We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.
– Erik Qualman
Social media has become one of the most critical marketing strategies for just about every target market. Whether you are preparing to launch your first social media campaign or you’ve been at it for years, there’s always more than you can learn and do to improve your approach.
Determine Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
To be strategic, you’ll need to answer some important questions. You need to determine WHY you’re taking the time to have social media in your marketing mix and WHAT outcomes will make it worthwhile. For example, how will social media help you achieve your overall business goals? And do you want to build brand awareness, drive website traffic and sales, or generate engagement around your brand?
Choose the Right Platforms
When choosing your platforms, consider each platform’s purpose and how it relates to your overall goals. For example, I believe that Facebook is great for building brand awareness and loyalty, while LinkedIn is best for business development. Just remember the demographics of your target audience to help decide which platforms are the most worthwhile.
Create a Well-defined Content Messaging Plan
Publishing content to social media is an easy endeavor. All you need to do is share a blog post, an image, or a video on a social media platform. Remember that it is best to have a content plan that is consistent with your overall marketing strategy. Maximize your reach by posting great content that your audience likes at the right time and the right frequency.
Track Your Performance
Analyzing performance is one of the most important things you can do to improve your social media marketing strategy over time. You will get a detailed picture of what kind of content and promotion strategies worked – or did not work – enabling you to adjust and improve. The platforms have tools that provide a basic level of this information. For more in-depth analytics information or to easily compare across social media platforms, you can use the wide range of available analytics tools.
Expand to Paid Advertising to Maximize Your Targeted Reach
When you have more funds to grow your social media marketing, consider adding boosting and social media advertising. Boosting is affordable and straightforward. You pay to have your posts show up as sponsored content on the timelines of non-followers to gain more exposure. Paid social media also help you to reach a wider audience, but in a very targeted manner.
Are you thinking about investing in paid social media? Maybe you’ve been disappointed by the results of an advertising campaign you did in the past. If you’re already managing a company like a home services and repair business, eldercare law firm, cybersecurity/technology provider or healthcare practice, you know all too well time is one thing there never seems to be enough of. Lucky for you, media buyers are experts when it comes to making your media campaigns run smoothly and more profitably.
Give us a call today at (404) 232-0794 or contact us to talk about how to strategically plan and leverage social media so your marketing campaigns get better results.