Social media strategies
As companies focus on effectively
leveraging social media platforms, there are a few critical things to
keep in mind. Here are the four strategies that have achieved superior
results:
1. Develop a comprehensive social media strategy.
While Facebook And Twitter are the most used social media platforms, a
comprehensive social media strategy should incorporate additional social
media platforms where customers, prospects, employees and candidates
could be talking about the company. Some examples include:
- Business networking and hiring platforms such as Linkedin
- Industry-specific platforms, e.g. travel forums, automotive message boards
- Specialty multimedia sharing sites such as YouTube and Pinterest
- Country-specific platforms such as Renren.com
To
be able to know which social media platforms to incorporate as part of
its social media strategy, a company needs to systematically track top
platforms where the company and its brands are being discussed.
2. Establish a two-way communication model.
Companies who use social media just to disseminate information to
customers may not see high returns from social media usage. Instead,
companies who use social media platforms as a two-way communication
medium tend to have a more successful social media approach. There are
several tactics that can be used to establish two-way communication,
including:
- Posting questions and surveys related to the company as well as general topics of interests
- Getting
customers, prospects, employees, and candidates to share their queries
and experiences related to the company and its products, as well as
themes related to the company’s business (e.g., best travel stories).
This can even extend to the sharing of photos and videos
- Set
up dedicated customer service pages, tabs, or handles, as well as
dedicated candidate query pages, with a promise of high responsiveness
Doing
this requires constant focus on generating new ideas and content for
social media, as well as the ability to post content and responses in a
highly efficient and streamlined manner.
3. Retain control of content being posted on behalf of the company.
Some companies tend to outsource their social media asset management to
their advertising partners. In such situations, however, companies
should make sure they retain control of and full editorial rights to
what is being posted on their behalf. Companies can do this by putting
in placed automated approval workflows and escalation processes between
their partners and internal teams.
4. Set targets and measure performance.
It is critical for companies embarking on social media initiatives to
set targets, measure performance against those targets, and compare
their performance against competitors. What is measured gets improved.
Some of the key performance indicators to track include:
- Share of social media conversations for the company/brand vis-à-vis competitors
- Positive and negative sentiment for the company/brand vis-à-vis competitors
- Monthly addition in number of social media followers
- Average
time taken to respond to comments by social media users by type of
comment (e.g. positive feedback, customer service issue)
- Percent of résumés being sourced via social media, and percent of positions being closed through social media
Concentrate on Increasing Daily Updates
Ensuring that your posts and updates have a good chance to be seen by
your target audience is an integral part of a content strategy.
Leo Widrich offers 3 key tactics:
- Frequency: Post around 5-10 times a day on Twitter and 1-4 times a day on Facebook for optimal outcome.
- Timing: Almost all research studies highlight the main work hours from 8 am to 8 pm as good times to tweet and post to Facebook.
- Multiple sites: Post to multiple social sites, in addition to your own blog or website.
Social media has made it possible for you to share information about
your business in a multitude of ways. Photos can show your serious,
productive, silly, creative, successful and charitable sides—but above
all,
be sure to expose your human side.
Present Your Human Side With Photos
Photos and other types of visual content are highly shareable on social networks.
Pam Moore suggests that when you
post photos of your team, it helps to
show your business as a human brand and
build relationships with your community.
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Create custom links for better tracking and measuring. By
embedding a unique link in your posts and tweets, you can more easily
see what type of content your audience is likely to click on, signifying
better engagement.
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Keep it simple and visual. Make sure you have a strong
image to go with your posts, and report on which images get the most
shares. Research shows that tweets using images get retweeted a lot more
often than others.
Always use images on Twitter – Use images to your advantage, as they get better engagement than tweets that only has text.
1. Share Images on Twitter: Increase Retweets by 150%
Share Content More Than OnceWe often share our blog posts multiple times on social networks, for a
few difference reasons. Some of the biggest benefits we get are more
traffic, reaching people in different time zones and sharing our content
with people who’ve followed us since we last posted it.
Set Up Google Authorship
Google Authorship is not just the photo and byline that appears on search results pages, thought that’s a large part of it.
1. Post regularly – The more your audience hears from you, the more trust you’ll be able to build.
2. Deliver relevant content – ensure that what your audience hears (and sees) is interesting and fits seamlessly with your brand identity.
3. Post unique content – Try
not to curate too much of your social media content, as most likely
your target audience has seen it before. If you want to stand out on
social media, your content needs to be unique to your brand.
4. Share and retweet – a great way to widen your audience and show that you know what’s relevant.
5. Don’t discount the “smaller” social networks – Test out everything, which includes Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, etc. You might be surprised at the results!
Be a helper – Respond
on Twitter or Facebook when you have legitimate answers to questions,
and never follow up with calls to action or sales language. Be genuine
about wanting to help.
11. Limit tweets to 100 characters – this provides extra characters for people to share your tweets with comments or @tags.
12. Stop fishing for likes and shares – Try
engaging your audience in ways that encourage conversations and
interactions. If people find what you post interesting, they will share.
13. Mix it up with content formats – Make
sure that your social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)
are well-branded, and don’t be afraid to use different formats.
14. Host live hangouts – This makes the social media experience more real. Both Google Hangouts and live Twitter events are great tools to use.
15. Make strategic use of #hashtags in all relevant social media platforms – whatever
you do, please don’t make up hashtags as you write your posts.
Thoroughly research trending hashtags. There will be times when you can
blaze your own trail, but if you want to broaden your reach, you need to
follow existing trends.
16. Get good at one thing at a time –
try not to establish several different social media channels and
attempt to keep up with them all. It’s a good way to burn out fast.
Master one social media platform, and then move on to the next.
17. Automate whatever you can – Always
maintain a fresh flow of content. Don’t be afraid to use automation
tools to schedule your posts and keep your content organized.
18. Know what your competitors are posting – Look for patterns in your competitors’ content, and test out similar material of your own.
19. Spend money on video – Every niche can benefit from videos as they get better engagement on social media.
20. Hold contests and giveaways – Few
things churn up the kind of buzz that’s created by giving away free
stuff, so consider some friendly competition among your followers.
21. Use your email list to promote your social media content – it’s a great way to drive targeted traffic!
22. Invest in custom graphics – Stock photos work, however, images unique to your brand almost always gets more engagement.
23. Encourage employee engagement on your channels – The people who work for you are among your best endorsers. Enlist their help in sharing your content on their personal channels.
Encourage conversation by asking people questions.
Keep it brief. Save the long copy for your blog page.
Post photos and videos to your timeline. Research suggests these are the most shared types of content.
Timing is everything. Test different times of day to find out when your fans are most active.
Promote your blog content using relevant, eye-catching images.
Everyone loves an inspirational quote. They are perhaps
overused, but they still get lots of love on Pinterest. Just try to
make them at least slightly relevant to your industry.
SOURCES
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/profit/big-ideas/042213-mchaturvedi-1937903.html
https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-metrics-improve/
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-to-create-a-strong-social-media-content-strategy/
http://www.prnewsonline.com/water-cooler/2015/03/30/7-tips-for-how-to-maximize-pr-measurement-via-social-media/
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/9-best-from-buffer/
Read
more at
http://www.business2community.com/social-media/top-25-social-media-marketing-tips-experts-01356578
