Social Media Marketing
For Your Social Media Marketing, the first thing we are going to talk a little bit about how to decide which social media platforms to use for your business.
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat have become the prominent social networking tools for millions of online business owners. They’re using these channels to share hundreds of links that promote their business, products and services.
When it comes to using social media as a promotional tool that question that I get asked the most often is; “how do I decide which social media platform is best for my business when there are so many channels to choose from?” This mainly depends on the nature of your business, your ultimate goals and which social sites your target audience uses the most.
Eventually, you’ll want to have a presence on multiple platforms, but when you’re just getting started you’ll want to focus your time and energy on one or two platforms, then branch out from there. I see so many business owners jump into social media marketing, set up profiles on every social site they can find only to find themselves overwhelmed and unable to keep up with all the daily activities required to manage them effectively.
That’s why today we are going to go over a few things you should consider when it comes to choosing which social media platforms to focus on for your business. So, grab a pen, paper and jot down some notes as we go through this part of the lesson.
Consider your main goals
Maintaining a solid social media presence takes lots of time and effort. The type of business you have will help determine your main objectives. That’s why, knowing exactly what you want to achieve with your campaign will help you choose the right platform to focus on. For instance, do you want to engage your customers and increase brand awareness? Do you want to target new leads and generate more revenue? Knowing what you want to achieve will help you in choose the best channels for your business.
*Take a minute and write down at least three things you hope to achieve with your social campaign.
Know your target audience
Now that you have a good idea of what your main goals are for your Social Media Marketing, you need to figure out who you’re trying to reach. When you know who your target audience is, it will be much easier to find out which social media sites they spend most of their time on and what type of content they respond to best.
For example, people between the ages of 18-24 hang out on sites like Instagram and Snapchat, while more mature people gravitate towards Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. If you’re not sure where your audience hangs out, look at where your competitors are posting. Find out where they invest their time and where they’re getting the most engagement.
Find out what your audience wants
After you know where your target audience hangs out take some tile to figure out what type of content they get excited about. Once you have determined what they want you can focus on creating content that you can use to connect with them. This is where paying attention to your competition will come in handy again. Keep an eye on where they are sharing content, what type of content they’re posting and what kind of response they get from their audience. For instance, if they’re posting a lot videos on YouTube and Facebook that are getting a lot of likes, shares and comments, then you can be pretty sure that those platforms will work great for your business too. But if they are spending time posting images on Pinterest and Instagram that their followers love then you’ll want to explore those channels instead.
Determine how much time you can devote to social media
As I mentioned, maintaining a solid presence on social media takes a lot of time and effort. Some platforms are more time-consuming to maintain than others so focus on the ones that you’ll feel most comfortable posting on. But, also which ones are responding to your content. If you only have an hour a day scheduled for social media, it’s a good idea to keep your reach limited to one or two networks that will make the biggest impact. This will make your job much easier.
Once you have developed a good presence on one or two sites you can then branch out to others to expand your reach even more. As you become more successful you can consider outsourcing your social media management so that you can have a strong presence on multiple channels without spending all your time posting and responding yourself.
When you take the time to consider these things it will be much easier for you to decide which social media channels will help you achieve your goals and reflect your business values.
Tracking your progress
Keeping track of your social media activities is extremely important. Luckily most networks have built in analytics that will allow you to measure the results of your campaigns. Depending on which network you’re on you’ll want to track things like follower growth, likes, clicks and shares to determine if your campaigns are working. There are also outside tracking tools that you can use but when you’re just getting started the network tools should work just fine.
Priority channels
As I mentioned, your Social Media Marketing will want to have a presence on multiple networks but there is no need to jump into all of them at the same time. Think of your social presence as a tree. It starts out as a small twig and as it grows more branches will develop. With proper nurturing, it will continue to grow and expand its reach.
Remember you want to focus on one or two networks at first then add more as you grow. However, it’s a good idea to include multiple platforms in your schedule, because it will give you a timeline to follow. A good place to start is by making a list of every network you think will be a good fit for your business and analyzing their demographics. This will help narrow down your options and then you can tentatively add them to your schedule as a part of your expansion plan.
We all have a lot more to Learn about Social Media Marketing and all the different ways we can use this to improve our business. I have more tips for you, with my FREE PDF GUIDE!
“Discover 5 Ways To Elevate Your Social Media Presence” Click Here and grab a copy for free. Plus… There is a bonus eBook with a heap more help, you will also get FREE on the Download page!
That’s it for today’s Post. I hope you’ve got some helpful insights, and that you will let me know, in the comments below!
Thanks and All the Best!
Pete Bentzen
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