If used correctly, social media marketing can give you a platform for brand awareness, exposure, networking, and a huge boost in traffic and sales. The problem is that most people don’t know how to properly use the properties of social networks…
Social media marketing gives you an edge over larger competitors. Studies show that most companies are not yet embracing social media, which leaves plenty of room for the “little man” to do big business in that space.
Follow these 10 easy tips to create your own strategy for Social Media Marketing success:
1. Map out your social media strategy
What are you most hoping to accomplish with your social media marketing plan? What response do you expect from your target market? Ideas to consider in your overall goal may include:
-Brand
-Networks
-Exposition
-Incoming links/SEO
-Building relationships/trust
-Customer relations (think @comcastcares on Twitter)
2. Connect with your target market
Get a picture of your ideal customer or website visitor clearly in your mind. Who are they? What are they looking for? What do they most want and need? What do you think they expect from you through social media communications?
Consider what they experience from you in everything you do. They are the person you want to attract into your funnel, so you want to make a great impression, and also include a strong and specific call to action.
3. Offer consistent, quality content
The content you post on the social media properties must be consistent as in regular updates and also consistent with your overall message or goal.
If you’re an MLM recruiter, for example, provide quality resources for recruits. If you own an eCommerce gardening site, offer gardening tips. Whatever your message is, you want it to be consistent across the web.
This helps you achieve your branding goals and allows you to create the perception you want people to have of you or your company. Anyone following you online should be able to easily fill in the blank: (you/your company) is known by ___.
Being consistent with your message and branding also lends itself to your goal of relevance and theming when it comes to SEO or search engine optimization.
4. Focus on content, not marketing
Most people get this backwards. If you focus on high-quality, valuable content, that content will do the marketing for you.
You shouldn’t have to dig or bookmark your own content, but instead focus on writing content so good that your readers give you an unsolicited dig or stumble from you.
Your job is to write and provide easy access to social networking services where your readers can share your content with their friends and groups.
When people like what you have to say, they will share it, period. And when they share it, the search engines will take notice. Write high-quality content and updates, and let the rest happen naturally.
5. Watch out! Don’t overoptimize
Social Media Marketing can help you achieve top search engine rankings for specific keyword phrases. But be careful… because there is such a thing as over-optimization.
Using the same anchor text everywhere you link to (or request a link from) your site leaves a ‘fingerprint’, throwing up a red flag that you may be trying to manipulate search results (or PageRank).
Avoid this by using natural variations in anchor text for links pointing to your main website. You need a certain number of “click here” or similar links to balance your optimization strategy.
6. Stop linking to your home page!
Social media is all about micro-topic conversations, so consider how you can introduce internal offers or pages from your website into these conversations.
This will keep your groups and followers engaged with the topic at hand and provide greater value to your readers.
These deep links, or links that point to internal pages of your site or blog, also help you gain search engine authority. All things being equal between two identical websites, the one with more deep links will outperform the other. This also gives you more exposure in search engine results, as your internal pages will start to rank for specific relevant keyword phrases.
Tip: Your home page may not be the best link to share on your profile while you’re interacting on social sites. Consider linking to your “about me” page instead for a nicer introduction to you and your site.
7. Provide a valuable resource
There is a reason why it is called Social Media, and not Self-Promotional Media. Keep that in mind when considering your social media marketing plan.
If all you post is self-promotional links and requests, you will eventually become part of the “noise” and ultimately be filtered out by your target market. They may not unfollow or delete you, but they will start scanning your posts and tweets without even realizing it.
Avoid this by becoming a valuable resource in your niche. Share links to domains that you do not own. And I don’t mean your own Squidoo pages or Facebook profiles, I mean the domains you have ZERO association with. Provide value to your groups by sharing relevant links and resources.
Do you mean you want me to *gasp* promote my competitors? Yes, and make friends with them too. Interconnection and networking are powerful!
8. Social networks
To truly achieve your social media marketing goals, you need to do some social media, too. Forget the word “competitor”. Other publishers or webmasters in your niche will be your best friends in the social media landscape!
Locate each competitor at your level (or within a reasonable range) and create an “inner circle” of friends or business associates. These are people you can interview or be interviewed with, exchange links, joint ventures, etc. Stop seeing them as competition and start seeing how they can take advantage of each other’s position in the market!
Tip: Don’t ask for favors. And don’t brag about the favors you do. Simply follow, comment, link or be “known” to select publishers in your niche. They’ll notice… and generally begin to reciprocate. With a little time, the relationship will form naturally and be incredibly beneficial to both sides.
9.Generate report
Participate in discussions, respond to blog comments, ask for feedback (and then respond and act on it!). People want to know that you are a real person, and not just “a company”, or worse: a bot that spits out links and sucks money.
Don’t be afraid to have an opinion or express your thoughts on hot topics within your niche. Your unique voice in the market will attract your ideal visitors and customers.
Social networks give you the opportunity to be nice. An eCommerce site has its limits when it comes to establishing trust and building long-term relationships with customers, so use social media as an opportunity to make a real connection with your target market.
10. Link freely, and don’t apologize for it!
This is something of a combination of tips #3 and #7. One thing that really gives me the creeps is the 2 words “shameless plug”. Promise me you’ll never use that phrase!
People who follow you, subscribe to your updates, or become friends with you on social networking sites… want to hear your latest news and advice. If they don’t, they’ll quickly unfollow you, which is fine. This is not a numbers game or a vanity contest, it is a means to unionize and socialize in a professional yet enjoyable way.
There is a right and wrong way to link resources and content on social networking sites. The wrong way is to say “read my blog post” or “visit my website”. The correct way is to share an interesting link (either yours or something of interest to your readers from another website) and open a discussion on that topic.
Have a clear purpose, be a valuable resource, and use the properties of social media the way it was designed. Anything else will get you filtered, unfollowed, banned or blacklisted… and ultimately a complete waste of time.
Done right, by following these 10 simple tips, social media marketing can actually grow your online business faster than any other medium.
