Social media continues to be an important element of marketing and businesses are now spending time and resources to get the most attention on popular social sites and apps. The biggest challenge for marketers is how to stand out from the thousands of other social campaigns that are competing for the same traffic and attention.
The hard truth is that your social marketing campaign won’t bring you the immediate results you expect hence the need to pay attention to the details of your social media outreach to make the most of your resources. Here’s why your your recent social marketing strategy isn’t working.
1. You keep talking, instead of stopping to listen
Social conversation can last and have the maximum impact when make room to listen. You don’t have to do all the talking all the time. Encourage your followers and connections to give you feedback and share their impressions of the information you keep sharing. Sometimes it works better when you stop to listen. You can better understand your followers if you engage with them in a language they understand. Take a break from shouting and start listening.
2. You don’t measure, but you keep spending your valuable asset: Time!
You should consistently be measuring how you are doing on all the social channels that communicate your message. Even after you have identified the best social channels that can better communicate your ideas, identify your social media objectives and make sure your objectives and goals are being met.
Example, if you prefer to use Facebook, concentrate on measuring how many likes, comments and shares your updates receive. Likes show support for your brand or cause, comments indicate a deeper interest in your update.
Shares indicate that the user is ready to promote your update and that is valuable because they move the update beyond your page and get others involved. And guess what they start telling your story via sharing. That is what you should aim for.
You should be able to know what happens to your content after you send it out? Do people ignore it or share it? Do your questions generate conversations? Are you getting any sales, subscriptions, followers, likes and shares?
If a particular content attracts a lot more attention, then you should know that users prefer that kind of information hence the need to keep sharing more of that content. Keep your eyes on what works and focus on it.
3. You are not consistent!
Whatever information or content you are ready to share, be prepared to keep sharing similar ones with your audience. If your followers identify your brand with what you share, they are more likely to keep coming for more information.
Neil Patel of Quicksprout.com keeps sharing consistent great content on marketing, blogging and search optimization. And guess what, most of his readers can’t wait to bookmark his articles and advance guides. Make a conscious effort to provide your followers with the most valuable content across your social channels.
Some brands prefer to involve a third party or a marketing company to handle their social strategies because whoever handles it may not be consistent to keep users and readers coming for more information. Focus on what works for you and stick with it.
4. You are shouting to everybody when you should be attracting loyal fans
If your business finds social media useful, be where your customers are. It’s as simple as that. Don’t focus on platforms that do not produce results. If you are no seeing the results on all your currents social platforms, narrow down to a few ones where you can achieve the most results.
One of the best ways to find out how your business is doing is to search for your brand on social platforms and find out if there are communities, groups or prospective customers talking about your business or topic of interest you can leverage. If a lot more people are talking about you on Facebook, find a way to respond on Facebook.
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blogging, podcasting, video marketing, infographics are all the popular channels of communicating your message to your audience. If Twitter works best for you, make the most consistent noise on Twitter.
If your company can better communicate with pictures, make the most of Pinterest and share the right images. You could also create infographics and share them on Pinterest.
What works!
It takes time and trust to get prospects to become your customers and better still paying customers. You have to figure out how to move your prospective customers into a relationship with you to achieve your biggest social marketing goal: getting fans to become customers.
Do it right and you it will be worth all the efforts and resources you invest in it, get it wrong and it will be a total waste of your valuable time and investment.
Which social media strategies are working for you? Share with us in the comment box below.