Social media is a delicate art that requires a balance of soft selling and short bursts of informational shares. Here are four lessons you wished you would have heard about sooner.
Social media is one of the most effective techniques for marketing directly to consumers. Incorporating social media marketing campaigns into your marketing efforts is a sure way to grow your business and engage with your customers. There are several techniques and practices used by companies that chose to use social media platforms as key avenues for interacting with customers in more relaxed and personal ways. As you embark on using social media to grow your business or build your brand’s awareness consider these four lessons that you just may have had to learn the hard way.
Social Media is One Tough Nut to Crack
Most businesses implement a social media campaign and expect instant results. They hire a social media professional to set up their profiles and create relevant and engaging posts for each. The process is redundant and consuming at times yet initially rarely seems to produce any tangible results. The most important aspect of successfully utilizing social media platforms is patience and consistency.
Know that social media success takes time and energy. You will need to carve out time to create original yet relevant posts that are engaging and shareable while maintaining a sense of traction and zeal. Avoid disappearing for extended periods of time. Interact with your audience on a regular basis to show you are around and easily accessible. Do not lose heart if your social media following seems to barely garner attention or followers. Stick to it and remember that mastering social media is not easy and requires energy, persistence, and patience.
Social Media Can Produce Tangible Results
It used to be that business owners would dump tons of money into building a Facebook or Twitter following without really knowing why. Nowadays social media success is very measurable. You will soon learn that if your posts are not getting shared and yet are reaching many personas in your audience that you need to tweak things for better results. By utilizing social media management platforms such as Buffer or HootSuite you will be able to determine which posts engaged your audience the most, which did not, and when your audience is the most active – thus post new updates accordingly.
Often upon implementing a social media campaign businesses are unsure of how to measure tangible results; however, with a firm and unique marketing strategy in place you will be able to identify how to reach certain objectives that have been outlined in your strategy.
Social Media Should Be Used to Achieve Select Goals
Social media is a powerful tool that can deliver very real results. Whether you desire to increase website traffic by 20 percent or lead your followers and customers into select sales funnels keep in mind that your social media campaign should be set up to achieve true goals that help you grow your business and deliver positive return on investment.
Avoid creating a blanket approach to your social media efforts and rather target a particular action to achieve particular goals. Creating landing pages, developing drip emails, or detailing your visitor’s experiences will prove worthwhile for any social media campaign.
Social Media Means You Must Be Social
The biggest downfall to launching any social media campaign is to remember to be social. So many companies begin social media with posts about themselves and what their company has to offer. Learning and understanding that social media is not about your business but rather about your customers and their needs is necessary for any type of success.
The key to social media is to be social. Think of meeting people in real life. Do you only talk about yourself? Do you share advice without being asked a particular questions? How do you introduce yourself? What are your most successful networking tactics? Consider these questions and more as you journey through social media and remember to keep things light, easy flowing, and conversational. We have found that this is easier said than done for most businesses and so we encourage you to read some of our other social media related posts to ensure your social media efforts are launched in the right direction.
Social media is not for the faint of heart. It requires dedication, persistence, and patience. Through skill and planning you can build a social media following that helps establish you in your niche and increase your brand awareness. As you branch out and experiment with your social media efforts recall these lessons and try to avoid the pitfalls that each of them cause.
Undertake every social media effort with patience and longevity as your backbone and utilize social media management tools to help you measure and track your goals and campaign results. But most importantly be social and social media will be good for your business
