Strategy Must Drive Your Social Media Marketing
When it comes to your business, you must have a strategy for your social media marketing efforts. If you don’t have a strategy in place, you will not to really make good progress. At least not the progress that you will make if you do have the strategy working for you.
The purpose of your social media marketing strategy
Your social media strategy serves as a guide that you can follow in order to get from Point A to Point B. It allows you to stay on the correct path for your business and it helps you to increase your traffic with top-quality target audience members. If your business does not have a social media marketing strategy means that you will not be in control of the direction that you follow and exactly where you are going to end up. It may mean that you will be all over the place and you will have the possibility of never reaching your goals (at least, not all of them). As daunting as social media may be to you, it is definitely important enough to leverage because it will make your business become more successful.
Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
As you are creating and working your social media marketing strategy, it is important that you feel confident about the idea that it is really making a positive change to your business. Your strategy is very important in such a situation and it is essential that you know exactly what you are doing and how you are going to go about accomplishing what you set out to do. If you choose to delegate your business’s social media activities to someone else, if is very important that you choose that person very carefully and very wisely.
Actually creating the social media marketing strategy
Your business’s social media marketing strategy is very important and not only do you need one in place but you also have to make sure that your strategy is well thought out and effective. Part of what you must include in your social media marketing strategy is a specific approach.
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First of all, it is critical that you establish your objective(s) before you do anything else. Without objectives, you will have a very difficult time of getting where you need to be. If you try to think of developing your strategy as something fun and interesting, it will not become a “task” but, rather, will become a pleasurable activity. You will see that it will go smoothly and easily if you use that approach.
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Aligning your social media marketing strategy with our objectives is an extremely important second step. You must make sure that you have an established connection between the two. This all ties into getting from Point A to Point B. Without the alignment, you will not make progress. There are many different social media marketing objectives that you can focus your business on. Some of the more productive ones are:
- Generating new leads.
- Dramatically increasing the number of people who opt in to your newsletter or other offerings.
- Promoting a particular event.
- Attracting more traffic to your landing page.
- Promoting your new offerings.
- Paying close attention to analytics so that you can understand clearly how your business is progressing.
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Giving credit where credit is due. It is very important to acknowledge your fans and followers who have been nice enough to support your efforts and to pass on the word to other people they know and trust. Express in some way how much you appreciate what they are doing for you and your business. Some of the analytics that you should pay attention to are the number of conversions you have made, how much revenue you have generated through those conversions, and the total amount of money that you have earned through your social media marketing efforts.
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Figuring out how to define success. Being able to define and measure success is extremely important when it comes to your social media marketing strategy. There are several ways that you can measure that, including:
- Stepping up the number of conversions that you have been able to make.
- Multiplying the number of retweets on Twitter that have occurred.
- Increasing the number of new visitors, time spent on your business’s website, and the number of times that visitors viewed your page.
Conclusion
The victories that your business experiences should be closely linked to your social media marketing activities and tracked through the analytics tools. It is critical that you understand that your social media efforts are tied closely to your business’s success. If you wish to succeed professionally, you have no choice but to be as active on social media as you can. Remember to be consistent, persistent, and discrete in your social media marketing efforts. It will be worth the effort in the long run. Whatever you do in business, make sure that your efforts bring forth results that work for you.
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Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Writers World
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
YES, social media is a huge plus for me and my projects. Two months ago I launched a project called Prayer Ties, Letters and Drawings to the Trail of Tears. My idea was to UP awareness of Native American History around the world in classrooms. The noted items have been arriving from around the world. The Prayer Ties (call them Memorial Flags, if you prefer) will be hung this month on a major Cherokee route coming through my property that was used for Cherokee leaving the SE as they walked to present day Oklahoma in 1837. In 1838, other Cherokee were forced to walk to Oklahoma and 4,000 died along the way. Cherokee, I was the first person in the modern world to walk the Trail, and Random House nominated my book about the trek, Walking the Trail, for a Pulitzer Prize. I have since dedicated much of my life to informing the world about the Cherokee, having lectured at schools across the USA, Africa, Europe, and Asia.
By Jerry Ellis Tanager Tds.Net
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Writum
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
I would have to say yes overall. A good-sized chunk of my business is maintaining and adding content to my various niche sites. After posting a new article, I always promote it across various social media platforms and track how much traffic it gets, and from where. Sometimes content that I expect to be a hit is a dud and sometimes when I suspect a dud (too focused, not bad writing) it turns out to be a hit. One thing is certain, just out of the gate, articles are more dependent on Google’s whims. Once they are a bit older, they can swim on their own.
By Kelly Smith
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Marketing Communication
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
In some way or the other yes It does , It depends on your business experiences & the social media contents that may touch any faces of your business – your work experiences makes it more close or far a way – that much will keep you in touch with social media .
By majdi alsayed
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: PeopleCount Social Media
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
All very true particularly “..If you wish to succeed professionally, you have no choice but to be as active on social media as you can…” however you MUST have an appropriate integrated strategy for your social media or you are setting yourself up to fail..!
By Barrington Gibbins
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: PeopleCount Social Media
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
I agree with Michael that an effective Social Media strategy, where appropriate, is now a critical element for most businesses and if correctly implemented should prove a direct and measurable contribution to brand building, lead generation and sales. I would be interested to understand more on the reverse position suggested by Bill that it is “…probably the least important from a sales standpoint”, clearly assuming the other key elements are already in place.
By Barrington Gibbins
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: PeopleCount Social Media
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
Why?
Why is it “critical that you understand that your social media efforts are tied closely to your business’s success.” It’s just one leg of the platform, and probably the least important from a sales standpoint. Your article just repeats the assertion without a shred of proof. In my experience Social Media is important in an additive manner, but there are far more business-critical elements that need to be in place to have a successful business
By Bill Babcock
Bill, thank you for your comment.
Regarding the critical nature of social media efforts, It is one of the critical efforts, not the only critical effort. By saying ‘critical’ it doesn’t mean that it is #1.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: PeopleCount Social Media
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
“Critical” to me means that a system can’t function without that element, which a few thousand years of commerce prior to social media would seem to refute. Beyond that, many companies now focusing on social media are ignoring or sub-optimizing important additional channels, efficiency improvements like globally distributed fulfillment, and emerging mobile commerce elements. Fixing the way customers finish a transaction (or don’t, in most cases) on a mobile device is likely to yield a lot more revenue and profit than thousands of Facebook likes. Even if a company has a great social marketing effort underway, if they can’t convert a cold, barely qualified, long timeframe lead into an eventual sale then their effort is unlikely to produce anything useful, because that’s the most common characteristic of a SM lead.
By Bill Babcock
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: PeopleCount Social Media
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
I can see the benefits in both arguements, we recently developed a social media strategy for a customer that both increased the brand awareness of the company and generated leads. However the sales process was not ready for the influx of leads. Would it be safe to say that sales and marketing are intrinsically linked to achieve the best results for a business?
By Paul Friend
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: PeopleCount Social Media
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
No. Never going to happen, and it shouldn’t. First of all, the sales force probably isn’t inundated with your leads, they probably hate them. If you haven’t established at least a basic BANT criteria then the leads are a waste of time for them, and they’ll rightfully ignore them. Realistically, marketing works for sales, but sales cannot direct marketing, because what they want marketing to do is impossible, and salespeople don’t care about process, they care about transactions–or they should.
By Bill Babcock
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Step Into The Spotlight!
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
Social media has exceeded all of my expectations.
By George Anderson, MSW, BCD, CEAP
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Small Business & Independent Consultant Network
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
Jonathan: Social media and all other forms of marketing is just a work in progress. Sometimes it works and sometimes it don’t. All you have to do is keep at it and keep consistent. Hit your head on the wall often enough and the bricks will come loose.
By Peter Lawson
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Consulting Success
Discussion: Does social media contribute to your strategy the way that you expect?
Good general blogpost. It could’ve been summarized as follows:
Strategy = I think
Tactics = I do
Strategy = Analysis, planning, ideation
Tactics = Mechanisms, activities, deployment
Strategy – tactics = Einstein’s brain in a jar
Tactics – strategy = Einstein without a brain at all
Strategy + tactics = Growth
By Guido Picus