Social Media Marketing Tips

Introduction:

The aim of social media is to connect with existing and potential clients, so the focus should be less about "selling" and more "engaging". Central to the notion of an effective social media strategy is the ability to create, publish and share content. Businesses should use social media to make themselves more accessible, more personable, and maintain long term connections. Email addresses and phone number aren’t enough anymore and people want to interact with businesses via Twitter, Facebook, discussion forums or whatever their favorite means of communication may be.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing:

• Engage with a huge audience (350 million people use Facebook and 75 million people use Twitter)

• Increased traffic

• Increased brand exposure

• Improved search engine rankings

• Cost effective (reduce PPC costs)

It is important to determine the objective of your social media campaign:

• Increase site traffic

• Increase transactions

• Increase trust in your business

• Learn more about your target audience

• Educate and inform customers

• Promote your company culture

• Improve customer service

• Get customer feedback

• Monitor brand reputation

Make content interesting, unique and engaging so that it appeals to the community or communities you are targeting and gives them a reason to visit your site:

• News & Stories

• Guides & Advice

• Pictures

• Videos

• Statistics

Encourage interactivity:

• Ask their opinion

• Competition

• Exclusive discount

• Promotional code

Track Success:

• Google Analytics can track visitors driven directly from social media channels

• Brand Watch and Radian6 can track the volume of conversation around your product and service

• Twitter Counter measures growth in the number of Twitter followers

• Facebook Insights provides similar data

• Monitor conversations taking place within blogs and forums using Google Alerts

Remember, social media is a long-term strategy.

It’s not just a matter of getting 10,000 followers on Twitter and calling it a day. Social media is all about building relationships, and you’re not going to get to know your customers overnight. You need to carry on making connections with your audience, get to know them and allow them to get to know you.