Your social media marketing efforts exist to expand your brand awareness and to drive traffic. If your social media is not doing these two things, it may be time to scrap whatever it is you have going and start again. Your strategy needs to embrace these two objectives. Once they are embraced, a formidable plan must be put into place.
- The most important starting point is understanding who your customers or clients are and on what social media platforms they might be. You must understand each platform and what they do and who they attract. If you don’t, you will be wasting precious time and resources. You don’t have to be out at every platform but you must be on those where you are likely to find your potential customer base to be.
- Your content must be fresh, entertaining, informative and engaging. Use a ton of images and video. Give the social media folks something to remember and give them a reason that they should like you, trust you and buy from you. Be yourself out there. Bring them into your company and let them see who you really are. Social media is not the place for a slick advertising campaign. It is a place to reach out to potential customers and show them how you will solve a problem or improve their life.
- Your voice becomes your brand. You must create and establish your voice and an image you want to project for your company. And, above all else, you must be consistent with it. Get everyone comfortable with who you are and they will feel like they know you; like you have become a friend who will help them. Do that and they will trust you. If they trust you, they will come and see you.
- Have a full time sales team to tend to your social media marketing. Engaging them is the key to driving traffic. Who better than to engage than your sales reps? Also, attract those social media influencers in your profession or industry who can help spread the word and expand your brand awareness. Finally, you must track what progress you make. Have specific parameters and measurable goals. Discover what is working and reinforce it while discarding what is not resonating with your audience and what is not, ultimately, diving traffic.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
