The power and potential offered through newer social media websites have yet to be fully recognized. Social media marketing quickly replaces older methods as the easiest and most preferred option for reaching a core audience and bringing in traffic. No other marketing plans offer diversity or interactive possibilities. The below paragraphs will offer some insight into the basics and help you find your own two feet in this growing world.
Think twice before you hire a Social Media Marketing Agency
You should definitely think twice before you hire out a company dealing specifically in social media marketing. For starters, their black hat techniques are often seen as spam and will degrade your reputation. The companies utilize thousands of fake Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, which they create using proxy servers and automated registration bots. No matter how much you pay the company, your ad may never be viewed by an actual person, even if it has a high view count.
Establish your Social Media Marketing goal
Establish your goal for a social media campaign. If you do not know what you hope to achieve with your campaign, you won’t know when you have been successful. Are you looking for product awareness, concrete sales, or better customer service? When you can answer these questions, building a strategy is a more straightforward step.
To create social media content that really markets you covertly, come up with lists. Compose a list of the top fifty weird but true facts about your product, widget or niche. Top number lists seem a little boring to some, but they do tend to get quietly passed around the internet, providing an excellent opportunity for your brand to get exposure.
Put up some stats
If your blog has grown popular, put up some stats showing your visitors how many others follow your content. Demonstrating your growth through showing the number of Facebook “likes” you’ve received, Twitter followers you’ve accumulated or any awards your site or blog has received is a great way to prove your “social worth.”
Use LinkedIn for Social Media Marketing
Do not neglect LinkedIn. LinkedIn is less popular than Facebook or Twitter, but you can find extremely influential users on this site. Add a LinkedIn ‘share’ button on your articles, and the chances are that someone who shares your content on LinkedIn will cause dozens of people to share it on other websites.
Be sure to thank your visitors
Let followers know about different milestones you reach. You could write an article when you reach a thousand followers on Twitter, for instance. Be sure to thank your visitors for being interested in your work, and make sure you share your experiences on social media sites. This kind of article is going to get spread around fast.
Stay professional
You should always stay professional, regardless of the fact that the way people communicate has changed due to social networking. Maintain a professional tone in your posts, profile and any other correspondence. Avoid getting into disagreements; if you encounter comments or posts that are not constructive, you can delete them. Always use a separate profile for your personal social networking and your business operations.
Be flexible
Be flexible when it comes to keeping your page updated. For example, followers typically look for an increase in posts centred around upcoming launches or product promotions. But because it can be a hassle to find good info to post, you should definitely save your updates for something more substantial.
When your customers want to contact you on your social media, always respond in a timely manner. Do not let messages sit for days unread. Your customers and followers are taking the time to write so from a customer service perspective. It is good customer service to respond to messages and comments at least on a daily basis.
Use Twitter
If your social media marketing campaign involves Twitter, get the most followers you can. The number of Twitter followers an entity has is now a serious measuring stick of importance in today’s world. Companies always love seeing that their Twitter feed has more followers than their competitors and are quick to point it out to their customers; you should do this too.
Place deadlines on some of the contests and discounts you offer. This will build urgency with regard to your site and get more people to give attention to what you are doing. They will share the social media links with their friends and increase exposure to your brand or business.
Post videos of interviews
Post videos of interviews with experts or influential individuals in your niche on YouTube. Not only will you be providing interesting content, but those in your niche also may look at you as an authority. This authenticity only helps you sell your products and services within your niche.
Follow them back
If someone follows you on Twitter, follow them back. Most Twitter users expect this courtesy. It shows that you respect your customers as well as letting them know you don’t feel more important than them. New followers can be acknowledged with both a follow-back and a tweet; this will increase your chances of retaining followers.
Try to obtain a Twitter handle that is very close to your business name or brand name. Avoid handles like Jane7592 because nobody will remember you. You want your name and your brand to be remembered so that consumers will look for it when they are shopping online or at the store.
Try making some lists for your social media blog. When you are trying to attract visits to your blog, you need information that can be taken in quickly by readers. The best way to do this is to compile lists that show things like the ten best places to visit or ten songs that make you move.
Headlines should be interesting and exciting. A lot of social media sites list only the headline unless a user clicks to read the entire story. The headline should be titillating enough that they feel compelled to click through to read the full post. A solid, clever headline can help you get noticed, but one that falls flat will be skipped.
While social media marketing may be relatively new, there’s still plenty of competition in all fields. This means you need to focus on quality over quantity and use the above advice to develop a unique plan. When social media marketing is used correctly, it can be responsible for building an entire empire in a short period of time.
