Social media is incredibly important for your online presence. A good social media strategy can help your business become more trusted, increase the number of customers, and boost your revenue. Sounds great doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, you can’t reap the rewards without first planting your seeds and nurturing them into fruition. Follow these five tips and you will be on your way to reaping the rewards your business deserves!
Define your Objectives
The best place to start is location – where you plan on planting your seeds. You don’t want to plant your seeds where the sun never reaches. This is the same concept when choosing which platforms to advertise on.
Search your favorite thought leaders in your respective industry and see where they are most successful. Chances are those platforms will be the best option for you as well. Make sure to compare it with the next step, as it may impact this decision.
Once you have found where you want to plant your seeds, you must choose what kind of seeds you want to plant. Do you want more reviews, more customers, a bigger social media following? If your goal is to increase your reviews from customers, you may want to focus on Facebook, due to their rating and reviews section on your business page.
Now that you know where and what your goals are, the next step is to plan on how you will achieve these goals. Ask yourself these questions to help plan:
· How many times will I post a week?
· Do I plan on using scheduling software?
· What content will I share?
· How much of the content will be original?
· Can I afford to boost/pay for increased reach?
· Can I afford to hire a digital marketing agency?
The last step in defining your objectives is to understand your social media budget. Your budget will help determine what kind of giveaways you do to attract new customers, your ability to boost content and if you will use software to help with your strategy. At Keystone Click, we recommend having at least a small budget to boost your content. Although you are not required, by any means to pay to post, you may not receive nearly as powerful results by organic posting.
Bring Value to your Customer base
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Bringing value to your existing and new customer base is huge. If you do not bring value to them, they will not see you as an expert and will be less engaged with your efforts. The better content you provide, the more likely an individual will be to trust you and your business. The best and most successful leaders are the ones who continue to bring new and valuable content to the table.
People like new things, if you can consistently provide them with new, interesting content they will trust your expertise. Bringing it back to our seed example, think about your content as the soil. Your goal or, seed, will not prosper without the right soil and nutrients, which is your content.
Be Consistent
You must be consistent with your content! This is a major part of your plan, so do not plan for too much or too little. Trial and error will help but do your best to plan your time accordingly. If you need 4 hours to plan each week’s social media content, then make sure you have 4 hours available to work on it. If you don’t have 4 hours, then think about cutting down your content so that it takes you 3 hours a week to complete.
Moving back to our seed analogy, it’s best to think about your social media dedication as a watering pattern. Consistent and dedicated time for watering will allow the plant to grow best, the same goes for your digital marketing strategy.
Engage with Thought Leaders
Identifying the right thought leaders can be tricky. Generally, a good rule of thumb is to find thought leaders that are non-profit organizations, research facilitators, people who are not in direct competition with your business. Not only are most of these thought leaders already trusted, many of them will have a large following you can leverage.
You can engage with thought leaders by tagging them in posts, reposting their content, and engaging on their content. If you can prove your expertise to a thought leader, a repost or an engagement from them can potentially do wonders for your social media presence.
Encourage Reviews
Although this may not have been one of your original objectives, it should always be a part of your plan. Online reviews are trusted nearly as much as a personal recommendation and can be seen by a very large amount of people compared to word of mouth.
Think of online reviews as the new personal recommendation. Online reviews really are just personal recommendations written on the internet, right? Having positive reviews and testimonials from customers on your business’s pages will help new customers trust you before they meet you.
When planning your social media strategy remember it’s all about value, consistency, and leadership. Bring these three attributes to the table and your business will see a positive impact. Don’t forget, your digital strategy is like a plant, the more you put in the more you get out. If you don’t have the time to care for your plants, see about hiring a landscaper. Keystone Click is here to help landscape your digital marketing strategy!