What can successful entrepreneurs offer you that will help boost your social media marketing strategy? The answer is applying a formula of thinking and doing that is different than what you are probably doing now. What defines an entrepreneur is how they primarily act versus think their way to success. This principle can be applied to generating a successful social media marketing plan for you or your clients. Below are some tips that can help you reach this goal:
#1 – While social media networks are generally used to get to the same goal (higher visibility and awareness, more customers, etc.), don’t have the same plan for all of them. Many companies will just make a standard plan for all of their social media strategies, regardless of the network. Make your Twitter plan different from your Facebook plan and so on. Maybe one is better for broadcasting your company’s news, while the other is better for interaction with your customers. It really depends on what your product, brand and company is, but don’t just stick to one plan and frequency for all the networks you are working with.
#2 – Use only the networks that make sense for your company or product. Don’t just create a YouTube channel because it is social media. This goes for all the social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, Myspace etc., even a blog. Make sure you know what your goal is and what you are looking to get out of it. Also, make sure it targets the customer base you desire and that you have content to add that is valuable, not just fluff. Most companies can benefit from a Facebook fan page or Twitter handle, but the rest, including blogs, may not fit your needs or goals and will just end up making you and your company look worse and unprofessional.
#3 – Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Shocking, we know. But many companies don’t have their target decided on before they go out into the social media world. Maybe they know their target in general, but when it comes to social media, they are all over the place. If your product is fashion, specifically footwear, there’s probably no need to discuss makeup, hair and other subjects that really have nothing to do with your current product/company or plan. It’s a waste of time and will likely attract people you don’t even want to reach. In the end, just think about what’s more important, the quality of people following you or the quantity.
#4 – Have a voice and a “theme” for your social media effort; don’t just use it as a marketing vehicle. Along the same lines, when you begin using social media, think about what voice you want to use. Is it fun, wacky, serious, playful, etc? This really does matter in how you and your brand is perceived. Once you choose it, stick to your posts being in that voice. The same goes for content. No one wants to just hear about your company and your brand. Think about what your company can offer better than any other company; what is your expertise? Then, make your posts a mix of news about your company, as well as industry news, fun facts, trivia, questions, etc. Essentially, make it engaging and interesting for your friends and followers.
#5 – Don’t overdo it with automation. This has become a big trend, especially with Twitter: auto-follow, auto-replies, etc. Sure, it’s a great tool and can help you build followers, but be careful about scheduling “tweets” way ahead of time, especially when you are posting links to articles that will no longer be “news” or of interest when the post hits. Also, auto-replies can be quite the turn-off, so if you have the time to spend replying to your followers and thanking the more prominent ones for following you and RTs, do it, don’t automate it.