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<\/p>\nIn today\u2019s post we have outlined a few things to consider when starting a social media campaign. We hope that this post will help you to consider some important areas you may have overlooked, which will actually help you spend your time productively, increasing your bottom line.<\/p>\n
Enjoy!<\/p>\n
When you are looking to start using social media to promote your brand, time should be spent on creating a social media strategy rather than just posting here and there, at random.<\/p>\n
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A strategy will allow you to spend your time effectively, and help you to engage with a maximum audience within your allocated \u2018social media\u2019 time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are creating a social media plan, make sure you align it with your overall marketing strategy.\u201d\u00a0Suggests Evan at Hootsuite.<\/span><\/p>\n You should determine your goals and aims before you start. What are you looking to achieve through social media? This will help you to analyse, down the line, how successful your strategy is working and whether you should change it.<\/p>\n Once you know your aims you can alter your strategy to maximise your success, meaning your time is spent more effectively. It may also happen, that your audience is more responsive through different forms of social media; again, if this is the case, transform your strategy to reflect this.<\/p>\n It may be that not all social media platforms are important for you. Figuring out which platforms your customers use is a good idea and depends very much on your niche.<\/p>\n Spend your time on the proven areas which work, you only want to spend your time on those areas where it is worthwhile and beneficial to your business. If you don\u2019t know which forms of social media are likely to be successful, do your research and then trial it. And once you figure out what works you can adapt accordingly.<\/p>\n Whatever your aims are, make sure to determine how the strategy will benefit your bottom line. If it doesn\u2019t benefit your bottom line then your strategy needs to be altered. The best way to do this is to determine, from the outset, some business goals and targets.<\/p>\n For instance, if your social media goal is to get more traffic to your blog, do you have a plan for how that will impact your business\u2019 success?<\/p>\n Sam over at Hootsuite suggests\u00a0using the rule of thirds\u00a0for your social content creation, which essentially means the following:<\/p>\n Most businesses focus too much on self-promotion and not enough on sharing. Unfortunately today\u2019s customers are savvy and will actively avoid businesses who are selfish or don\u2019t have an approachable personality.<\/p>\n Sharing ideas, or stories, from industry leaders and similar businesses shows that you understand your market and your audience, and ultimately, you are putting the buyer\u2019s needs first.<\/p>\n Individual interaction, especially for many online businesses will show your users that you\u2019re more than just a computer! You\u2019re actually a real person at a screen, responding to each interaction, personally; and many of these interactions won\u2019t be seen as a sales pitch \u2013 a huge bonus!<\/p>\n Some businesses may be deterred by the idea of interacting with people so often, for the reasons of getting trolled so we do encourage careful decision-making when you are interacting at this point \u2013 it may be worth doing a quick scan of the user\u2019s profile first.<\/p>\n Something to consider when deciphering a social media strategy is organisation of your activity \u2013 inactivity doesn\u2019t deliver the right message to your audience\u2026<\/p>\n If you haven\u2019t got the time to keep all of your social media regularly updated, as mentioned above, it isn\u2019t essential for you to have a presence on all outlets. Just sticking to those which work best for you will have a greater impact on your brand, and bottom line.<\/p>\n A social media activity calendar is a useful tool. Having a plan will help to ensure that the activity ties in with your overall marketing plan, rather than rushing to put something together as you realise you haven\u2019t been active in a while.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve discussed analysing how well your social media activity is doing and whether it is actually contributing to your previously determined goals. Depending on your objectives, there are a number of routes you can take to review the stats.<\/p>\n Take the time to analyse the traffic coming to your site from social media (using Analytics ideally).<\/p>\n If your campaign is being successful, figure out why, what is working and what could you do better? If it\u2019s not working, try to figure out why, and refine.<\/p>\n Another indicator of your success will of course be how many followers you have, how many likes etc\u2026 this is probably pretty self-explanatory but what you should do is compare your stats now to your stats when you started. Have you achieved the desired results?<\/p>\n It is also a good idea to track things like mentions, interactions etc\u2026 Gaining more followers is nice, but if you are not increasing your interactions, you may be building an inactive audience, and ultimately that is not going to help to grow your business.<\/p>\n If you are about to embark on a social media campaign, be sure to think about the overall strategy and what you want to achieve from the strategy. It is important to have a plan from the outset as it will help you save time and it will also help to benefit your bottom line \u2013 the main thing any business will be aiming to achieve from a marketing campaign.<\/p>\nDecide what do you want to achieve<\/h2>\n
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Spend your time wisely<\/h2>\n
Focus your time in the places where your customers actually hang out!<\/div>\nUse the rule of thirds for content creation<\/h2>\n
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Avoid leaving social accounts inactive<\/h2>\n
Having abandonned, inactive social media accounts is worse for your brand than not having any accounts at all!<\/div>\nTrack your activity and understand the results<\/h2>\n
Analyse traffic produced by social media activity<\/h3>\n
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Track followers, interactions etc\u2026<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n