5 Key Steps To Developing Your Social Media Marketing

Today, social media dominates our lives. If you are not winning on social media, then you are losing market share to your competitors. If you want to be successful in developing social media marketing, then you must take pointed action to drive results. Here is how:

1. Start with a Plan

Most small businesses have no strategy when it comes to social media marketing. Whether it is driving new sales, acquiring new leads or engaging with your customers to get feedback to iterate with, plan out your goals.

First, think about your customers and decide who your target audience is. Develop a profile and plan to be able to relate and communicate with that specific audience; figure out how you can successfully add value to them online.

Do industry research and consumer analysis to choose the most effective social media channels. Check competitors and learn what is working best for them.

Reanimate web recommends creating a calendar for posts to help you stay organized and consistent when it comes to your social media presence. Staying organized also helps you best collaborate with your team and will help you have a higher likelihood of success.

2. Quality Content

Quality content engages audiences and can be shared across multiple platforms. How does your content help you with your overall marketing strategies? (Including SEO, Content, and Sales.)

Quality content is:

• Informative
• Shareable
• Actionable
• Relevant to the target audience

Marketers should not be afraid to experiment and see what works best for them; whether they have successes or failures. Listen to feedback from your followers and use that feedback to improve the quality and relevance of future content.

3. Think Visually - Video and Image Content

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” but in social media, it may be worth more.

• The video, for the first time, uses more bandwidth than images on Facebook.
• 95% of all social media posts include an image or video (As of 2018)

Marketers need to think ahead with a creative strategy behind all posts that incorporate the use of images. Gather images of your brand, customers, services, community, products, etc. to keep your customers and users informed about your brand.

People are more likely to remember the content of a post when it is accompanied by a striking image.

4. Be Active and Responsive - Use messaging

It is important to have a conversation with your audience rather than just making a presentation. Beware of total Automation. Automation has the ability to get brands in trouble because it can lead to inappropriate responses. Instead, try to use primarily human responses because it will be more genuine.

5. Measure Metrics and Evaluate

There are hundreds of millions of interactions across social media sites every day. Businesses that spend time and money on social media want a return on their investment. One of the best ways to understand what is happening and what can be improved is to use measuring metrics.

A few metrics that every business should keep track of are:    

• Shares across all social sites
• Click-through-rates
• Conversion rates
• Traffic from social channels to their website (some businesses will even find activity from social sites they are not active on)

If you are struggling to understand your social media metrics reach out to us at team@reanimateweb.com. We can help you get started and help you to manage aspects of your social media as needed.

Also check out Content Marketing (Blogging) Advice here with Content Marketing: 5 Trends that can Work Wonders for a Growing Business