Identify and Define Your Goals

The first part of finding your social dominance, is identifying and clearly defining what your goals are. A lot of brands have a vision of how they are perceived on social media and again in the real world. Most of the time the two often align but sometimes they don’t.

Create a clear message online that echoes through your social media campaigns. When a visitor arrives at your social profile on any platform, they should be made to feel like they know exactly who you are and what your message is.

Who is your target audience.

Identify who you will be marketing to and where they hang out online. Understanding the content they interact with best will give you better return on content distribution.

If your audience is younger image-loving people, then LinkedIn is not the place to spend your efforts and instead look at creating waves on Instagram and Pinterest. This understanding of who interacts with your brand and where they hang out online is key in finding the sweet spot to spend your marketing efforts with social media.

My target audience is Google+, middle-aged men interested in technology, software and websites. I know this because I engage with many people on the platform joining groups and participating in things that I enjoy. There is a method to my Google+ madness, there are no ads following me around on Google+ so I treat it as my hideaway form marketing on other social media platforms.

Pick One Social Channel and Own it

Create a clear content schedule and post regularly, focus on getting this process down on one platform first. Don’t be too ambitious and try to conquer all platforms at once this is a recipe for disaster and how you burn out fast.

Take the time to analyse your landscape on the platform and identify:

  • Who does social media well
  • Who has engaging posts
  • Are your competitors doing something better
  • Who are your target audiences
  • What content do they best engage with

When you have mastered a social media platform this will be the perfect springboard for you to launch another platform and bring across loyal followers. Taking this approach you will be able to quickly gain traction on the new platform.

Remember no one wants to follow someone that has no followers. Bring your tribe along for the ride, make your profile look like it has a legitimate following and the organic likes shares and comments will roll in.  

How To Make Social Media Platforms Work For You

Define your goals

Will you post for consumers or to increase business to business.

Do you want to increase your social following or drive followers to specific deal on your website. These are the goals that you need to identify that will help shape your social strategy.

Identify what content you want and for what audience so you can provide what they want and build your brand around engaged followers.

Personalise your message across your channels

Be unique and stand out against the chat bots.Taking time to create a personalised approach within your social media strategy will reward you with more loyal and engaged fans.

Automated messages are awesome...when they are tailored to the user and not everyone. Your audience should feel engaged and like they are special. Avoid template automation and craft a branded feel to every channel you interact on.

Open up your internal team to showcasing some ideas, this has proved very successful for me in the past. Agency life creates some innovative thinkers that when challenged create interesting things. This adds a unique twist on your company's brand by allowing employees to add their own alternative twist to your branded message.

Take time to reply to messages and requests. This might seem like a waste of time for upper management it is important that no one is unanswered and every one feels like part of your social community. Add value to their day by replying to their messages, you never know who your biggest fans are until you make their day.

Use automation

The automated social strategy works for some businesses and not a blanket strategy for everyone. We live on the brink of VR, AR and artificial intelligence taking over, people want real personalised interactions. A colleague recently published an interesting article on the rise of Instagram bots covering the recently rise in popularity of automated social media.

Using a well crafted automated approach can benefit your business. Take the fully automated hands off approach if you have a steady flow of leads and enquiries coming in. Social media posting can be tiring if using a multiple platform strategy and automating the process makes this a simple push button process.

I think that automation has its place in a social strategy, also with the rise of chat bots there is a level of personalisation that needs to be included in the setup phase. Taking a chat bot out of the box and adding it to your website of your Facebook messenger is not enough to work. Personalisation is the key to growth and consistent sales online, just take a look at Drift chat I’m a big fan of this chat bot platform.

The chat bots used on their websites are fun and intuitive, providing helpful links and references that actually help me find things. I like the level of personalisation even if they are using bots it gets me wanting to use it everytime I visit their website.

You can look at your competitors and see how they automate their social media channels and work out if it will benefit you or will it limit your business online.

My social team follows a simple schedule like this:

Google+: 3 times a week

Twitter 1 time weekly

Facebook: 5 posts per week

Instagram: once daily

Linkedin: 2 times a week

Using this simple formula we keep our followers entertained and attract new followers every week. Don’t over think the scheduling of posts.

What type of content does your audience interact with

I like to ask the question to clients “How does your audience take in content?” this gives me a fair idea of what they actually know about their customers.

Popular content consumption content

  • Image sharing
  • Video sharing
  • Informational & Educational articles
  • Memes
  • Infographics
  • Review articles & Videos

How can you incorporate these popular content pillars into your strategy? Hire someone specifically for this task, Hire a writer, hire a graphic designer, network with viral sites and push their content towards your audience as long as it is within your professional image that uphold.

Always review the content you share and especially if you assign a social media coordinator from within your business. Hiring a professional to do this removes the need to worry about what is being shared and what message follows along your posts. Doing the social media posting from within the business is always something I dread. I look at it this way, you are Subway and you need a social media presence so you ask Tiffany the new sandwich artist. Young Tiffany has no formal training on social media except for tagging friends on Facebook and  to promote the new 2 subs for $6 deal on your franchise social media channels and she does exactly what she was told to do.

Can you leverage social media influencers?

Using an authority figure in your industry to help promote your business is smart business. Ecommerce businesses have grown overnight by leveraging social media influencers to give shout outs and drive their large social following to the mentioned brand or product.

Starting out fresh in any industry you will need allies. Having a list of people with credibility on your side goes a long way when it's time to leverage influencers.  Using this method is going to be a growth generating move that you have to consider in your social media strategy.

Brands can create positive relationships with influencers that will be powerful for both parties in the social media universe. Exposing 200,000 followers to a new brand name product can have a tidal wave effect on the mentioned brand name’s  revenue for that month. Consider using this method to grow and reinvigorate a social media strategy.

This can be done by simply tagging the top influencers in a newsworthy article, reaching out to them or by exchanging money for mentions.

Create a social media brand strategy that works and you will grow your online visibility organically. While some may advise against this, I suggest new brands run a brand awareness like campaign to introduce new people to their brand.

Avoid buying cheap page likes on places like Fiverr, instead go for a paid Facebook campaign. Yes a paid advertising campaign will cost you but so will people not buying from your brand because you have 23 likes. Social proof matters now just as much as a positive review does. Making sure you have sufficient likes, followers and subscribers can be the tipping point for a purchase or the reason to look elsewhere.

All of this matters because if you want to influence people on social platforms your brand needs authority. Can you say that your brand has the required authority to influence your audience, and do you take advantage of that status if you do are good questions to ask yourself.  If you social post about the new deal at Subway for 2 footlongs for the price of 1 will this impact your daily revenue? I tell you this if I saw a subway deal on Facebook I would be at the nearest subway cash in hand ready to spend.

Generate a following and provide consistent engaging content that excites and entertains your followers. Do this and your social media growth will be consistent and of truly interested people and not just trolls and deal seekers.

Take advantage of social media and promote your brand online.

Shane Pollard
Digital Team Leader
Be Media