Every company that incorporates social media as part of their marketing strategy and brand awareness will hit a ceiling and wonder how they can improve on their strategy. Here are some tried and true marketing, social media improvements that you can use.
Start with the end goal in mind
Ensure your goals dictate your social media activities. Most companies use social media for the following reasons:
- Increasing brand awareness by building reach
- Building customer loyalty via engagement and support
- Increasing sales by driving more purchases, more frequently
Pick a goal and prioritize it. American Express organizes its social media efforts around customer service.
Provide useful content
You must produce content to make social media work, so learn how to create valuable content in some cool publications, Web copy, a blog post or two. And brushing up on some traffic-generating tactics like SEO can only optimize your efforts!
Understand people’s motivations
Don’t build content that revolves around you; build around what users care about and are interested in. Provide creative ideas on what people need or can use in their company. That way your content becomes useful to them. As a result, you become the thought leader in their industry and give you the credibility you deserve.
Don’t overemphasize tactics!
Social media are tools. Don’t worry about sophisticated marketing tactics; just use these valuable tools to simply connect in real time. The key emphasis in social media is “real time” information. Which means that the information provided need to be current and relevant.
Let others share the story.
Let go of the message; it’s on the backs of others that your social efforts will shine. Get people—bloggers, influential tweeters, and industry evangelists—to care about you, and they’ll take your story to places you never imagined!