With the world getting more and more technology-driven, the need for online marketing to grow businesses is skyrocketing! Looking for social media to grow clientele can be a massive leap for your company!
Just like a recipe, there are steps you can take to start your Social Media Strategy. These are "6 steps to success" to become successful in social media.
- Goals and objectives
- Clientele
- Competition
- Platforms
- Tone
- Posting
1. Goals and objectives
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For your Social Media, this is the first step to know who you are and what you want to achieve. When you get goals, it helps you measure your success. When choosing goals, answer some questions such as:
- What is your primary purpose for your business?
- To drive sales?
- Direct traffic to your website?
- Bring awareness to a cause?
- Create brand awareness?
- Build a community?
Once you set specific goals, you can see what tangible objectives you want to achieve. What do you want to see on your social media?
- Do you want to see an increase in numbers on social media?
- Stronger interaction between you and your followers/customers?
- Do you want to see an increase in sales that directly correlates from social media?
- Do you want to strengthen your engagement with your community?
Every business has different goals and objectives.
If you are trying to measure numbers and grow engagement, an excellent place to start would be to look at your community. Take the past three months (90 days) and look at the number of followers, likes, shares, and comments and try to increase each category by at least 10%. Interacting with your audience helps grow your community interaction with your content. Knowing what your audience wants and tuning your social media content to it can be a huge success.
2. Clientele
When thinking about whom you direct your product/service to, who comes to mind? Knowing your customer's persona can help you find out what people want to see.
If you don't already have your persona for your targeted customer, there are ways to help determine who it might be.
Facebook Analytics
The Facebook analysis shows you precisely who your audience is, from age to hobbies to purchasing behaviors and much more. If you are looking for a more in-depth guide to facebook analysis, Social Media Examiner has an extensive guide here.
Twitter Analytics
Twitter analytics gears toward engagement and impressions. Hubspot's writer Larry King writes,
Twitter engagement refers to the retweets, follows, replies, favorites, and click-throughs your tweets get -- including the hashtags and links those tweets include. Your Twitter Engagement Rate is equal to your tweets' engagement, divided by the number of impressions those tweets have made.
To check out a full look at the Twitter analysis, you can check out Hubspot's blog here.
3. Competition
Keep your friends close but your enemy closer.
1. What are their strengths?
- Are they posting timely and relevant content?
- Are they promoting in a friendly manner and not being intrusive?
- Are they using social media in new/compelling/creative ways?
- Are they smart and creative?
2. What are their weaknesses?
- Where do they fall short?
- Do they post inconsistently?
- Are there spelling mistakes or incorrect grammar?
- Do they lack in customer service?
- Do they come across as overconfident?
To improve your product, you have to look at your competition. What are your competitors doing differently than you? Is it working for them? What can they improve? What is the feel for their brand on social media? No matter who it is, every brand can improve. Find out how your competition can improve and implement that to your strategy.
4. Platforms
Each business should focus mainly on the social media platforms that the company would see the most results. Just because you use Pinterest doesn't mean your ideal client does. Each platform has specific strengths to them that other platforms don't. For your goals, each platform does something different.
- Facebook: It is all about brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, and online conversations.
- Instagram: It is excellent for growing your business organically.
- Pinterest: Is more about creativity and has a strong female presence. (81% of its users are female)
- LinkedIn: This is mainly for Business-to-business and a consumer-based job title.
- Twitter: It is great for engagement. 78% of people who complain on Twitter expect a response from the brand within an hour.
5. Tone
When a person first clicks on your social media account, before they even check out any posts, they sense a feel for your brand. Is it colorful and happy? Serious and slick? Is it cartoony and lighthearted? Setting the tone for your company right off the bat is enormous! When you look at Coca-Cola, what comes to mind? For me, it's Red/white/energetic. So when you first go to their Instagram, what do you expect to see?
For Coca-Cola, the drink should be enjoyable, and their Instagram shows that fun factor with a cartoony light feels!
Let's look at another example, Zippy's! For Zippy's, they are about eating local Hawaiian food and plate lunches. Do you think their brand is going to have dark colors and a severe feel? Of course not. It's going to be happy people enjoying good food.
Let's take a look at a more serious brand, one that is all about being trendy and artsy. BLVCK Paris. They are a trending clothing and accessories company.
As you can see, there are not many other colors than black, grey and white. Here, the color IS the brand.
For your brand, find what kind of tone you want your community to feel when they think about your product. If you are trying to find your tone for your brand, ask yourself, "Who are we, and who are we not?"
After finding your specific tone, you want to show it on everything you post. Consistency is key!
6. Posting
When it comes to posting, there is no right answer since every business differs. Maintaining posting consistency is critical because it helps you stay on top of your content, keeps you organized, and keeps your brand's presence on social media.
There are, however, a few helpful tricks that can guide you.
- Facebook: 1 post per day.
- Instagram: 1 post per day
- Pinterest: Up to 15 times per day
- LinkedIn: 1 Post per day
- Twitter: 5-10 posts per day
Adjust these numbers to your brand, and it sets you up for success.
If you are unsure what to post, this guide from Social Media Examiner here helps you with fresh ideas and keeps your content flowing. Constant Contact also has an in-depth guide on different posting ideas here.
When posting on your social media accounts, make sure you are up to date on current events. A simple hashtag/link/location-tagged can be huge for engagement! As long as it makes sense for your brand, current events can be a great tool to help your business grow.
If you liked this blog and thought it could help someone out, feel free to give it a share and check out our website at Hawaii Web Design for more helpful tips to help set you up for success!
