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Social Media Marketing – DIY

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Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a term that encompasses many social sites that may provide vastly different social actions. It is comprised of websites and mobile apps that allow the sharing of information with large numbers of people at the same time.

Social media marketing can be used to connect with prospects and customers, build your brand, drive quality usage to your website, establish expertise, make sales, gather competitor intelligence, and much more.

In order to have an effective successful social media marketing presence and results you need to:

  • Do your homework: research, listen, decide which social networks are right for your business, compare social media networks - these things help you decide on where you invest time and efforts (some social media may be a perfect fit topic wise but if their usage is dismal there is an opportunity cost of not spending time in highly popular portals that will result in more business).
  • Define your strategy: what do you want to accomplish?, Who is your target market?, What types of content on which networks do you have or need to develop?, Where do you add value?, Are you going to do paid social advertising?
  • Engagement: connect, engage, use best practices for social media posting, fill your social toolbox. Here are five top ways to engage your target audience with content that matters to them: promote your content, share others content, mentions, replies and favorites, direct and private messaging.
  • Content: choose the right content, will your content add value for your audience? Does your content encourage conversation? Is your content personable instead of salesmanny? There are many types of content: how-to, inspirational, emotional, review, insightful and more.
  • Measure success. What are you measuring? Are you getting a return on your investment in the forms of followers, fans, views, engagement, shares, clicks, and actions (signing up for a newsletter, buying product/service, submitting a contact form, and so on).

Here are some ballpark stats, relationship types, and engagement opportunities for some of the major Social networks: (You need a separate business account and/or company profile page for all of these)

  • LinkedIn: 364+ million users, you are seeking "connections", you are able to engage with likes, shares, and comments.
  • Facebook: 1.44+ billion users, you are seeking "followers", you are able to engage with likes, shares, comments.
  • Twitter: 300+ million users, you are seeking "followers", you are able to engage with Tweets, ReTweets, Favorites, Mentions, Replies.
  • Instagram: 300 million, you are seeking "followers", you are able to engage with loves and comments.
  • Pinterest: 50 million (USA only), you are seeking "followers", you are able to engage with Pins, likes, and comments.
  • There are many others that you should research and investigate - the above is just a brief overview.

The below social media marketing tools help with social management, social monitoring, social analytics, influence marketing, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Social Networks, and more.

Here are some quick social media marketing audit/checklists:

Social media marketing content performance review. What is working well with your content in regards to:

  1. Are you getting conversions in your sales cycle?
  2. Are your social efforts driving people to your website and other off-social destinations?
  3. Is your development of community working? Is your fan/following count increasing, declining, or remaining steady?
  4. What is your reach? Is social driving increasing brand awareness?
  5. Quality and ROI of traffic/usage: How do social users compare to other types of users in terms of page views, bounce rate, session duration, and conversions?

Social media marketing workflow health check: how well does your social media team work?

  1. Does your process facilitate a fast response to social conversation?
  2. Does it provide high-quality on-brand and shareable content?
  3. Do your social marketing goals mesh with overall company goals?

Social media marketing inventory. Take stock of everywhere you're active, or should be:

  1. High-performing accounts: what insights can you use on other social media platforms?
  2. Under-performing accounts: how can you improve strategy to increase results?
  3. Dormant accounts: should you shut them down or relaunch them?

Digital Buzz. Use social listening to surface insights and opportunities:

  1. What are people saying online about your brand?
  2. What is being said about your competitors?
  3. What conversations are forming around key industry terms?

Here is a link to Marketing Land's "How To Guides: Social Media Marketing": http://marketingland.com/library/how-to/how-to-social-media-marketing

A key to social media marketing is creating ongoing quality content. Publishing content in the right social media portals in the right format is also important.

To increase your social media marketing ROI it is recommended that you use a marketing automation solution. This will help you lead nurture prospects and customers throughout your new business and customer service sale cycles. Visit the marketing automation section in this website for more details.