The new year provides marketers with a fresh new start. 2017 gives you the opportunity to take your social media marketing strategies to the next level. Here are some strategies to follow to ensure you and your business are making the most out of social media marketing:
1. Define Your Objectives
Just like any marketing channel (print, digital, display, etc.), marketers turn to social media with a purpose. Whether they’re trying to sell an idea, product or service, they always have a purpose in mind when turning to social media.
Think to yourself: What are your social media goals? What are you trying to get out of the efforts you use with social media marketing? Once you do this, you will have your objectives solidified and will be able to benchmark your data and know what your objectives are.
2. Understand Your Audience
Most of the time, your audience is also consumers or potential consumers. Therefore, it is in your best interest to carefully personalize your social media marketing campaigns.
Find all of the different characteristics of your audience from demographics to psychographics to your audience’s geographic information. Doing this will help you tailor and personalize your messaging. With Social Listening, brands can now measure who reacts to their campaigns based on:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Interests
3. Find Your Social Media Channel
Each business is different, in many different ways. It is important to track and measure your efforts on each channel rather than as a whole. Social media users want to hear or see different messages on different social media channels.
When you know what your ideal social channel is, you can then adjust your social media marketing messaging and imagery for your unique audience. For example, if you’re a clothing line, your ideal channel is more likely Instagram, and so it’s up to you to know that promoting your business on LinkedIn will be a waste of your resources.
4. Identify Your Social Media Marketing KPIs To Track Success
It is crucial to measure every social media marketing effort in order to prove success. By following the first item on this list and choosing the right KPIs and objectives, marketers are able to show the true value of social media by bringing in leads, traffic to your website, revenue to your ecommerce page, etc. So what KPIs should they be looking for:
- Awareness: How far your brand’s messaging could spread
- Acquisition: The growth of your online community
- Activation: How successfully you are engaging with your community
- Satisfaction: How your audience feels about your brand
These are just a few of the many social media marketing KPIs that modern marketers use. Pick which ones are right for your business and will prove social success.
5. Create A Crisis Management Plan
Let’s be frank here. No business is perfect. In fact, there are ups and downs in every business. Nowadays, when a crisis hits, consumers turn straight to social media to voice their opinion and get the quick response or discount they want since all of their followers are watching. And, if marketers don’t catch these crises quick enough, they spread like rapid fire and have a huge toll on businesses.
Be able to catch these events early on by setting real-time alerts for any social media data spikes. If you want to learn more about crisis management tactics in our e-guide: Plan For Your Next Crisis With Social Intelligence.
