Wouldn’t it be nice if a handful of tweets, or a single well-timed Facebook post, doubled, or even tripled, your number of followers, website traffic and conversion rates? Life would be so much easier. Imagine the time you could spend binge watching Netflix, petting cats and frolicking in fields of flowers instead of plotting out your social media strategy. Unfortunately, this is not how social media works (though we’ll keep on dreaming).
The importance of social media is undeniable and the benefits - engaging with customers, increasing brand awareness and solidifying your brand identity - are numerous. Now this doesn’t mean you have to be on Twitter 24/7 or target every single social platform to run a successful social media campaign. What it does mean is that you shouldn’t rush into social media without developing a strategic roadmap to achieve your goals.
Creating a killer social media presence doesn’t happen overnight. A successful social media strategy requires a considerable amount of time, resources and research, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a painful, drawn-out process. To make this process as painless as possible, we’ve compiled a list of 3 tips for creating a killer social media strategy. Feel free to pet your cats while reading.
How do you build a social media presence?
1) Customize your posts
It’s easy to create one social media post and push it out to all of your social media channels, but it’s not as effective. Your customers hang out on multiple social platforms, and they have certain expectations depending on the specific social platform. This is why you should avoid sharing the same post for all of your social media accounts. It’s repetitive and, frankly, boring.
Instead, consider the characteristics and desires of the specific social platform’s users. You should create your content with the target audience in mind. Every social channel attracts a different audience. Visitors to LinkedIn are most likely looking for blog posts and articles that are relevant to working professionals, while Facebook allows for personal discussion and generally features posts with a more conversational tone.
Also think about the length of your posts. For Twitter, brevity is key (obviously, given its character limit). You will want to tweet precise and to-the-point messages. On the other hand, Facebook and LinkedIn can be more content heavy, though try not to go overboard. When they’re rapidly flipping through their news feed, your customers may skip over lengthy posts, especially if they’re waiting in line at the grocery and have little time to spare.
2) Share relevant content
This part may involve some research, as you’ll need to take a closer look at your target audience and identify industry trends. What are their interests? What challenges do they face in their day-to-day life? And how do your products or services make their lives easier? Basically, why should they give you the time of day?
Once you have discovered your audience’s topics of interest, you can create quality content to post on social media. Sharing relevant industry content will help position you as a trustworthy source of information, and you know what that means - an increase of followers, leads and, eventually, customers! See, there is a point to this whole social media business!
3) Publish consistently
If you want to build a strong social media presence, it is absolutely critical that you post, post and then post some more. We cannot stress enough the importance of creating a solid social media marketing plan and then sticking with it. Yes, it would be amazing if you could tweet for two days and reap all the rewards, but social media is not a one and done thing.
For the best results, create a publishing schedule and detail what content will be published on a certain day and the specific communication channel. This will make your life so much easier, as you won’t be frantically writing posts last minute and cursing Twitter for their character count.
Social media might not have you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, but you can’t deny that it promises a tantalizing boost in lead generation, website traffic and conversion rates. To benefit from social media, you need to develop a clear strategy that takes into account your target audience and career objectives.
