Run a Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign
Social media marketing is the process where a business owner, such as yourself, uses the power of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to promote your brand or products. Because traffic from social media sites is usually highly targeted, the visitors are more likely to turn into customers and buyers than visitors who find your site via a search engine query. Another important benefit of traffic from social media is that it is essentially free or relatively low cost compared to other forms of traffic generation. However, social media marketing is a time consuming and very involved effort that is not appropriate for everyone. This form of marketing requires a good deal of involvement, both in terms of keeping up with all the latest trends and in maintaining ongoing relationships with customers and fans. Social media invites a two-way conversation between the poster of the information and the reader. If the business owner ignores the second part of the equation, then the marketing effort is most likely doomed to fail. In order to execute a successful social media marketing campaign, the business owner should review this list of traits that define a successful campaign.
Steps
- What does your audience want? If you're not sure, carry out a survey on existing and/or possible consumers to learn about what they would look for from your company.You can structure your promotional activities around your findings.
- Post regular, useful or entertaining updates. The more often you share interesting or informative content with your fans and followers, the more often you will catch their attention. While to many it may seem counterproductive to spend your time finding an article or blog post that your fans would like and then sharing it, it actually builds credibility and authority in the eyes of your readers. Over time, your brand or website will become known as something to trust in the mind of your readers. When it comes time for them to make purchasing decisions, the value of that trust cannot be overstated.
- Build relationships. As mentioned above, creating relationships with your customers is one of the parts of social media marketing that gives it so much power. You can build these relationships by posting updates that users actually want to read, not just a never ending stream of sales pitches. Use your updates to inform, entertain and address the needs of your customers. Open up a two-way conversation with them via the comments sections and message boards that many social media sites include. These relationships build credibility and help keep your company in the mind of the reader.
- Forget about going viral. Viral content is a posting or piece of information that someone has created that is shared by thousands, if not millions, of people across the Internet. This posting will often find itself on dozens of different sites. Some even make their way onto television news, and they will more than likely spawn many parodies and response postings. A piece of viral content can be a gold mine, albeit a short lived one, for the poster. However, determining whether or not something will go viral is like trying to write on water. Millions of dollars have been wasted by companies both big and small trying to create something that will go viral. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, that piece of content that some marketing team thought would be viral wound up being ignored completely.
- Maintain a consistent message. This is where a social media manager or the hiring of an SEO services company comes in really handy. When you are posting information across several different sites, it is easy for the message you are trying to convey to become garbled as you try to tailor that message for a variety of media and audiences. The voice you choose for Facebook will not work on Reddit or Tumblr, and many business owners do not have the experience or the time to learn the local lingo of all the various social media outlets. If you do not have the budget for an SEO services company, then it is best to limit yourself to the social media sites that you are comfortable writing for. Many website communities are rude, if not outright hostile, to someone who shows up and obviously has no interest in the site other than posting their own promotional material.
- Participate in the community. As stated above, social media sites are usually tightly knit communities, particularly sites like Tumblr, Reddit and Digg. The users of these sites can spot marketers a mile away, usually because the marketer does nothing more on the site than post information about various products. In order to gain trust (and followers) within one of these communities, you must be willing to participate as well. This is usually done in the form of commenting on the postings of others and the sharing or re-sharing of posts that have absolutely nothing to do with marketing or consumerism. If you choose to hire an SEO services company, it will have a person or a team of people who are dedicated to maintaining community involvement on your behalf.
- Be careful of what you post. In the rush to get new postings out the door, it is often tempting to skip editing, proofreading and screening of the content. However, this is a very dangerous game. Unfiltered content has been the downfall of many companies trying to establish a social media presence, and some companies have even lost their entire business because they allowed someone to post rude or demeaning comments directed at unhappy customers. Even a simple spelling error can turn an innocent post into a racial slur, so it is imperative that you screen, edit and proofread all content before posting it.
- Attract the public's attention. Bonuses, leaflets, etc.
- Sales promotion in fact is the process of self-promotion: bold, careful. Can capture every word meaning, and that contains "only the fittest can be invincible".
- Alongside social media, there are other ways to promote your business on the Internet. If your company has a website, highlight your promotions on your website's main page. Go as far as to create a web page about your promotion, and then create a link that you can place on other websites. Collect email addresses from your customers and send them your promotional offers. Other than a few moments of your time, this is a great way to advertise without spending a cent.
- Raise awareness inside and outside of the Internet. Use a variety of promotions to strengthen people's interest, such as drawings, coupons and discounts. Advertising in the real world will help if you can afford it within your budget!
- Make sure that you personalize your social media pages. Especially if you are focused on a specific product or service. Remember that you will be posting information, messages and communicating to your audience, customers are fond of social media pages that shows how hands-on you are about this aspect of your business because it gives them the impression you can handle them in the same manner. It is not always advisable to copy someone else's social media strategy, but it would be better if you do it your own way by taking ownership and personalizing your website, it will be enable you to engage in conversation with potential customers.
Tips
- By using these social media marketing ideas and tips, you are now armed with the basic information you need to run a successful campaign. However, this is a lot of work for one person, particularly a busy business owner, to try to do alone. If the workload is overwhelming, then consider hiring an SEO services company to take on some, if not all, of the work for you.
Warnings
- Do not underestimate the power of social media, it can be an effective tool to promote your product, but it may also be damaging to your brand if not properly used. These are the things that you need to avoid when utilizing social media:
- Vaguebooking - Stop beating around the bush just to get attention, be clear and concise about your post. A lot of people finds vaguebooking very annoying. You don't want to end up on potential customer's spam or junk folder right? Be creative and relevant.
- Hijacking Hashtag - Remember when Kenneth Cole hijacked the #Cairo hashtag to promote his new spring collection, it was totally unrelated as people were dying during that time and he used the hashtag to get his tweets out there more frequently.
- Buying follower and likes - Surely paying for advertising may generate traffics or leads to your website, but it doesn't mean that you have to buy followers on tweeter and likes on Facebook. This method does not provide you quality audiences, they really would not care whatever you post, there will be no engagement and eventually they will diminish sooner than you expected.
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