Below are five things you can do to seriously boost your social marketing efforts over the next 12 months.
Use Visual Content
If the hockey stick traffic growth of Pinterest has taught us anything it’s that users seek out, consume, and go crazy for visual content. Marketo recently compiled an engaging infographic (see? more visual content) that showed how restructuring content to be more visual is the future of content marketing and a trend that your business should hop onto. That means trading in some of those weighty words for items like photos, videos, memes, motion graphics, and other engaging content types for your audience to share across social platforms. Our minds and attention are scattered. Find a way to present your message in a visual format and your audience will be more apt to listen.
Develop Real Metrics
If your social media efforts aren’t currently tied to real business metrics, make this a priority. Get smarter about social media marketing by identifying your business purpose for engaging and the metrics that support that purpose.
For example, if your goal is to increase brand authority, then you’ll want to document how many shares your brand is getting, where you’re being cited, where you’re being linked, etc. If you’re trying to shorten your sales cycle, then you want to benchmark the cost per customer today vs. the cost per customers this time last year. Developing business goals and metrics is what takes social media from just “tweeting” to building a social company.
Understand Promotion
The biggest mistake I see business owners make with social marketing and social media in general is they spend all this time creating content and building cool stuff, and zero time getting it out there to their audience. Get comfortable with self-promotion and go out there and find your audience. Build your email list, use tools to find your followers on Twitter, get people to subscribe to your Facebook page, show yourself off at local events, etc. Make sure people are aware of your business and of the content that you’re spending hours producing. Create your media list and get serious about blogging outreach. The only way to grow your business is to be actively making people aware of it.
Expand Your Efforts
If you’re like many other small business owners, you probably have a Facebook page. And maybe even a Twitter account. That’s great. But why not look to some other channels this year and test the waters? If you’re a local florist or a wedding planner, why not get involved with Instagram to help you spark that visual content and show off your assets? If you’re a consultant, maybe this is the year you start that blog or participate in Q&A sites based in your expertise. Social media is extending past Facebook and traditional screens. Find new ways to get in front of and engage your audience.
Get Help
If social media still looks like a giant question mark to you, consider getting help. Consult an outside agency or bring someone into your team who understands social media from a business perspective. Someone who will help the company to create a social media plan to guide the company’s interaction for the rest of the year. For SMBs watching their budgets (and who isn’t?) this may be as simple and cost-effective as hiring a social media company to give you an audit to help you understand the opportunity and the strategies you should be using to take advantage of it. Once you have your roadmap in your hand, social media becomes a lot easier to implement and see value from.
Above are five powerful ways any business can improve their social media power and social marketing over the next twelve months. What’s on your list?
Lucky Balaraman
Hey Lisa,
Excellent post. As far as visual content goes, I’d like to specially mention that the infographic is one of the most popular forms.
There are several free online infographic creation tools such as Piktochart, Easel.Ly, Visual.Ly and Infogr.Am which one should look into when time permits (my picks are the first two).
Cheers!
Visual content allows you to more easily make an emotional connection, so if you’re not an amazing writer like Lisa you should definitely use more images.
Ti Roberts
I agree, Robert. I would also suggest using more video as well. Even if you’re not able to produce video daily, releasing at least one video a day and posting it to your blog or mailing it out to your list will do wonders for your business.
Ti
Hi Lisa,
Fantastic post. Thanks for the shout out regarding our infographic. Visual marketing is indeed going to be a huge trend for 2013 and we are huge fans of this strategy. I like to say that the image is becoming the new headline and our best bet for breaking through the noise, differentiating content, and giving our audience another option for consuming our content and engaging with us.
Thanks again,
Jason Miller – Marketo
Ti Roberts
Nicely put, Jason. I liked what you said about images being the new headline. That’s really neat and it quiet true when you think about it. Thanks for sharing that.
Ti
To go along with the self promotion part, it’s smart to start asking your customers to review you positively on sites like Yelp. It may be strange to start asking at first, but can be great for your overall online reputation.
Ti Roberts
Great post, Lisa. It’s important to keep our eye on the trends for 2013, especially if we want to keep our edge or gain an edge in the market place. Thanks for sharing your insights with us.
Ti
Michael Madden
Great list! Get out there, find out what works and what doesn’t, and always be trying something new.
HMC
Social Media in healthcare is definitely on the rise. Patients are now using social media as a tool for performing a background check on both doctors and hospitals alike.
Be forewarned though… much of the social media in medicine plays off the fact that the doctors and hospitals who use social media benefit from the fact that all others Do NOT! It’s easy to compete when there is no competition.
Mike
Nice post Lisa.
I’d say for most small business, A PLAN, is the first most important step. Having a plan eliminates a large portion of frustration and bad results. Hiring an agency for planning, if nothing else, will help businesses make smarter decisions with their brands in regards to social media
Great article Lisa. Especially the metrics and getting used to promotion. I spend way too much time creating content and not promoting it. Does this seems to be a typical “woman” thing or is it more of a personality issue?