Did you know that 65% of adults use a social networking site? Of course you do. Everyone is on some sort of social media channel – even your non-tech savvy Grandma.
Simply put, if you’re not using social media to promote your brand, then you’re already at a major competitive disadvantage. Even worse? You’ve already invested in social media and have found that you’re failing miserably.
Why?
It’s most likely because of the following reasons…
You Have a Non-Existent Marketing Strategy
Remember when you started your business? You had a plan in place that was going to guide you in all of your future decisions. In a way, your business plan has been like a road map to success that you’ve turned to ever since.
That same mentality should be used when it comes to your social media strategy. Simply creating a Facebook page isn’t going to cut it. You need to have a game plan in mind. For example, how many new fans do you want to gain in the next three to six months? How much do you want to increase the exposure of tweets in the next six months?
Remember, “failing to plan, is planning to fail”!
You’re Using the Wrong Platform
Where does your audience spend most of their time online? If you’re audience is predominately using Twitter, then why are you wasting your time trying to reach them on Facebook or Pinterest?
Each social media platform has a different audience. And, you want to make sure that you’re on the right platform. Take LinkedIn, for example. It’s primarily used by professionals for networking purposes. If you’re a law firm then it’s a great platform for you to use. But, if you’re a wedding photographer, LinkedIn wouldn’t be as effective as Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.
You’re Not Making Meaningful Connections
Social media is all about interacting and engaging customers and influencers. This means that you don’t want to create a profile and only appear once in awhile when it’s time to promote a new product, service, or blog post.
Share other people’s content (A good rule of thumb is implementing the 80/20 Rule – 80% of your content should be someone else’s and 20% should be self-promotion) . Leave a comment. Ask a question. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, get yourself out there and interact with your audience and influential people in your industry.
You’re Not Measuring Any Metrics
Figure such as “like,” “retweets,” and “followers” aren’t effective measures. You need metrics that prove your social media’s ROI.
Keep an eye on your analytics – Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics – to give you an better idea on how your accounts are faring. You can then use some of this data to start measuring your ROI.
Brian Zeng has an excellent 3-Step Process on Moz that involves;
- Knowing your reach, engagement, traffic, and conversions.
- Measure your metrics and track your campaigns.
- Check you results against the goals that you’ve established.
You Haven’t Humanized Your Accounts
People want connect a brand with a face, or several faces, while on social media. Show a little bit of your personality when updating your channels, share behind the scenes images, profiling yourself yourself or your employees, or hosting Twitter chats.
You Don’t Have an Effective CTA
Always include a call-to-action in your social media accounts. Ask people what they thought of your blog article, YouTube video, or infographic. Ask people to share. Ask people to answer a poll question or participate in a survey.
Facebook makes this easy by allowing you to install a CTA onto your page.
If you need a little inspiration on which words or phrases to include in your CTA, checkout this awesome list from Wishpond.
You’re Social Media Marketing Efforts Aren’t Integrated
Finally, your social media strategy should be integrated with your overall marketing strategy. This means that you should be creating content that your audience will find valuable or entertaining. At the same, you’re creating your brand’s voice and establishing yourself as a leading thought leader in your industry.
This can be easily accomplished by having a consistent voice, you wouldn’t have a serious blog and a quirky Twitter account.
What are your favorite social media marketing strategies?
David Koji
David Koji is CEO of Evolvor, an online marketing and advertising agency based out of New Jersey, specializing in search engine and content marketing that converts into real results.
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True, share your voice everywhere now. Your presence will be noticed when you are consistent!
Great tips in this article David!
Likes, tweets and follows don’t mean much if you are not reaching your ROI goals. Thanks for the article David!
In my opinion social media is very powerful strategy IF we focus on SHARING VALUE in the first place. What I can see is that 99% of people share their URLs to programs or biz opps that they want to promote which isn’t the right way.
The thing is that everyone at the beginning does this because we just need to learn about using social media and this article can help understand what is THE RIGHT way of using it 🙂
So many people using Social Media…But Do they use it well?
This is such a great article to share with my friend who need to learn more about the good leverage!
This is a great blog David. I agree with everything you wrote here. I’m especially into Metric right now. You get what you measure. If you measure nothing, you get . . . nothing!
Totally agree, great post David.
The best part of the 80/20 rule is that it helps ease you into the idea of making posts and being visible regularly. Long term, original content is difficult to keep producing.