You need a smart strategy for your Social Media Marketing. With everything going on on social media platforms, it can be easy for your page to get lost in the commotion.
It helps to answer these questions.
- What do you stand for? Who is your community?
- What kind of relationship do you want to have with them? (Informative? Expert? Reliable?)
- Where do they hang out online? What will your content be?
- How and why will people share it? How can they participate in shaping it?
- And, of course, what do you want to get out of the effort? Sales? Awareness? Word-of-mouth? Feedback? Customers?
Answer those questions first and you’ll have the beginning of a plan.
Social Media Page Suggestions:
- Post more than products – Once you get comfortable and start “talking” on social media, tell your customers things they can use. Add value to their day. Talk about special offers; inform them of changes in your business hours, etc. What would YOU want the businesses you deal with to tell you? That’s what you should tell your customers. And you don’t have to be long-winded about it. A brief notice repeated periodically works.
- Use photos – People like photos. Take them and put them on your social media profiles. Pictures of new products, new employees, special deals, your customers. If you or your employees work with community groups, take pictures of their participation in 5K races, public space cleanups and other good works.
- Offer incentives – Offer incentive for a customer to follow you in a social media outlet. If they like you on Facebook, they get a gift card. If they re-post your post, they are entered to win a contest. Promotions are great ways to get new followers.
- Measure your success – You set up goals. You even wrote them down. Check yourself at least once a month. Are you making progress? Does the progress match the effort? Can you make improvements? You won’t know if you don’t measure from time to time. (Most of the social platforms have metrics that track your activity for you.)
- Budget monthly ads – Get a budget in mind for ads to run on each page, if it is promoting a post about a new grill, for a budget of only $10. Establish that monthly budget so your audience can grow and learn about your products and services.