Deciding how best to navigate the world of social media as a brand is a tough challenge. There’s just no guarantee that you’ll get any measurable return, making the decision to implement a posting and content distribution plan difficult.
Social media is such a big part of people’s world, yet still a tough nut to crack when it comes to trying to turn a profit from your business marketing efforts. People use social for virtually everything but buying it seems, from news and alerts, to entertainment and keeping up with celebrities. Social offers people with niche interests to engage with others who enjoy the same hobbies and curiosities. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and several other platforms are here to stay.
Social’s not going anywhere, but it’s not rife for exploitation by marketers either (ie., like Acai blogs back in the first decade of this century), you have to have a SMART game plan in order to maximize your ROI.
Things are changing in social media marketing as it relates to SMBs. And the changes are looking pretty impressive:
- 49% of small businesses find social media marketing effective for their business.
- 80% of small businesses prefer to connect themselves to brands through Facebook.
- 58% of small businesses spend 10 minutes on social media every day.
- 46% of online users explore social media for social proof before making a purchase.
Whether or not your business can benefit from social media is entirely up to you. It’s very likely a big slice of the market pie may be out there just waiting for you to engage users and secure their undying loyalty to your brand.
Here’s a few helpful tips to make your social presence more meaningful and profitable:
Commitment
Make every post meaningful and in line with your brand. However, don’t just post because you feel obliged to. Instead, focus on making passionate purposeful posts that are as interesting to you as you hope they’ll be to followers.
Specialized Content
Figure out a few areas of expertise and/or entertainment you want your brand to be known for and stick to them. Don’t try to pass yourself off as something you’re not or people will know it and start to ignore you. By focusing and streamlining your content, you actually make sourcing post material easier on yourself, and the message more meaningful.
Platform Focus
Customize your social content for each of the social media channels that you use. They all have a best practice and preferred method of application with regard to content and strategy. Observe people that get a lot of engagement and action. Watch what they do and say and emulate their approach.
Know Where You Fit in
Not all brands can expect to thrive on each and every platform out there. Nor should you attempt such a monumental task. Narrow down a few platforms that are known to work best for your brand. Gary Vee summarizes how to identify the right platform for you in this post, but also cautions that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are still the big heavyweights to consider from a marketing perspective.
Get Your Strategy Inline
Know who you are, what you do, and how you can help people through your content. Then write down a firm plan and execute. Sounds too simple, but those three variables are all that’s needed to nail down a firm content distribution plan.
Educate, Instigate, Entertain, Inspire – Then Sell!
Pareto’s principle is used by all industries and businesses in this world. In the case of social media, we all know that it’s important to only attempt to sell 20% of the time. If all you’re doing is posting product links and the phone number to your sale’s office, your followers will very quickly start to ignore you and unfollow you.
Be Real
Show people that your company is run by human beings who care. Show it through your posts, content, likes, favorites, etc. Consumers like doing business with human beings, not corporate robots with vanilla personalities.
Suggested Reading
This post Content on Content on Content from Gary Vee and team is great reading (and viewing, there’s a video too) give lots of helpful insights into how to make and execute a great content creation/posting strategy to help accelerate your brand’s growth. Take 3 minutes and give it a read.
