When it comes to building and strengthening your audience, social media is a popular option for many marketers. For small businesses and nonprofits, social media has particular appeal because it is generally free to set up an account on the platform of your choice. However, social media is a tough space. Rarely do new users get the manual explaining how to make the most of it! There are five key factors for social media success, and knowing about these factors can help you maximize your social media marketing.
Find for Your Target Market
Simply put, good marketing is connecting your message with your target market. The statement is simple, but it takes thought and effort to make this happen. No matter what type of marketing you do, knowing your target markets is paramount. Once you know who you need to reach, you can make sure you have crafted the correct message. Once you know who you need to reach, you can find where those people are. And once you know both of these things, you can put the right message in front of the right people.
You don’t need to be on every social media platform. You need to be on the ones your target market is on and in the places where your target market is looking.
Lead with Your Brand
One of the advantages of social media is the fact that you get to put your brand on display. Ideally you would set your business name as the profile name you use (the exception being for network marketing companies where you are not licensed to do so). From there, all of the posting you do should give your audience an impression of your business: values, tone of voice, and why you do business. Visitors to your page should be able to scroll through and have a sense of what your company stands for. How you communicate and how you do business are two things that may inspire your audience to get to know you better.
Be Smart about What and When You Post
When it comes to formulating a posting strategy, the top consideration is to be consistent over time. This means respecting what is realistic for volume and frequency of your posts. If you are being pulled in a lot of directions with your overall workload, be realistic about a posting schedule that will push you to communicate as frequently as you can but will be viable for you to maintain for years on end. Once you know that frequency, you can start mapping out what kind posts you want to do. Remember that you want a low percentage to be sales posts. Too many and you will drive your audience away quickly! Instead, focus as much as you can on building interest around your brand, your values, your products/services/programs, and your tone of voice.
Creating Pathways
While you generate posts that attract your audience and give them a reason to interact, you can also start creating pathways for sales. These can be planted all over. Make sure your profile description includes links to websites, products, services, donating, or whatever other options you have. If you have an opportunity to create a newsletter sign-up or shopping tab, do it! Run posts that have a good reason to link back to your website or blog, and then make sure you include those links. If someone happens upon a post of yours, you want to lead that person down a path of finding more and more content and resources you have created.
Interact
What really builds reach on most platforms is interaction. Engagement is what maximizes the impressions you get on the posts you do. This means that you need to have conversations on social media to be successful. The more you interact on other pages and your own page, the more you attract new people to see what you are up to. It is entirely possible to build an audience on engagement alone without paying for followers. If you are willing to be social and be patient, interaction can bring you a loyal following.
Social media is a tough space to market a business. In a crowded online marketing world, there are a lot of businesses trying to be heard. It takes time to see the impact of your work, but if you follow these five key factors, you are on your way to social media marketing success!
FREE WEBINAR! If you are marketing a business on social media and want some guidance, check out this FREE webinar coming up on October 17, 11am-12pm Pacific. It is free to attend, and I am going to share a ton of information with you. Learn my social media secrets, including how I built an awesome, supportive, engaged Facebook community of over 9,100 without paying for likes and spending less than $100 in Facebook ads on content a year. Click here to check it out and sign up!
https://melissaforziatevents.com/how-to-win-at-social-media-free-webinar/
Guest Post by: Melissa Forziat
