Online Marketing 101 – Part 7: Social Media Success

Our previous article explained why social media has changed the marketing landscape so dramatically over the past few years. Here, we reveal to you the number one thing to remember about social and what it can do for your business.

What’s The Secret?

There’s social media done well and then there’s social media done badly. Often the difference is made by one simple realisation. It is this:

1) People share things on social media because they WANT to. This is the first and only point.There are many devices dreamed up by marketers to entice customers and fans to share their information to all their friends and some of these work better than others. What you have to remember is that people need to want to share your content. Make it interesting and relevant!

The Main Players In Social Media

• Facebook
  o Pages – are for brands; businesses or celebrities
  o Profiles – are for individual people
• Twitter
• LinkedIn – primarily for business-related topics
• Google+
• Others (Instagram, Pinterest)

How Social Media Can Help Your Business

• Connect With Your Customers
  Start a conversation with your customers about your products. Allow commenting and reply to the comments. Ask questions in your posts. Request feedback. Social media is best used as a two way street, not just another advertising platform.
• Provide Relevant Content
  If you want your customers to remain engaged you need to provide relevant and interesting content. This means finding things that may be of interest to your customers (news articles, pictures or events) and sharing them. You want your page to be a place they come to for information about their interest in your industry.
• Ensure you focus on those platforms you can keep going
  It’s not possible to keep every platform updated with relevant content. Most people will focus on one or two. Look into who your audience are and choose the platforms that they frequent most often.
• Branding
  Don’t forget that every sentence you say online is recorded and remembered and goes towards your brand image. Because social media is so personal and instantaneous, there have been many a celebrity or CEO caught out by updating something in the moment that was inappropriate and then spread around the internet – in the bad way.

Take precaution when using social media as part of your marketing plan. While it’s benefits can sound exciting to the uninitiated, there is a lot of work that goes into successful campaigns. Social media is a slow-burn tactic, something to build up over a long time, like reputation and a brand. Recruit in some experts for stress-free and professional social media management!

Need help with your social campaigns, Complete Cloud can show you the way.