There’s no question that many people spend hours online visiting, sharing, and commenting on social media platforms. Therefore, using social media to reach your target audience makes sense. Depending on what your company sells, and the demographics of your customer base determines which social networks are best for you to focus on. If you want to create positive interactions with customers and prospects on social media from the start, working with an experienced social media management service will help you avoid pitfalls.
The prevalence of social media companies and the number of people who spend time there has created a huge opportunity for brands. Social media allows you to engage your existing customers and potential new customers directly. There are several reasons for marketing on social media including:
- Discovering insights about your customers and how they perceive your brand
- Resolving complaints directly with customers
- Marketing your brand to increase its value for your customer
Any well-planned digital marketing strategy should include a social media marketing plan.
What is Social Media Management?
The basic definition of social media management is the process of managing an all-encompassing social media strategy. But that doesn’t dig deep enough to explain why you should have a social media marketing strategy.
Most companies have a digital marketing plan which at a minimum includes a website and a blog. You might have an e-commerce store or qualify leads through a landing page. However, no matter how small a company you have, you should include social media marketing as part of your digital marketing plan. And unless you have lots of free time and are a social media expert, you will need help managing the creation and implementation of your strategy.
In general, digital marketing is how your company presents itself in an online forum.
Social media strategy focuses on how you utilize social media channels to drive brand awareness, find new leads, and generate sales.
Social media management is overseeing the steps you have planned, implementing them, and analyzing the results.
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Knowing Your Customer
Before you can begin social media marketing, it’s important to know your ideal customer and what they value. That way, you will learn how to approach them. So, any marketing strategy will start with finding out as much as you can about the people who do business with you.
To help you better understand your buyers and how they think, you can create personas for them. Creating a persona means researching the lifestyle and feelings your buyer has, and which of their needs you can resolve with your service.
Meeting Your Customer on Social Media
Social media platforms differ widely from each other, and each one appeals to a distinct group of people. Some platforms attract a niche audience, while others have a wide following. Social media platforms also change quite rapidly, so it’s important to keep up with their changes and what that means for your audience. If your audience is young, you need to find out where they spend their time online. For example, while people in their 50s may spend most of their time on Facebook, high school kids can often be found on TikTok.
Business-to-business clients won’t be found on TikTok. Instead, you may need to reach them through LinkedIn, a social network designed for businesses.
Both the people you are trying to reach, and the social platform will determine the type of media to share with customers. For instance, a business professional appreciates in-depth information related to their business. But you still have options as to how to present the information. Is an article the best way or should you create a video? What are you trying to accomplish with your marketing? That can also determine the type of content.
To help you decide on the best social media platform to reach your customers, you can use the personas that you’ve developed to investigate. Ask yourself questions such as:
- Would your persona have an account on this platform?
- How would they behave there, and interact with others like them?
- What type of information would they be interested in, and how do they like to engage with it?
- Is this platform a good place for your industry to find clients?
Use this research to consider which social platforms you want to work with.
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Create a Social Media Strategy
A social media strategy outlines how you will interact with customers on a given social network, and what type of content you will produce. It will determine how often you will post new content, and how much you’ll create. It will lay out how you will engage your customers and prospects.
Creating a social media strategy will require considering how large your budget is for social media marketing, and within that budget, which types of content are best to share with your customers.
To make your strategy easier to implement, it’s a good idea to schedule it on a content calendar. A content calendar will make implementation easier to manage and should include the platform, type of content, date, and time.
Engaging with Customers
The whole point of social media marketing is to engage current and potential customers. However, engaging customers means something different for different people. Do you want to use social media as your point of contact for customer service issues? Or are you looking for feedback on a new product or service?
Do you want to put “How-to Videos” on your social media account to suggest ways to use your service? Or would you rather create discussion groups regarding suggestions for new products?
There are so many ways that you can engage customers on social media that you can tailor them to your industry and services. If you think of social media marketing as an opportunity to engage directly with your customers, you will generate lots of new ideas as to the best practices to do so.
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Getting Started
Are you ready to get started with social media management? A good idea is to use a good SEO Agency like BizIQ to partner with you. You gain their experience and can spend more of your time in your core business.