Social media marketing is very important in today’s day and age. If your company decides to take the social media plunge, you now have the job of creating a social media campaign. Chances are you’ve never formulated a social media strategy for your company before. Your business may have a Facebook and Twitter account that it occasionally posts on with an article or promotion, but that’s about the extent of it. Nowadays you hear how your company needs to be present on social media, but you aren’t seeing the results that are everyone keeps claiming are possible.
Building a Social Media Campaign
Effectively posting on social media requires a well-thought-out strategy that must be continually tweaked and re-implemented. The occasional posting about company news or promotions doesn’t cut it.
A big question is how to start a social media campaign strategy. There are so many social media channels out there, which ones should you post on? What kind of content should you post to get the most engagement? Should you pay to promote your posts? Do you know where to look to see how well everything is performing?
Before you get overwhelmed, here is a guide to get you started on the right path of a successful social media campaign strategy for your business:
Guide for Starting Your NJ Social Media Campaign
- Set Goals and Objectives. Before you start a campaign in any business, you need to have goals and objectives in place to assess progress and know whether you’ve achieved success. A social media campaign strategy is no different. If you don’t have any goals or objectives written out, you won’t know how your campaign is performing. These provide the foundation of your blueprint for your strategy. Every subsequent course of action within the strategy is aimed at meeting or exceeding these goals and objectives. With goals and objectives, you can see when and where your social media campaign is going and make immediate changes to put it back on course. The S.M.A.R.T method is a good starting point when creating goals. According to this method, the goals and objectives are to be specific (S), measurable (M), attainable (A), relevant (R) and time-bound (T).
- Do a Social Media Self-Audit. After creating the goals and objectives for your social media campaign, you should look at where your current strategy stands. What social media platforms is your company currently posting on? What kind of material is being posted? How much or little engagement is there? When do you post? How often do you post? It helps to create a spreadsheet to document your answers to those questions. Use the spreadsheet and compare it against your strategy’s goals and objectives. Are there things you’re already doing well? What needs changing in order for your goals and objective need to be met? Besides looking at the health of your current social media channels, be sure to completely fill out your company’s social media profiles, with a clear, identifiable picture and keywords. Completed social media profiles make your brand easier to find by consumers and it adds to your brand’s credibility and authority.
- Do Research. Your company could be posting on the wrong social media channels, or posting the wrong type of content, or is currently not on another social network it could leverage for increased attention. Maybe your posts are going out at the wrong time. It can be tempting to be on as many social media networks as possible. The downside of this is that you will wear yourself out, waste valuable time, and produce hurried, boring, bulk postings. You need to do some research on your industry, your desired audience, and even your competitors. Where are your ideal audience members most active? When are they most likely to engage? What interests them and what messaging catches their attention? There are multiple social networks that allow you to gain insights into these questions. Facebook, for example allows users to target specific audiences, see the interactions on their posts, the best and worst time for post engagement as well as demographics of those that interact with the posts. Observing what your competitors are doing and how well they’re faring with their social media campaign can give you tips and tricks on what to try out and what to avoid when formulating and implementing your social media campaign.
- Create Quality Content. You can be on every social media network and still not get the engagement and conversions you’re looking for because your content is bland, useless and impersonal. You won’t know what to write without first identifying your ideal audience and social media networks. When coming up with content, you want to not only catch people’s attention, but you want to make your brand stand out as an authoritative and trustworthy source of information in your industry. As you do this, it’s important to design your content to take advantage of each individual platform. Twitter, for instance, only allows for 140 characters and utilizes hashtags. Instagram, and Pinterest utilize images. Facebook utilizes text, images and videos. YouTube utilizes videos. Your content needs to match the format of the platform, be interesting, and be useful. It should not come off as impersonal or condescending. Have your content make your brand appear as a person, not an organization.
- Continued Assessment. Once you research your audience, craft your content and schedule the posts on the appropriate social networks, you may be tempted to sit back and relax. If you put a lot of time, resources and energy into a social media campaign strategy, you want to make sure the ROI is worth it. Otherwise you’re efforts will be in vain. Nobody wants to stay stuck and not grow. Just like general internet marketing, things in social media change constantly. If you post a Facebook post at 2 pm one week and get a lot of engagement can turn into an ignored post the next week. Consumers also get bored seeing the same content all the time.
Social media strategies require time and a plan. Just doing the occasional posting on a few social media channels will not result in a successful social strategy. A well-performing social media strategy for your small business begins with goals and objectives. You need to see where your current strategy is, research the best social media channels and your target customers and create high-quality, useful and interesting content.
Do You Need Help With Your Social Media Campaign?
TJB WebMedia is a leading NJ social media marketing company We work with businesses to boost sales and increase revenue. Our team of experts is eager to analyze your site and develop a customized strategy to meet your individual needs. In addition to search engine optimization, we also provide web design/development, dental SEO, law firm SEO, PPC management, reputation management services and SEO marketing. To get started, or for more information on our services, contact us now at: (732) 463-7835 or visit our website:
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