In this the age of connectivity, consumer expectations are high. They expect their fitness devices to speak to their phones, which talk to their laptops, which link to their e-readers, which have full web access. Each of these products in turn should connect with social media. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have quickly become hubs of communication – it’s often the first place people look when something momentous hits the news cycle.
As any prosperous online business entrepreneur will tell you, harnessing the power of social connections is crucial to a successful social media campaign. If your engagement hasn’t led to harnessing, however, you may need to rethink your game. Even the savviest social media campaign can fail for a variety of reasons. If yours is struggling, consider these tips to help you redesign a great social media presence.
Focus on Your Strategy
If your company is still afloat in this uncertain economic time, you are doing something right. You have probably hammered out a mission statement, created a clear identity, targeted your primary audience, and have engaged marketing techniques to match – so most of the hard work is already there. Use these bones to design your social media campaign.
Social media campaigns should help you reach more people, but don’t reach them at the expense of your company identity; be true to your company persona. You’ll have more success with specificity than by trying to cover every demographic – and you won’t be spinning your wheels trying to market to an audience who won’t be listening.
When you enter the conference room to develop your online marketing strategy, remember what your company is and who the people you are trying to reach are. The first question is simply, “Why does this marketing initiative make sense for our company?” A complete answer to this contains vital information that you can use to create an effective and comprehensive strategy. Knowing what you hope to achieve – and why – will often produce the “how” you are seeking.
Recommended Reading: Social Media Campaigns: Strategies for Public Relations and Marketing
Consider Your Audience
As you move forward, keep your audience at the forefront of your mind. Your social media campaign should be a tool for customer acquisition and retention, with potential for increased sales. You know what it can do for you, but you need to know how your consumer will benefit. Switch roles with the consumer and look at your campaign through their eyes. If there’s nothing in it for them when they follow you on Twitter or like your page on Facebook, they are unlikely to do it.
This doesn’t have to be a “go big or go home” situation. Creating funny tweets may be enough for your base to follow. If that’s not who you are, though, don’t force it. Be useful by linking to useful – not salesy – articles, or make “following” your business matter by providing discounts or customer-specific specials. For instance, some theaters engage in Throwback Thursdays, showing older movies. The only way to know if it’s going to be a customer’s favorite 1980s’ teen flick is by following the cinema on Facebook. Give your content value – but make it specific to your audience.
Give Them What They Want
What does your audience want to see? Think about that first – and what you want them to see second – then marry those two concepts. If you represent a bakery, perhaps Snapchat is the way to go. Post enticing pictures of your daily cupcake selection – users would love to share an artfully made cupcake. If you are a mobile application startup, perhaps Facebook would be better. You can link to articles on your company’s blog and offer more-detailed promotions. It is important to decide where your money will have the most impact with your specific client base.
When you know where to put your resources, your marketing investment should represent a return. Once you’ve decided social media marketing is right for your company, execute it properly. It is worth noting that social media is only one aspect of a marketing strategy. Once you decide which outlet is best for your goals, do not eliminate all other forms of marketing. You should incorporate social media into your program, not replace something else with it.
Implement Consciously
Once you have developed a plan of action, implement it thoughtfully. A common mistake is creating a strategy and then walking away. If you plan to outsource your social media marketing, it would be smart to stay involved in some way. It is a great avenue by which to stay connected to your customers. Make certain that someone intimately acquainted with the mission statement and goals is keeping tabs on the social media sector. It can be easy to spiral away from your company’s identity when left in the hands of outsiders.
Balance is key in this endeavor. Just as it is unwise to turn a blind eye, it is not advisable to remain glued to your company accounts at all times. Especially in a young company, over-analysis of social media is an easy pitfall. If you are the CTO, even if you only have 20 employees, you should not be spending eight-hour days on Facebook. Be mindful of your human resources and find a combination of outsourcing, in-house staff, and directorial overseeing to make it work.
Make it a Tortoise Win
In an age focused on the immediate, it is sometimes difficult to be patient. For social media campaigns, however, being the tortoise over the hare will likely win you profits. The day you launch your social media campaign, there may not be a huge spike in sales. However, with good content and smart practices, you will build a following over time. Recognize that this is a long-term investment and that slow and steady wins the race.
In embracing the potentially slow and steady process, consistency is key. A presence you don’t maintain is useless. Keep in mind which time zone(s) your audience is in, what kinds of content they look at, and how often. Design a posting schedule and stick to it. The more consistent you are, the more likely you are to gain follower-ship.
Embrace a New Mindset – A Marketing Campaign that Doesn’t Market
Image Source: Linkedin
A huge mistake some companies run in to is a basic lack of understanding. Educate your team about how to engage on social media and what the differences are among the different platforms. This is deeper than simply knowing how many characters you can post in each. It’s vital to research what kind of user you reach through each platform, what sort of tone is most popular on each, and how shareable different forms of content are.
Your company’s social media account is not a great place for in-your-face advertising. People do not want to see posts that read “30% off, today only!” Consumers are more interested in reading informational blogs or articles about a product than seeing ads. This gives businesses a great opportunity to educate clients. Keep your content fresh, relatable, relevant to your target audience, and pertinent to your business.
After gaining some insight into how these tools are used, monitor the trends. Most of these platforms make analysis straightforward. It can be extremely helpful to jump in and use popular terms and images – and recognize they are always changing. Never use any method that you are not completely sure you understand.
Many trendy terms and hashtags are references. If you do not know what it refers to or where it came from, do not use it. Burger King learned this the hard way with their #WTFF campaign. Apparently, WTFF is an acronym for more than just “What the French Fry.”
With this in mind, educate your team about how each of these mediums should be used, and keep in mind that a personal account works differently than a business one, though you should aim to make you social media as personal as possible. Budget your human and financial resources to implement your strategy. Once launched, proceed with care, always putting the customer first. With these steps in mind, and tools in your back pocket, your social media campaign will soar.
Hey Stephen,
There are many companies and peoples around you with their different strategies. But are they applying it properly? Well, the answer is no.
You should focus on what you have in your mind. Social media is one of the strongest tools you can use for your business success.
An informative post indeed.
~Ravi
Thanks, Ravi. While one is using social media tools for business promotion or branding or to connect with future prospects or customers, it is needed that one has applied good strategies for that. Depending on external factors and the type of business one owns, using social media requires a lot of research and study to gain on such platforms.
Drawing right inference and monitoring trends are useful for charting further plans and achieve your objectives.
Stephen
My challenge is not following through. I’m a one-person operation and always get distracted by alleged more important things when promoting my project or book is important. Thanks for sharing this post and changing my mindset about social media campaigns.
Thanks, Marcie. I liked your frank views. It happens not just with you, but I feel with most of us. Most social media platforms nurture thrill and excitement at so many different levels, that it’s hard to focus on your main campaign on these platforms. Often we tend to lose or get lost in the world wherein all sorts of people drop in to associate with us. Sometimes, it’s fruitful all the way and sometimes, not. So, it’s important to be cautious and keep focused on our goals. All I can say to you is All the Best! Keep up your goals in mind, always.
Same as the case with Marcie. I am the only resource in our 15 year old staffing company to manage its online presence. Implementation always a tough part when it comes to social media.
Thanks for the some great tips.
– Sanjeet Veen
Hi Sanjeet,
Glad that you have liked the tips. It’s indeed tough, and a continuous process to implement the right strategies on social media. We cannot simply assume that social media can work by just randomly writing blogs or replying queries. It’s a serious job, if you know and want to manage your online presence of your brand.
Thank you for the inspiration, some of this will probably even be possible to implement on our blog. 🙂
Hi Jesper,
Thanks for liking the post. You are right it becomes easier if we know how and what we need to be doing for winning the game. Keep focused on your objectives and entice your audience with the right strategies. Try to distribute your promotion campaign on different channels and see the difference. Also, you will realize where you can make improvements and resolve your crisis, if any.
Keep writing.
Hi Stephen,
Consistency is key to success, this is something that is missing in my online marketing strategies.
Doing something really good now and not doing it again is not going to help. I like that you pointed out that slow and steady wins the race here.
Even with the biggest marketing budget on earth, we still need time for things to work and measure our progress level
Thank Stephen, nice read.
Hi Shamsudeen,
I am glad you already know what need to be done. You also know what you are not able to do and that too, why. We should focus on giving in our best efforts each time we are dealing on social media.
There are people around who are reading our mind and trying to know our brand through that. We cannot afford to be careless. Even if we are not good all the time, we can play safe and keep our race going on all the time. One day we will surely win. ‘Implement consciously’ is my ultimate goal when I am on it.
Hello Stephen
Great post ! Insightful and very helpful. I agree with what you wisely pointed out there should be a balance of what your audience wants and what you want them to see. I guess there is need to always implement actionable changes that will bring better results. Thanks for sharing this value-packed post
Thank you so much, Darrell for liking my post. Better results are awaiting us if we are implementing right strategies to market ourselves. If we are able to give our audience what they are looking for and are keeping focused on our goals, we are sure to win the race. And gradually, I believe we do start understanding a lot of things that help us revise and devise new strategies to connect better and fix our problems.
It’s important to give what customers what they want. This is kind of a broad topic and it’s definitely is not easy for bloggers to implements.
Hi Louis,
Thanks for writing. Visitors on social media channels are more receptive to your posts or messages. Not only that you will get noticed, you will also get to interact with the customers you had thought that they did not exist. You can leverage to communicate better with them. Also, your strategies will get you more sales.
Hey Stephen,
Social media works best when we’re able to be active consistently. Problem is, things come up that impede our ability to hop onto social media at regularly scheduled times. Most of business owners invest an insane amount of time and money having excellent content written for their blog or social media accounts. But content can be extremely well-written, and still not provide anything of value.
We need to have a unique angle – something that’s different, special, and tailored to our particular audience. We’ve been seeing a massive shift in what it means to be effective on social media over the last few years. One challenge that marketers are facing in this new era of social media marketing is connecting with audiences on an individual and personal level. We can commonly accept this challenge by, monitor all additional social media channels and respond to each comment in an authentic way.
The best way to do this is through creating social media campaigns that take customers through a funnel from stranger, to fan, to buyer, to advocate. While this sounds simple enough, many businesses are ignoring some of the crucial elements required to make their campaigns a success. Thanks for sharing your valuable information with us.
With best regards,
Amar kumar
Really nice article and actually the information you are telling will be more powerful and actually social platform will be the proper medium for getting interact with the customers. But within that I agree with your points of Considering Audience. It’s primary information because it’s not a thing how many followers or likes we are having instead of that it’s important whether we are having the proper audience is there. Nice article here thank you for providing this
Hi Jeffy,
Thank you so much for liking the post. Social media is the best tool for connecting with industry leaders and the targeted audience. If you know who your audience is and how you should be connecting with them, your strategies are going to work. Keep writing.
Hi Amar,
True, there is a massive shift in what it means to be effective on different social media channels. Most of the time, marketers are unable to understand their audience and howmuchsoever they create good content, they are not able to gain out of it. On top of it, they fail to understand the important question, why.
They may have been investing heavily in creating content, but not investing in a right way to understand as to what will turn a simple visitor to a fan of their brand and advocate it in the future. Many businesses are missing on this. Social media is the most viable channel which allows us to connect with audience, easily and quickly. It’s like in an auditorium we know where our audience is sitting but are unable to connect with them, while we are performing on the stage.
Thanks for sharing your views, I am sure your thoughts will be helpful to many.
Stephen
Better results are awaiting us if we are implementing right strategies to market ourselves. If we are able to give our audience what they are looking for and are keeping focused on our goals
Hi Andrew,
True, what you have said. We may not target all the audience, but we need to focus on the right audience who is genuinely looking for us and wanting to hear from us. If our strategies are right, they are going to target them. Right strategies should be used to drive targeted traffic and also this can boost your site’s SEO.
Hi Stephen, your findings are true and these are the main problems in social media campaigns. Engaging with the users through social media is a nice way to attract more customers. “Make it a Tortoise Win” that’s where the wise people win, Most of campaigners need instant results and are not patient.
Hi Vineet,
Social media is great way to easily evaluate and improve at the same time. You can engage with audience and understand the growing trends in the industry. It’s easier to understand where you need to be by knowing about your competitors. Sometimes your own customers teach you a lot about your competitors, and indirectly their ways to deal with customers.
Thanks for writing.
Hi Stephen,
I am the budding online entrepreneur under business for past 2 years. I didn’t come across huge growth. Even the social media campaign support failed in some case . After reading your article I got a clear cut idea to fix the fault. Done a great job Mr.Stephen thank you for sharing such a favourable post.
Hi Sathish,
Thanks for liking my post. I am concerned and trying to figure as to what made your social media campaign fail. Had you not sought any expert’s advice? But am glad that you could pick up a few points that may have delivered some relief to you in understanding your social media strategies better. I wish to hear more from you when you succeed in your venture.
Thanks again.
Nice post! We need to target only those customers who are valuable to us.
Patience is the key.
Hi Rahul,
I think you have summarized the most talk we have all been doing. Have patience and the targeted audience… that’s the real key actually. I hope most understand that, and if could contribute only towards these two aims, we can succeed faster. And yes, thanks for writing.
Great article! The information you talked about really applies to what I’m learning in my university journalism classes. I agree that finding the right audience and catering your social media posts to what they want to see first is very important. I also think that patience is key when gaining followers and implementing your social media plan, which you touched on in the article. Nothing will happen overnight, and if you’re not consistent with the kind of material you post, amount you post, and you don’t keep up with the work then your campaign or plan will likely fail. I like what you said about how “if there’s nothing in it for them when they follow your social media account, they are unlikely to do it.” I definitely agree with this. I think it’s beneficial to think about what you like to look at or read about on social media and reasons you follow certain accounts so you can get a better perspective on what changes you need to make in order to make your campaign and social media accounts successful. Overall, great information! I will likely come back to this article when I need help boosting my social media following.
Hi Katie,
Thanks for writing and appreciating. It does take time and commitment towards your efforts that one has been putting in on social media channels. It’s not an overnight job as you said. There are many internet users who have been on social media just for fun sake but are gaining popularity with the work they are doing. This may have happened automatically, as it seems to be, but it isn’t. These people have been consistent with what they have been posting and wanting to attract their friends and their friends indirectly. This is how they gain massive popularity and are being liked constantly by their friend circle. So whether you are a professional blogger or a simple user or a member of any online channels, you have to be consistent to be successful in your work. I hope that says all.
Thanks for writing this amazing piece of article.
Any suggestion for my Amazon Affiliate website please?
Hi Nikola,
Thanks for writing and liking my post. As far as your query regarding Amazon Affiliate website is, then we often get to hear that it is harmful as regards to doing promotion directly through social media sites. But one can certainly promote as long as you do not do spamming. Spamming gets you banned easily and without fail. What I suggest is that you should create a blog site about a specific line of product and then you can use it for promotion.
I also face this same problem few month I’m also doing social media and share everything about our business, but there are no effect. That time I checked my social media summary nothing happen. if we follow this instruction may be quite good.
Hi Anup,
If you are also doing spamming then it may not help you get the right results that you are looking for. As I wrote earlier that spamming can get you banned, you should be careful enough not to get trapped. For this, you can send Amazon Affiliate links using email marketing. Try and link to a page on your blog or niche site that has your Affiliate Links. You can also include Amazon Affiliate links in E-Books, PDF documents, etc. Hope this helps and do write more about your experience.
These tips truly deserve implementation. In social media campaign, you have to be relevant as well as audience oriented. You must know what interests them and what would be their reaction or behavior towards campaign. Thanks for the actionable read.
Hi Hardik,
Thanks for liking my post. We can’t make social media campaign successful or a hit unless we pay attention to relevance of our content and the right audience whom we want to attract. It is also important to measure your campaign’s success, in terms of both measure both quantitative and qualitative results. This gives you better clarity on how your audience is behaving towards your brand, what impact the product purchase has brought on their life, etc. And, I really believe that makes a lot of sense for a marketer. One can wisely design future strategies or revise existing tactics based on this experience.
I create my blog page for my social media campaign. But it wont affect the traffic of my website . But after few days i google about social campaign and i come to know about your blog post on social media campaign. trust me really help me a lot to gain social media traffic.
Regard
Caesey
Thanks for the reminder that slow and steady tends to win. Having been promoting my blog on social media for 4 months, I’m definitely itching for results! They’re starting to come, so I guess I just need a little more patience!