to their own audiences. Search engines can then use this sharing and discussion as new entry points for keyword searches. These entry points become new ways for people to find you online.
Influence. Find the major influencers in your market. Their audiences are likely to be interested in your business or product and create a huge new audience for you to present your content to.
Value. Don’t spend all of your time directly promoting your products or services. You need to generate content that engages users and stimulates conversation. Would you ever go on a second date with someone who only talked about himself or herself? Nope. Don’t lose sight of that in this relationship, either.
Acknowledgement. Interact with your audience. If your audience reaches out to you, don’t leave them hanging. Acknowledge them and then revisit the conversation to develop a strong relationship.
Accessibility. Don’t disappear between postings. Your audience wants to see frequent and fresh content. This doesn’t mean you have to churn out meaningless info. Instead, participate in conversations, share links about your industry or pop culture. Give them a reason to need you. If you aren’t able to be reached and disappear they are likely to replace you.
Reciprocity. If you expect others to share the content you publish you must in turn do the same for them. There’s no better form of social media flattery than clicking that “Share” button.
