How to Build a Social-Media Strategy That Works

Social media is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. If you use it correctly, you can create a strong personal connection with your prospective customers. However, marketers often make the mistake of diving into social media without a clear plan. At best, this is a waste of time – and at worst, it can lead to a PR disaster. To benefit from social media, you need to build a clear strategy that takes into account what you’re trying to achieve, who your customers are and what your competition is doing. As with any journey, the first step in creating a social-media marketing strategy is to understand where you want to go. What is the purpose of your social media marketing efforts? Do you want to create or raise awareness of your brand? Are you looking to increase sales, social media brand marketing or website traffic, or both? Is your goal to build customer loyalty and increase retention? These goals aren’t mutually exclusive, but you should focus on one or two: If you spread yourself too thin, you’re not going to accomplish anything. It’s time to set clear objectives based on your goals. Focus on the S.M.A.R.T. strategy for goal setting to ensure your objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time based. For example, if you’re a B2B marketer looking to increase sales, you might decide that you want to generate an additional 100 online leads a month. On the other hand, if your goal is brand awareness, then you might want to increase the number of times your brand is mentioned on social media by 50 percent. In all cases, these objectives should be directly tied to your business goals, and theycost of social media marketing should be achievable. Otherwise, they’re just wishful thinking. Also, make sure your objectives are time limited. For instance, you need to achieve that 50 percent growth in brand awareness within six months, not at some undefined time in the future.

Creating an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy

Have you been been avoiding social media marketing? As a small business, you may be thinking you have enough challenges to deal with in managing your money and time, not to mention fatigue and the stress of hiring and retaining the right people. So being active in social media marketing may be the last thing on your mind. If your business is in a non-technical field, you might also be thinking that involvement in social media marketing requires a steep learning curve. If this describes you, think again. A recent Pew survey shows that 81 percent of American adults are online. More than 50 percentdefine social media marketing use multiple social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. This is where many of your clients and prospects are likely hanging out. As Dee Anna McPherson, vice president of marketing at Hootsuite, puts it, “Social media is the new golf course—it’s where the buyers are; it’s where your customers are. That's where you need to go to build a relationships." In our increasingly interconnected world, this trend means you can no longer afford to ignore social media. A survey in the UK reveals that nearly 80 percent of consumers said they would be more inclined to buy more often from a company that has a social media marketing plan pdf presence on social media. This guide will give you some pointers to get started on social media marketing for your business without wasting too much time or breaking the bank, and reveal the relatively easy way to help get social media exposure for your company for free.

How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Business

With hundreds of active social networks, it can be tough to know where you should start when it comes to marketing a business or building an online community. To help you get a better understanding of each network, and how you can use them for your business, we put together a quick rundown on some of the top sites and services for your to build out your social media marketing strategy. Social media is an excellent and increasingly necessary social media marketing best practices way to spread your message and grow your business and a key part of any inbound marketing strategy. But a professional social media marketing plan is required to ensure success. These days almost every industry is being affected in some way by the power of social networks and the virility of online communication. At Sticky, we have have used social media marketing as an agency to grow our business for many years. We encourage the use of social media where appropriate and have numerous clients who rely on us to provide them with the expertise required to successfully integrate social media into a comprehensive how to start a social media marketing business online strategy. We believe that social media marketing, when used as part of a holistic online marketing strategy, can be an extremely successful way to amplify your message and engage core audiences. It is also becoming an increasingly important part of search engine optimisation (SEO). Like any good marketing, social media marketing requires a professional plan to ensure you make the most of your opportunities.