Social Media Marketing

Setting some objectives will mean the business can be focused and use the time effectively. The most common objectives are:

• Awareness – Getting people to know that a particular brand exists
• Direct Sales – Selling something to someone online
• Loyalty – Keeping your existing customers engaged

A business can choose all three or just one or two, but that decision will affect what needs to do next. If the business wants awareness they need to aim for lots of followers and lots of shares to spread the word as widely as possible. For loyalty the business wants interaction and conversations to keep their customers involved and engaged. If the business is aiming for direct sales they will be looking at paid social media advertising, links to their website and attractive special offers.

This is the most important. It is the answer to the question which is one of the fundamentals for your whole business plan. The answer is NOT ‘everyone’.

Time spent understanding this question and identifying one or more target groups is time well spent.

‘Who is or could be my customer?’ is also important because if you spend a lot of time tweeting and Facebooking to your existing network of people who are mainly your mates on digital media platforms, then they are unlikely to be the ones who buy from you so your effort is not paying you back with more business.

Finding the right target audience on Social Media Marketing platforms for business is not a difficult task once they have figured out who they want to reach.

A proper social media marketing strategy and interpreting social media analytics can easily overcome this issue.

After an initial burst of activity, many businesses find they have run out of steam and can’t think what will be the next social media post. That’s why it’s really important to have a proper social media marketing plan so that you can keep posting relevant content regularly.

Many business hubs just do the social media competitor analysis to make a creative social media post. However, we do not consider this as the right way. Creating identical posts like your competitor means either you follow them or you just want to demote your brand.

There are millions of images on millions of topics, so, with a little googling, you are bound to find something useful to your followers. The best way is to start putting together a calendar of content ideas for each social network and create engaging content for social media posts.

This is the biggest question every business facing while starting social media marketing.

The simple answer is regularly. It’s important to have a consistent presence in your chosen social media so that people don’t forget about you or your brand.

Using a scheduling tool to line up the planned content in advance is extremely effective, especially if the business is working on too many issues at a time and too busy to post.