Make your next social media marketing briefing with your boss one to remember. Read on
5 Ways to Social Media Marketing Success
Because of this, businesses rely heavily on the success of social media efforts, especially when complimenting overall communication strategies.
Here are five ways to help your social media marketing efforts be more successful:
1.) Understand Your Audience
First and foremost, you need to understand your audience in the following ways:
- The platforms they use
- What time of day they’re online
- What content they consume and share
This is the key to all success.
With these discoveries in mind, you’ll be equipped to create extraordinary social media marketing content that will effectively reach your audience and carry your digital reputation forward. Businesses who don’t understand what their audience wants often share content that bores them and most unfortunately may offend them.
All too often we see businesses posting content that goes viral for all of the wrong reasons because it struck the wrong nerve. This is due to a simple lack of understanding.
2.) Unite Your Audience
Your audience may be composed of an eclectic mix of individuals and groups. Whatever you do, do not cultivate content that for any reason draws a divide between them. This will cause chaos, disharmony and ultimately harm your organization’s reputation.
That diverse body of people most likely follows your organization for similar reasons. Use your business as a common ground to make the world a better place by uniting your audience. I promise that you won’t regret it.
3.) Showcase Your Audience
Similarly, utilize strategies and mechanisms to gather photos and stories regarding that diverse audience.
There’s nothing that your audience will love more than to see themselves in action every now and then. It lets them know that you not only care about them, but are paying attention too.
Your business is a storyteller. You’re not just creating a one-way conversation about your organization and how great it is. You’re establishing a two-way communication intersection that highlights the bigger picture–your business and its interaction with the world and its audience.
4.) Give Something for Something
Your budget may be limited, but make an effort to give something away to your audience. Make sure it isn’t cheesy either–use your understanding of your following to select an incentive that is worthwhile and appropriate.
Also be sure to add a fun twist on this giveaway by making it an exchange rather than a plain freebie.
Are you giving away tickets to your show? Have your audience share their favorite memories of the show and select the top three.
Giving a $100 Visa gift card away? Have your audience show you a photo collage of what they’d buy–especially if it ties into your business.
5.) Use Custom-Designed Content
Regurgitating news articles and graphics made by other people is a sure way to position yourself as a follower–not a leader.
Your business needs to be leading your audience by sharing its own story. It may cost a few additional dollars to hire a graphic designer and videographer to make this possible, but I promise you won’t regret it.
Here are a few specific projects to invest in:
- Social-media-specific videos
- Guerrilla marketing stunts shared through social media
- Custom graphics for articles, quotes, products and holidays
Your audience will appreciate the fact that you care enough about your social media marketing to invest in high-quality storytelling mediums. Most of all, they will notice the difference.
Companies like Coke–who design all kinds of fun content surrounding the brand–stand out head-and-shoulders above the competition.
How is your organization leading the way to social media marketing success?
What Your Company Needs to Know About Media Relations
Your company may not receive regular media attention–or have any intention of doing so–but it’s important to have at least a general understanding of what it is and how to approach it.
The unfortunate truth is that a lot of companies abuse media relations. A lot of this abuse comes from simply not knowing the proper etiquette and protocol for developing high-quality relationships.
With that in mind, here’s what your company needs to know about media relations:
1.) It’s about mutually beneficial relationships.
Your relationships with journalists are about more than getting your company in the media–they’re mutually beneficial partnerships.
When you’re building relationships with reporters, be sure to offer yourself as a spokesperson for your entire industry as well as your company. They might not be interested in a particular story you share with them at the time, but they may have a need for information about something related to your practice area. Make sure that you let them know that you’re there to help in any way possible and mean in.
2.) Be professional.
For some reason, a lot of people totally disregard professional etiquette when approaching media relations.
If you’re contacting a reporter for the first time then make sure to introduce yourself and be polite. Briefly talk a little bit about your company and (again) offer yourself as a resource not only for your own company, but for your industry as well. If someone doesn’t respond to your email offer a polite follow up. Usually if they’re interested they will get back to you–otherwise you may want to consider a brief phone call or to simply let it go.
Don’t be that person who gets venomous if a reporter doesn’t respond. Have the professional decency to avoid reacting on your emotions and doing something that will harm your company’s reputation.
3.) Be accurate and concise.
An extension of being professional is the ability to convey information and ideas in an accurate and concise manner. This is especially important when it comes to media relations.
Journalists don’t have enough time or patience for superfluous or inaccurate information. No one does, so be sure your communications are to the point.
4.) Have a contact person trained and ready.
You may not have a designated public relations person to handle the media–it may just be the lady in HR. Whoever it is though, make sure they are well trained.
They should understand the concepts discussed above, and they should have all the necessary resources directly on hand. This includes a backgrounder on your company, recent news, team member bios and contact information. They need to know who the best person in your organization is to talk about operations, development and leadership and be able to easily direct the media to them.
Do all that you can to make sure that this individual is the sole contact person for your media relations efforts. The last thing you want is scattered members of your staff haphazardly reaching out to the media with no purpose or poise.
5.) Be ready for crisis.
Crisis communications will make or break your company.
Gather your leadership team and brainstorm all of the worst possible events that could ever happen. Don’t ever catch yourself saying, “Oh, that could never happen!” You seriously never know. Balance your discussion with more reasonable outcomes and finalize it by figuring out what you would do. Have all of this information documented and easily accessible for your leadership team.
I recommend that you appoint and train a single point person to handle all crisis communications. It doesn’t have to be the same person who handles your media relations–a lot of companies defer to their CEO in these situations.
6.) Don’t lie.
Once a liar, always a liar in the eyes of the media. Whatever you do, be sure that you never lie.
Why Your Company Needs to Start Blogging — Right Now
To blog or not to blog–that is the question. [Read more…] about Why Your Company Needs to Start Blogging — Right Now
4 Lies Social Media Marketing Companies May Tell You
Social media marketing companies have long emphasized the benefits of social media. I can’t disagree with them–social media marketing is indeed effective, but there are ideas related to the topic that just aren’t true.
Don’t be deceived by these four misleading statements:
1.) “You need to get on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and etc. etc.”
A lot of social media companies will immediately suggest that you need to have a content strategy for every single social media platform that exists.
What’s important is that you have a researched reason for being on any platform. For example, maybe you’ve discovered that your audience is on Facebook and Twitter, but doesn’t use Pinterest. In that case, it would be a waste of time and resources to push a Pinterest strategy at that moment in time (unless you have a crazy way of getting your audience to use Pinterest all of the sudden).
It’s also worth noting that most social media marketing companies charge by the platform, which may explain why they’re trying to get you to commit to so many of them.
2.) “Cultivating shareable content is enough.”
Social media marketing companies may tell you that gathering relevant, shareable content from a variety of sources is enough. The truth is that it isn’t.
Beyond regular, shareable content from other sources, your organization needs to be actively communicating with its own content, custom-designed graphics and full-fledged campaigns.
A solution to the content curation process is inbound marketing philosophy–this includes knowing what questions your ideal customers are asking and answering them. Your business can answer audience questions with its blog, infographics and other content that is circulated through social media.
3.) “Social media is the magic solution to your marketing needs.”
As powerful as social media is, it unfortunately isn’t the magic solution to all of your marketing needs. Most likely it is an extension of your digital marketing strategy, which stems from your overall communications strategy.
It’s incredibly important to bring your social media efforts to relevance and brand consistency, but it’s even more important to optimize all of your communications efforts.
4.) “Measurement is limited to social media actions.”
Measurement isn’t limited to each social media platform. It’s key to track how strategies are affecting follower counts, views and engagement, but it’s absolutely vital to understand how these factors are influencing overall goals. Are followers counts, views and engagement selling more product? Are they increasing web traffic and organizational awareness?
Social media success is only relevant to how your business measures success.
What You Need to Understand About Hiring a Marketing Agency
1.) You’re hiring them for their perspective.
First and foremost, you’re not just hiring a marketing agency for their services–you’re hiring them for their unique perspective.
Every marketing agency has an outlook on how the process should be developed and delivered. Some marketing professionals may expect a particular budget, system or role within your business that might not align with your expectations.
Make sure you understand their perspective and how it will affect your business–it’ll save you a lot of strife. If they don’t have one, you might want to consider hiring someone else.
2.) You’re hiring them for their expertise.
When asking for assistance from a marketing agency, you’re asking them to lend their expertise and skill set to your business. As obvious as it may be, businesses can forget that they are asking for help and begin to undermine the efforts of marketing professionals by either not listening to them or going around them on projects.
It’s OK to have a question about what’s being done, but make sure you check with the professional first before going around them (unless they make a hideous, damaging mistake–in that case react immediately and question later).
3.) It’s going to take work.
Hiring a marketing agency should make your life easier but it also takes a little bit of work in the beginning.
Take time early in the relationship to set clear desires and expectations. You may also want to participate in a one-to-three hour education session where you tell your new help every detail about your business and how it operates. Educate them like you would any new employee but make sure to maintain the business relationship.
4.) They’re working with you — not for you.
You shouldn’t think of a marketing agency as a regular employee. Think of them as a business partner by cultivating the working partnership.
They are a third party that is on your team to assist you and guide you. Treat them as such and make sure they treat you the same way.