What we mean by Social Media Strategy
“Not all companies or departments need social media,” I said.
A manager for a department at the local university did not fully believe me and to this day may not. It was a department that handled specialized visa forms. As a part of a website upgrade, they were wanting social media. They did not have regularly occurring content, updates, announcements or deadlines. No one was even scheduled to manage it if it was created.
In some certain scenarios, some companies really don’t need a social media strategy. Its good to have a Google+ page to help with your local search rankings, but otherwise it may actually hurt your companies brand and image. More information on this topic can be found in the previous blog post: Inbound Content.
You would not believe the amount of people that I hear saying, “social media is the future, you have to have a social media strategy!” But not everyone knows what exactly that means. Even Microsoft had a little bit of trouble at first with one of their products known as “Dynamics” a Customer Relationship Management tool. They found that the teams for the project had made over 40 social accounts and blogs (more info). They are now down to 23 and increased their social media following by 700% overall. By having a social media strategy that has all of the accounts working together, they are now functioning really nicely and building engagement all over the place!
So what does this look like for your small business?
What people think happens:
People follow social media accounts and blogs so that they can get something from them. Anything is given from funny content, coupons, special insider information, etc. You want more sales and customers so you post what customers want. Customer buys and then tells the world how awesome it is on social media and then your business sales increase.
This is partially true. People genuinely want something from you. But they wants deals and freebies.
So how do we get you sales? By targeting the clients and customers that you want.
Example: You are in the cell phone case business. 80% of your clients will buy the cheapest rubber cases for $5. 10% will buy the fancy patterned ones for $12 and the other 10% will buy the rugged-drop-from-an-air-plane-survival cases for $40. In reality you want to sell the rugged cases because you probably have a huge mark-up on those and can make more money if 20%-35% of your sales were the rugged cases.
So you enlist Social Media to help. Film yourself throwing your phone with the rugged case off of buildings, getting run over by cars, etc. Then run the video with Facebook ads and a coupon for the rugged cases being on “sale.” If you have the social media content reflect your store, Pinterest, Blog, etc. you can increase your sales very easily.
Why does the above model work? You are giving people good fresh content of phones being thrown, your offering coupons for your super awesome product, and people can actually tell their friends how awesome it is by sharing it. Your setting up your audience and ads to succeed instead of just saying, “buy my product.” This is what we mean by a social media strategy.
Steps you can do right away:
- For Facebook only: Try using ShortStackApps for making custom landing pages, contests, iframes, etc.
- Try a $5 Facebook ad to get a little more traffic to your website or Facebook Page. Its pretty easy and can give you a lot of insights.
- Run a contest give away. Give away a bit of your product. Books, t-shirts, cash, etc. Test some advertising with it too to promote it further.
- Ask for testimonials or video feedback of your products, especially the ones you just gave away and maybe even offer more incentives to do it.
- Curate some content on Pinterest and send it out on an email blast.
- Try Instagramming and be more personal with your customers.
There is a ton more to this topic but then they would’t be basics anymore.
As always, if you want to talk more about this and or schedule a consulting meeting to make a social media marketing plan, feel free to:
Call 509-240-9735
Catch me on twitter at: http://twitter.com/pullmanweb
Email me Adam@PullmanMarketing.com
