Social media is basically the use of various social media platforms and sites to advertise a product or service. While the traditional terms such as e-business and digital advertising are now quite dominant in academic circles, social media marketing continues to grow for both academics and practitioners. Social media is now thought of by many, to be important and useful in business. Many professionals now see it as a valuable tool for getting potential clients and customers engaged with your brand and products and services.
There are now four main components that make up this growing discipline. These are engagement, optimization, measurement and sharing. These are all linked and need to be examined closely to understand how they fit together. The key to a successful strategy is to begin to measure your desired goals before implementing any strategy, but also to develop a comprehensive strategy before you begin using Social media manager tools such as apps and integrate your analytics platform with it. This will allow you to see what is working and what isn’t, which will in turn allow you to fine tune your plan.
Your social media marketing strategy must have an objective. For example, if you want to increase engagement then this would require a measurable goal to hit. However, what are the most effective ways of engaging your audience? How do you find out what works, what doesn’t and where should further engagement happen? The purpose of a strategy is to define clearly your goals and how you intend to reach them so you can implement an effective strategy.
The second component is engagement. How active are your target audience? Are they actively using the channels you are using or are they passively receiving your information? The purpose of this step is to determine if the brand you are building with social media platforms is one that your target audience will actively engage with or if they will become bored or just lose interest.
The third component is research! What research has your brand done? Is there a detailed analysis of who, what, where, when and why your audience engages with your brand? If not then you need to determine how you can research these answers to better understand your audience and find out how to reach them more effectively through your social media marketing efforts. When you create a marketing plan, you need to be prepared for what you are going to achieve and be able to quantify how successful your efforts are.
Finally, consider engaging your audience before you start your media marketing efforts. Ask for their input, listen to them, learn from them, take their comments and incorporate them into your strategy. Social media advertising is all about observing and learning from your customer’s reactions. In addition to the questions above, why not run a survey of your customers to find out their likes and dislikes, their feedback on the service, whether they are likely to buy your product in the future, their likelihood of buying other products from your company etc.
So what are your goals for this new form of media? The goals you identify will dictate the type of content you produce and the types of strategies you engage in. For example, are you looking to increase the reach of your product or service? Create content that engages your audience and gets them to take action. Think about your goals as an individual and then determine which platform best achieves your media goals. Keep this media marketing strategy in mind and continue to develop your engagement strategy as you go.
There is no doubt that social media is still a new and exciting venue for brands to engage in marketing. The more time you invest into developing your strategy and ensuring that it is aligned with your goals, the sooner you will realize the results. This is not a time consuming effort. Social media strategy is easily implemented and if well planned, can provide the kind of return on marketing investment that most marketers only dream about.