One of the questions the majority of people ask me is: “What are the secrets of Social Media Marketing? How can my small business become successful?”. I always reply that there are lots of best practices and that the results arrive gradually.
But let’s see what those secrets are.
Truly understand what social media marketing means
I continue to highlight this point because I think it’s basic for anyone who wants to do social media marketing. So what is it? It’s any type of marketing done by using social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
The goal of Social Media Marketing is to create a community of people, called fans or followers, that follow your brand. Those people share a common interest, the fact that they liked your brand. It can be an Etsy shop, a local shop, a service.
But after this definition you truly need to understand that those platforms have been created to socialize. Therefore you need to fit into that atmosphere and try not to use these platforms as a traditional marketing channel.
DON’T
- Post promotional posts all day long. They won’t receive interaction and you won’t gain any traffic.
- Create conversations by asking questions and then leave your fans without a reply.
DO
- Post what you like, and what you find around the web that might interest your followers.
- Post your thoughts and make friendship with your fans.
Think about what to post
When you post something on Facebook, is there a strategy behind it? Don’t get scared by the word strategy, I’m not saying you have to open Power Point and delve into yourself, your brand, your target customers etc… A social media strategy for a small business just requires a couple of hours.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What do I enjoy doing? Crocheting, reading, cooking, gardening, tv, etc…
- What do my target customers enjoy? Fashion advice, funny photos, flowers, poems, etc…
- What do my fans/followers enjoyed? You can find this out by seeing which posts that had high interaction (comments, likes, shares)
After answering these questions you’ll have a list of things to talk about on your social networks. Thanks to the last questions you will know how to change your strategy depending on what your actual followers like.
Keep an eye on your competitor
The competition is the best and first inspiration for improving your social media marketing. This is because they have the same target customers and they’re trying to attract more of them just like you. What to look for on their pages:
- What posts gets more interaction, what are the topics about? With this information in mind you can edit your own strategy.
- via:http://blog.fanchimp.com/the-6-secrets-of-social-media-marketing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-6-secrets-of-social-media-marketing
- How are they interacting with their followers? Are they asking questions, replying in time, etc..?
- What images are they using? Are they engaging images?
Let’s go take a look at their pages.
Post regularly
This is very important because it’s the key point that will give you visibility. How can people see your posts if you don’t even publish anything?
If you say you don’t have time, you should consider paying for some tools to help you schedule your messages or to change marketing tool. But let me explain what you need to do better.
‘Regularly’ means to post everyday or almost every day. If you post every day for one month and then you stop for 2 weeks that’s not regularly. However, if you skip one or two days that’s completely understandable.
The number of posts you have to share every day is not the most important thing to care about. It depends on the platform your using, for example on Twitter and Pinterest you can post more times daily than Facebook.
Use the exact format for your messages
A text message has a completely different format than a letter. The same things happen between a Facebook post and a Pinterest one for example. Understand what works on the different social networks can make a difference in reaching more people.
Some examples:
- When you’re sharing on Pinterest the description isn’t important but the photo has to be the best possible.
- On twitter the url has to be very short, otherwise it will transform your tweet into a mess.
- On Facebook images are important but the description has to be short.
- When you use Twitter hashtag try to be creative and not use too many
Track your failures and success
You will also have failure and success on Social Media Marketing and most of the time it will be totally unexpected. It’s possible that you’ll share a series of beautiful photos that you had created specifically for publishing on facebook, and they won’t receive much interaction. Then another day you’ll just share a photo you took with your iPhone and that will have great interaction. Why is that? Nobody knows.
The only thing you can do is to try to learn from failure and success by tracking them out. All you need to do is just create a text document or use a notebook then start writing what happens on your social pages.
Have you got any social media marketing secrets up your sleeve? Please let us know.
via:http://blog.fanchimp.com/the-6-secrets-of-social-media-marketing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-6-secrets-of-social-media-marketing
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