In today’s business world, social media is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Given the fact that social media is used by millions of people around the globe on a daily basis, your business can get noticed by much more people than ever before. In order for social media to work for you, however, you do need to have an effective plan in place. Are you a business owner? If so, do you have a social media plan in place? If you don’t, then you really need to get on the ball and create one today!
Social media may be able to help get your business in front of a huge audience, but you need to have a plan in place in order for it to work for you. When it comes to social media efforts, so many business owners fail. Why? – Because they haven’t developed a structure for it, or committed to it. When they don’t see immediate results, or the objective ends up being harder to attain than they initially thought it would be, their social media efforts fall by the wayside and they give up.
By developing an organized, well thought out social media plan, you can help to boost the results of your marketing efforts. Here are some handy tips that will help you establish a successful plan for your social media efforts.
Commit Yourself
Before you begin building a social media plan, you want to make sure that you commit yourself. It can take a while to establish a social media presence, and in the beginning, things can move pretty slowly. A lot of business owners are under the impression that their list of followers or subscribers is going to grow in the blink of an eye. If you aren’t aware that it can take a while to actually see the results that you are looking for, you’ll likely lose interest and stop posting and interacting with your social media accounts. If you do that, it’s guaranteed that you aren’t going to see any results from social media marketing.
Make sure you are committed to your social media efforts before you even get started.
Find the Right Fit
If you are just getting started with using social media for your business, find out if a fanbase that fits your business already exists. Take the time do some research. Are there a lot of people discussing products and services that relate to your business? Are there already a bunch of mentions about your business on Twitter? Does your business have reviews on Yelp? While it is important that you establish your presence on social media giants, do take the time to set yourself up where you already have visibility.
Plan a Schedule for Engagement
Once you know what social media platforms you are going to hone in on, you want to figure out the ways in which you are going to interact with your audience, and how frequently you are going to engage with them. Not interacting often enough is one of the primary reasons why businesses fail when it comes to their social media efforts. The businesses that are the most successful with social media know how important it is to engage on a regular basis.
Creating posts and responding to comments should be a daily practice. It’s something that has to be done. You have to start the conversation with your targeted audience, and perhaps even more important, when they reach out to you, you have to be sure that you are ready to respond.
Keep in mind that while posting and responding consistently is important, the time table for doing so is specific to the platform that you are using. For example, things on Twitter tend to move super fast, so a tweet can become irrelevant in an hour or so; however, on Facebook, status updates have longer staying power, so they can be relevant for several hours.
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Develop Exceptional Content
The people you are connected with on social media aren’t looking for advertisements; they want to have meaningful conversations. They don’t want to hear about how great your company is, because they already know that; that’s why they are following you. They also don’t want stats and statistics related to your sales. Instead, what they want is news and information related to your industry.
Run Promotions and Contests
A great way to get your followers excited and keep them coming back for more is by running promotions and contests. They also help to get your business out in front of even more people. You don’t have to run them all the time, but you should consider doing them every once in a while. Giveaways, discounted offers, free shipping and the like are all excellent ways to get people talking about your brand and spread the news about your company.
Expand Your Horizons
All social media plans have to start out pretty much the same way: with a commitment and a keen focus on the basics, such as content, regularly posting and interaction. However, once you establish your presence and you have engaged your users, you can really start to experiment. You might want to try installing some custom apps on your Facebook pag, for example, or posting videos on YouTube. You’ll keep your followers engaged and further establish your authority.
Delegate Responsbilities
Once you’ve established yourself on social media, trying to do it all is going to be difficult. At this point, you are going to want to delegate tasks accordingly so that you can ensure your social media plan is living up to its expectations and that you continue on with your success.
