When clients start with our team, many times they are feeling overwhelmed by which digital marketing options to use and how to use them effectively. Today, we’re going to tackle social media marketing: Facebook? YouTube? LinkedIn? Instagram? Some clients are trying to do a little everywhere and others are using one channel, but have no idea if what they are doing is working or how to better use social media for business.
Get a Grip With These Tips!
Start With a Strategy. If you know The Big Picture at all, you had to know this would be the first tip! But, seriously, without a strategy for your social media marketing, you’re wasting your time and money, if you’re paying to boost posts. Don’t let the term “strategy” intimidate you – think roadmap, plan, menu – whatever word works for you. Simply put, outlining a strategy is deciding what you what to achieve and a plan of action to achieve the goal. Put your plan together (the targeted services, the audience(s), the approach, the schedule, and the budget) and then stick to it.
Here’s a snapshot example for a business that takes appointments: if you want to increase calls for appointments from new patients by 10 percent and move up in organic search engine rankings, you might use develop a series of Facebook video and animated .GIF ads for three key services to your defined audience with the new Click to Call button and link each ad back to an optimized article on your website about the highlighted service. The pages on the site would also have a form for viewers to fill out for more information, in case the viewer didn’t want to call or it is after hours. Evaluate results each week and after four weeks to review results and tweak for the next four weeks.
Mix It Up: Not only do people want to see different approaches in your feed, people prefer different communication methods. Static ads with a strong image, videos, animated GIFs, infographics and podcasts should be core tools in your social media toolbox. You can use these approaches for posts, boosts, and ads to ensure you are reaching followers of your brand as well as new people.
Engagement Matters and Money Matters: Engagement with your audience, i.e. people commenting, sharing, liking your posts on Facebook and Instagram does help give importance and therefore, reaches more of the people who follow your brand; also, answering comments (this is about connection, anyway!) is important too. However, gone are the days when social media was a free way to reach existing followers and gain new interests. For your existing followers, boosting your posts will certainly help your fans see what you have to say – and folding in targeted ads will help your message reach new people.
While this is a bit of an oversimplification, we hope these tips give you insight into how managing your social media can help your communicate your message more effectively in the digital realm.