In today’s business world every small business should be implementing social media marketing into their marketing strategy. But if your like most small business owners you either don’t have the time it takes to make your strategy effective or you just aren’t sure where to even start. So today I wanted to give you my time tested blueprint for your social media marketing to start getting the results you need asap!
My 10 Step Social Media Marketing Blueprint
- Start your strategy by taking a look at your overall web presence including your website, blog, and social media pages. Make sure your brand is consistent throughout all of your online destinations and representing you in a professional and appropriate way. Your goal should be that whenever someone visits any of your online pages they will connect with your brand and understand what you are all about. Consistency in representing your brand is key.
- Set up your social media presence on the big 3 …Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and customize the pages to represent your brand (and match your current website branding) in a professional and inviting way. *Also remember to claim your brand names on all 3 sites.
- Conduct an audit of how much traffic you are currently receiving to each site or social media page, where that traffic is coming from, and what your customer conversion rate is. This is a good starting point so you can track your results once you start implementing your social media campaigns. You won’t know what’s working if you don’t keep track of your efforts and results. (Using google analytics and FB Insights are two good ways to start your tracking)
- Decide who is going to be in charge of your daily social media efforts …you, an employee, a social media management company? Establish your goals for your social media campaign …more traffic, better customer service, better customer relations, more brand exposure, etc…
- Analyze who your target is for your social media engagement. What type of people do you want to connect with on FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Potential customers, Industry leaders, current customers, all of the above. Where can you connect with them …where are they hanging out and how can you communicate and connect with them best? Make a list so you can refer back to it.
- Create a “targeted content list of resources” you can pull from to use to share helpful information in your social media posts. This can include blog post ideas for your blog, other industry leaders blogs that you can share helpful resources from, news sites in your industry…. this will give you continual ideas for daily posts that will be interesting to your targeted following.
- Start to build your targeted community. Set a daily time frame to focus on building your community of Fans, Followers, and Connections everyday (consistent effort on this task is how you will start to build a large following…even small efforts each day towards it will start to make a difference, or you can also hire someone to do this task for you). Using a site like Twellow.com can be a helpful way to find people related to your industry to try to connect with.
- Engage, Communicate, and Build relationships on a daily basis. This is the key to making your social media efforts effective. Start by Retweeting other people’s posts that you think will be helpful or interesting to your followers. Comment on other industry related posts. Strike up a conversation using the @ sign to start building those relationships. Be helpful when someone has a question that you are knowledgeable in. (Using a tool like Hootesuite can be helpful in monitoring your daily interaction on all of your sites in one central place)
- Provide top notch content for your Fans and Followers. Including helpful blog posts and or articles you have written is a great way to present yourself as an expert in your field. Remember “Content is King” when it comes to having a good presence online … and that is true for all of your social media posts too. Quality is always the key! (Use your posts to drive traffic to your business, offer, and products in a helpful way by giving great content for free and building that relationship first!)
- Analyze your results and make adjustments as needed.
This blueprint can be used by any type of business to get their social media strategy going in the right direction. Make sure to remember that Social Media is not meant to be a sales pitch, it is not an instant money machine, you have to take the time to build relationships and connections and then your business will grow from there!
To Your Success!
Kate Wilber
The Marketing Momma
**Need help implementing your social media strategy? Click here to see how We Can Help!