5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT SOCIAL MEDIA FOR YOUR BUSINESS AND BRAND
Despite the kind of business you are running (small, medium or large), you can count on Social Media content to stand out from the rest of the crowd: plain text, infographic, videos, podcasts and the list goes on. All of these tools have may consistently improve either your outreach or content effectiveness. Keep in mind that nowadays, everything you do or say on Social Media is like a truthful extension of your own Brand, a sort of “Social Body Language”. Needless to say that the way you are going to choose the Social Networks for your business will be critical. Taking a plunge in all the Social Media is by now pretty worthless if you do not get a true benefit: the best strategy is to channel all of your efforts to the most rewarding Social Media, namely where the most of your target audience hang around. I am going to be describing 5 helpful tips in order to better recognize which Social Media are supposed to be the most fitting for you and your Brand Strategy!
Time, budget and expertise
When it comes to prioritize being realistic is the key. On a daily basis, how much can you afford to invest to each Social Channel in the coming 30/60/90 days? The worst thing you can do is to plan a broad and overarching Social Media Strategy that includes a number of weekly hours that you do not absolutely have! Timing and budget are quintessential as well as the overall know-how. In order to implement a surefire Social Media Strategy you are going to need a versatile staff whose skills may include Web Design, Visual and Content Marketing, Copywriting and Conversion Rate abilities to turn a prospect into a buying customer. On top of that you should brilliantly master the ins-and-outs of Social Media Marketing in order to focus on the right objectives and to flawlessly analyze the data performance. No time to panick! It is not compulsory to own all of the above-mentioned skills at the same time and in the very same place. Today, you can rely upon several reliable platforms to outsource most of these services whereas you get the chance to find talented and affordable professional such asFiverr or Upwork.
Clearly define objectives
If you want to be able to clearly identify the real success for your Online Marketing Strategy, you have to set-up some undisputed indicators to look at or Key Performance Indicators. Business goals should dictate your direction and which Social Media is supposed to be the most useful to better attain them. I want to highlight that this kind of success does not come overnight but it is based on a long-term, sustainable and forward-looking strategy. According to the inner nature o the business you are taking care of, the objectives may hugely vary and they are not always strictly related to ROI. The most widespread objectives are:
- Brand Awareness and promotion
- Web traffic enhancement
- Sales growth
- Newsletter sign-ups
- Talent recruitment
- Community Management
So KPIs might be different as well:
- Impressions of the brand
- Conversion Rate or Sales quantity
- Newsletter subscription’s growth
- Customer satisfaction
- Number of download of “giveaway” products as ebook, whitepapers, check-lists, case-studies and so forth
Once you have defined clear objectives, KPI’s will be your litmus paper in order to figure out how close you are to achieve them. Which Social will be the most appropriate to fully hit your goals? Which one will better allow you to connect with your audience? Which one will be the best to share your Brand Story authentically? Let’s try to approach your followers by taking their needs into account, so that they will look at you as a trustworthy source of information and support to fix their issues and get their expectations entirely fulfilled.
Keep your eyes thoroughly on the whole Social Media landscape in order to keep up with the arising changes and trends: this way you will naturally update and integrate your Brand. By the way, the better and deeper you know your target audience, the better you will develop your strategy. Where do they usually spend their time Online? Who do they listen to? Who has a leverage on them? How do they share their information and stories? What are they willing and keen to learn? Let’s begin by sniffing around these elements.
Careful Research
In order to figure out if a Social Network is really the one you are looking for, you have to have a rock-solid grasp of their “bells and whistles”. Let’s try to track down all of their demographics and worldwide statistics: you will be able to find endless information just by rummaging around the web since the most influential Web Marketing agencies release annually multiple reports about it (you can sneak a peek of the Social Media Examiner industry report with a goldmine of info). Moreover, you can always bank upon the “Native Insights”, namely data and numbers you can find within the platform itself (especially in Facebook on the top tool bar). If you want to dig even deeper, you can fork a small dough over so you will be able to use the most cutting-edge tools to better screen Social Media Market and Influencers with BuzzSumo, Circloscope, MyBlogU, Klear and some others.
Define the highest priorities
As i mentioned before, you must necessarily spend all of your efforts towards the channels where you will be giving the best support to your readers and where your impact is going to be more powerful. Basically, you should carefully split your Social presence in order to gingerly figure out where and how much invest on them. Try to differentiate the weight and engagement of your presence according to these coming factors:
- First level. Stay focused on the Social Network with the overwhelming majority of your audience. That’s the place where you will be concretely implementing your Social Media Marketing strategy by posting rich content, sharing news, comments and actively interacting with your community on daily basis.
- Second level. The more your following gets low, the more you will accordingly decrease both your presence and your efforts. Your presence should not massively drop down: once a day you keep on monitoring these channels in order to bring your “Lead Nurturing” strategy forward and to avoid to completely forsake your community.
- Third level. This level includes all the Social Media were just a very slim part of your audience is nestled, even an irrelevant one. You should just sporadically take a look at them just to catch up what is going on, every now and then.
Lastly, another wise pointer. Please, do not build up your entire Online strategy on Social Media! Despite Social Media are a gorgeous tool, your web-site (or your blog) are still by far the foundation of your business since you have a complete control over them. Be sure to not rely totally upon “rented land” as Social Networks. Afterwards, you will be free to integrate and add as many platforms as you wish!
Adapt, modify and optimize: constantly!
Social Media optimization is a recurring activity not a “shot in the dark”: Social Media is a fast-changing environment as well as your audience’s behavior and your company’s needs.
Objective’s assessment is fundamental to understand which direction you are taking. This change won’t be happening overnight as i said already, more likely it is going to take months or even more than one year. Nevertheless, KPIs are our tangible compass to measure the strategy’s success. One last thing: you have to keep your channels tidy and neat. The more your content are well-organized and readable, the more likely your followers will come back to your pages. A spotless content calendar may be indispensable to better schedule your weekly plans!
So, what are you waiting for putting all of these best practices into action? If you have even additional tips for us, feel free to share them!
