When looking at a social media marketing strategy we look at four key areas that make up a comprehensive and fully rounded social media strategy. It is not all about selling on social media although that is important.

Social Listening

You need to be listening and monitoring what your customers are saying about you and your brand on social media. You then need to be responding and engaging with your audience. This is now considered an essential part of customer service and brand protection.

Social Influencing

You business and brand needs to be establishing itself as an authority in social media. You should be putting out content that is of use and interest to your customers.

Social Networking

You company should be finding and associating itself with know individuals and brands who are authorities in your industry on the social web.

Social Selling

Social selling is all about generating leads and sales from existing customers and prospects on social media. This is one area a number of business focus on only at the expensive of the other three parts. You will have more success at social selling if you include the other key elements of a social media strategy.

Who To Target?

Key to a social media strategy is targeting the right people. To start the process we will build up a customer avatar of your ideal customer. We look at their “pain” what is troubling them and where they want to be. We will look at who influences them. Where they got for information, where they hang out and other vital information about your ideal customer.

Which social media to use?

This will very much depend on your business and were your ideal customer “hangs out”. Different types of social media have different demographics and different ways people interact with content.

Your Social Media Plan Could Include:

Facebook

This is often the best place to start a social media strategy and is a good place for consumer businesses and local businesses. It has the largest social media audience. It can be competitive but works well with the right content.

Paid advertising on Facebook is a great way to generate new leads and works well for a lot of businesses. This is because of the refined targeting on Facebook. You can target customers within a geographic area of your business e.g 2 miles.

You can target people based on the income, age, likes and preferences and more. It is a very sophisticated highly targeted marking channel when used properly and can produce fantastic results. They key is in the right content, message and targeting.

You can use FaceBook to “retarget” your website visitors. This is an incredibly powerful technique to bring visitors back to your website and convert them into customers. If you are not doing this a lot of businesses are and you are at a severe competitive disadvantage. Contact us to discuss this in more detail.

Instagram

This works well for products or brands that are very visual. You need the right mix of content and marketing to tell the story of business or brand to make this work effectively.

As Instagram is owned by Facebook it has the same highly targeted advertising options.

YouTube

YouTube is the second biggest search engine and often ranks well in Google. This works well for general content, education content such as “How to Videos” etc.

YouTube represents a good chance to rank and gain additional visibility for relevant keywords to get your brand more exposure.

If you are not using YouTube you are missing out on a lot of potential leads and customers.

LinkedIn

This tends to work best for business to business marketing. There are various techniques that can be used to improve your profile and make you an authority figure in your area of expertise.

LinkedIn also has paid advertising. This can be expensive and competitive but it does depend on your business and how you target your advertising.

Other social media platforms you might consider are TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, Periscope and others. The best social media channels to target will be determined by were your customer are hanging out and interacting.

Contact us to discuss the most suitable social media strategy for your business.