2016 August 24 Archive - EXEIdeas – Let's Your Mind Rock

“Let’s just get one of the marketing interns to create a blog and put together a Facebook page for the company.” If that sounds a lot like your current SMM strategy, you could be in real trouble. Unfortunately, this is just what all too many brands do. Then, the top brass is frustrated that social media marketing efforts aren’t working, or they write off SMM as a waste of time. That’s a shame because a good SMM strategy can be very effective. You just have to approach it in the right way.Remember That It All Begins With Great Content:If you aren’t creating and curating engaging content, nothing else matters. Your content should be well-written, your images should be of the highest quality possible and your videos should have the best production values that your budget will allow. The topics that you cover should be relevant to your audience, and encourage them to engage with your brand. If you are unaware of the 80/20 rule when it comes to content, remember that 80 percent of your content should be informative, entertaining, and engaging. The other 20 percent can be promotional.If you are not friends with writing and you don`t want to hire a content manager, you can search for best sites for writing help. That will create the perfect content for your audience.If you choose to curate content from other sources, and you should, be discerning. When you share something on your social media pages or reference it in your blog, you aren’t just endorsing that particular piece, you are also endorsing the source.Marry Your Social Media Marketing Strategy To Your Overall Marketing Strategy:Your social media strategy shouldn’t be it’s own entity. It should be a part of your overall marketing strategy, and it should have shared goals with that strategy. By keeping things connected, you assure that your social media marketing strategy never becomes an afterthought. Essentially, if you are laying out your marketing strategy, you should be talking about SMM along with everything else.Set Long And Short Term Goals:Building from the last point, just as your overall strategy has goals, so should your SMM strategy. Short term goals can be matched with specific campaigns, and even broken down into smaller goals according to performance on each social media site or the specific piece of content. Longer term goals can set according to quarterly and annual goals, and should reflect multiple campaigns.Market Research Matters No Matter How Small You Are:Your instincts are not a great basis for your social marketing strategy. Instead, you strategy should be founded on solid data that you gain from doing good market research. If your budget has room to spare, it is a good idea to bring in a professional. If you don’t have the money to spare, that doesn’t mean you are off the hook. You’ll just have to do your own. You can start by looking at your competitors. What kind of content is earning engagement on their social sites? What is the demographics of their followers? Don’t forget to check out the brands who sell products and services that are complementary to yours. There’s a good chance that what works for their customers will also work for yours. Ultimately, your goal should be to have one or more customer personas created that reflects demographic information, needs, interests, and the ability to buy your product.Know Your Audience Then Hang Out Where They Hang Out:Knowing your personas leads you to the next part of your strategy. Where do the people who are most likely to become your customers hang out? What social sites are attractive to them? You might have an audience that is a bit older and more reserved that spends most of their time on Facebook and Twitter. A younger audience or a more creative audience might prefer Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat. This doesn’t mean that you cannot have a presence everywhere. In fact, it would be rather foolish to ignore Facebook altogether, but it does tell you where your focus should be. It will also give you a good indication of the type of content your audience will appreciate.Use Tools To Create Schedule Publish And Promote:There is a large number of tools out there to help you boost your content marketing efforts. For example, you can use Feedly to stream content to your followers, Alltop and Twitter trending topics to help you find the best in trending content, and Buffer to schedule your content. Trello or even Pinterest can be used to keep content and content ideas organized for later publishing. There’s virtually no limit to the recipes that you can create via IFTTT. GIMP and Visual.ly are two very serviceable options for creating visual content. Finally, a tool like MailChimp can help you to get your content out to your followers.Be Different:Find a way to stand out from your competitors. This begins with the quality of your posts and content, but it doesn’t end there. You have to find your own voice. Be creative, be opinionated, and do things that your competitors aren’t doing. For example, are they using technologies such as Meerkat to stream live content to their followers? If they aren’t, be the first in your space to do that. Are they offering up eBooks and whitepapers in addition to the usual blog posts and social media updates? If the answer is no, get ahead of the game. What topics are they failing to cover that you can? The point is to give your audience a reason to pay attention to you instead of your competitors.Reach Out To Influencers:There’s nothing quite like a celebrity endorsement to get traffic and engagement. As part of your social marketing strategy, you should reach out to influencers in your industry. Develop good relationships with them, promote their content, and help boost engagement on their own sites. Eventually, you will be in a position to reach out to them. You might request a quote to use in a blog post, ask them to write a guest post for you, or even get them to provide a review of one of your products. Just be sure to vet out your influencers first. Someone with a lot of purchased followers or who simply posts a lot of content might seem like an influencer at first. The true test is in how many comments and shares they get.Conclusion:A thoughtful and well-planned SMM strategy can make a big difference when it comes to growth and improving profitability. Apply the tips above when you are creating your strategy for the next year, and you are sure to come out on top.About the Author:Luisa Brenton is a freelance writer and an educational blogger at TopWritersReview. She had been working as a brand developer for 4 years, and now Luisa is sharing her experience.Find Me On GooglePlus | Facebook | Twitter