Social media is crucial for your brand’s success and everyone knows it. While a strong social media presence can double your reach, audience, leads and sales, the wrong strategy can cost you these things as well.

One wrong move and suddenly your following is decreasing, your audience are disengaged and you find yourself back to square one resulting in missed opportunities, that ultimately impacts your revenues and sales.

Creating a social media strategy is not difficult at all in theory and in practice as well if your aim to be average amongst your competitors. However, if you want to make a real change in your industry you will need to understand a lot more than just the fundamentals of social media strategy.

To use social media to its full potential, the first step is stop thinking just about Facebook page and Facebook Ads only. The opportunities are limitless and certainly go beyond a Facebook fan page.

The idea is to understand the complete media landscape and plan your strategy around that while keeping your campaign flexible to adjust any new trends.

Create Content Not Ads

The audiences do not react and respond when you are doing only hardcore selling. Facebook is full of ads and promotional content. Stop for a minute and think about the difference your ad would make among the other millions. None!

People need to know about you and who you are before they buy your product. So, it is never a good idea to start with Facebook ads when implementing a social media strategy.

Produce something that has value and ability to resonate with users emotionally. Your content should be able to insinuate feelings into the viewer’s mind and heart so they respond to it by interacting and further sharing it with their friends.

Once users know that your content is worthy and unique, they will not need any persuading into visiting your website and checking your products out.

Brand Ambassadors

Social media has recently seen a spike in influencers and their key impact on followers. People trust them and listen to them. Vital decisions in media strategy are made based on the opinions of influencers which makes them a significant force.

When you profile your target audience based on demographic, research about the influencers they follow and trust. By building a partnership with these influencers, you can make them brand ambassadors for your company.

A few mentions of your product alongside their name will result in higher reach and engagements for the content.

Influencers are not easily affordable as they are well aware of their power on people, so until you are completely sure that their ideology resonates with your brand theme, do not waste your money.

Keep looking even if it takes some time and when you find the right one, it will be worth your time and money. Businesses in hurry mostly make the mistake of making brand ambassadors say whatever they want to by offering higher rates, regardless of their personal opinions.

While this might work in short term, it backfires in long term when your contract is over and the influencers are no longer required to say what you ask them to. Today’s audience is vigilant and they pick up such details, costing your company its credibility and value.

Diverse Channels and Consistency

As I said, Facebook Ads are not the only important factor in a winnable social media strategy. Look beyond a Facebook page. Set up a Twitter account. Experiment with Snapchat. Broadcast any live events on Periscope. Use LinkedIn to connect with other businesses and professionals of industry.

Making an account on all apps and platforms is not enough. Post across all channels. If you think handling multiple channels and accounts is overwhelming, use automation softwares to be more efficient and save time.

Consistency is very important, even if you do not see an immediate elevation in your analytics. Not posting anything or just posting once in a week is never better than moving forward by having a reliable schedule to upload posts. You may not see any engagements in starting weeks or even months, but ultimately people are bound to notice and that is crucial for your success.

Active Presence

In a two-way communication world, it makes sense that when the both sending and receiving parties are actively involved. Ignoring people’s comments and opinions does not do any good to your brand.

You not only come off as standoffish but your audience also creates this image of you, where you do not care about anyone but yourself. When someone asks a question, reply to them even if you see it late or someone else has already answered.

The user asked you because they trust your answer, so give them an answer and in case it has already been answered by another user, acknowledge that their information is correct and reliable.

This is a way of letting your potential and target customers know that you care about them.

Analytics

How will you know whether you are on a right track or your strategy needs some shifting? The answer is in one word. Analytics!

Many businesses ignore analytics by just looking at the results in front of their face in form of comments, shares, retweets, reposts etc.

Do not make that mistake. Many apps like Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn and others provide their own analytics so you can see the progress of your account for that network only.

However, if you are using a social media channel that does not have its own analytics app or option, you can always rely on third party softwares and tools like TabFu that will provide your analytics in one dashboard.

In conclusion, it is likely that different tactics work for different brands in different ways. Nevertheless, the above five tips are substantial in any campaign implementing them in your strategy can never hurt.

Follow the rules if you want to play by the book but taking risks is also vital. At the end of the day, having a meaningful deep personal connection with your customers is important to ensure their loyalty and to further your sales, leads and revenues.

Post Views: 477