There’s no doubt about the fact that social media is hot. If you don’t have a strong presence on the popular social media sites then you’re leaving open space for your competition.
However, if you look around you’ll find that a lot of online marketers are struggling with getting their social media marketing on track. They are seeing slow or no growth, and aren’t making the most out of their social experience.
The reason for this is simple – if you jump into the social media game without a strategy in hand, it will be hard to get results. Knowing what exactly you want to get out of social media and how you’re going to leverage it in the long run is really important.
Here are a few tips to help you devise a social media strategy so that you’re able to create a significant impact in your niche and build a loyal following on social sites like Twitter and Facebook:
1) Know your aim or purpose: Every online business has an aim when it comes to using social media, what’s yours? Do you want to get more leads/sales? Grow your band? or simply build awareness? Be clear about why exactly you’re getting involved into social media in the first place.
2) Understand what defines you: One of the most important aspects of finding success with social media is to pass on the right message to your audience. That’s how you get them to understand you and what you’re trying to say. But to do that you need to first know what defines your business. What would be that one word that would clearly describe your business?
3) Focus on building relationships: Social media is not about selling. Nope, it’s about creating relationships that will convert into sales in the future. If you think you can simply create a Twitter account, get followers and make bank, you’re wrong. You have to invest a considerable amount of time connecting to your audience so that they trust you enough to do buy from you.
4) Be real, be human: People run away from social media accounts that bear the corporate look. No matter how attractive your logo is, it won’t help in building an audience. Try to be as real as possible and give a human touch to your social media interactions. People want to connect to people, keep that in mind.
5) Forget shortcuts: If you go on sites like Fiverr.com, you’ll find offers that claim to get you a couple of thousand Twitter followers in a day or x number of Facebook likes in an hour. If you’re smart, you’d know that these offers are only a waste of money. It takes time and effort to build a social media presence – there are no shortcuts.
6) Don’t forget to measure success: There’s not one, but many different and useful ways to measure and understand your social media success. So see to it that you know beforehand what social media metrics you will be following. Don’t make it too confusing, pick two-three social media metrics to track and stick to them.
Do you have an ideas on creating a better social media strategy? If yes, then please share them below in the comments section.
