Social media is an important way in which your business should be communicating with the world. If your social media has become ineffective, the results can be detrimental to your brand and eventually to your bottom line.
Fortunately, there are some easy fixes to a broken down social media campaign. Social media expert Lisa Barone suggests some of the top options for bringing your social media campaign back to life.
Here’s a list of things you should be considering now to fix your broken social media message.
Get More Visual
Visual content grabs attention, so the more you use the better off you’ll be. An infgraphic from Marketo gives an overview of six kinds of visual content you may want to start incorporating into your social media.
They include more obvious options like:
- Photos to engage by showing your personal side with photos on Instagram and Flickr.
- Video to teach customers more about your product.
- Graphics as a way to tell a more visual story with your data.
But there are also some ideas you may not have thought of yet, like:
- Visual Note Taking to express your thoughts in a more visually engaging manner than text.
- Memes to establish a powerful viral presence with a memorable image and a line of text.
- Comics as a way to communicate ideas in a highly sharable and entertaining format.
How are you using visuals to share you message?
Become a Trusted Curator
Barone explains the importance of content curation in social media:
One way to lighten your content writing load is by becoming a trusted curator. Instead of putting the burden on yourself to write the content, you can take advantage of the content others are creating (and you’re already reading) in your industry by sharing links, pointing your readers to third-party resources, and highlighting the smart things that others are saying.
Content curation is a perfect option for channels like Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn where you can share links to blog posts, videos, infographics, resources and more.
Your contacts and customers will become as interested in the content you share as in the blog posts you write. So this content too can be very helpful in establishing your brand.
Stop Misusing Facebook
There are some big no-nos where Facebook is concerned. Ignoring them puts your marketing message on the most popular and highly used social network on the planet at risk.
But don’t worry. Barone has created the ultimate guide to things you should never do on Facebook.
Do you still:
- Use your personal profile instead of a business page,
- Fail to fill out your profiles completely,
- Use Facebook as a broadcasting media, or
- Leave spam on your Facebook wall?
If you’re doing any of these or other things on Barone’s list, it’s time to stop now. Ignoring these problems could ruin your reputation on one of the most powerful and pervasive social platforms around.
This is a tool you want working for your business, so be sure to handle it right.
Develop Metrics to Measure Effectiveness
If you have no way to measure what you’re accomplishing in social media, how will you know whether you’re a success? It’s simple. You won’t.
Barone recommends a simple method of developing metrics that can measure your success. Simply start by asking yourself what you want to accomplish.
For example, with social media you might be trying to boost your brand recognition, Barone surmises. Or perhaps you’re simply trying to shorten your sales cycle.
In the first instance, Barone recommends documenting the number of times your brand is being shared and where you are being cited or linked to.
In the second, Barone recommends benchmarking your cost per customer acquisition today verses your cost per customer acquisition a year ago.
No matter why you’re using social media, you must have a way of measuring whether you are achieving your objectives.
Get Comfortable with Self-Promotion
There’s an old saying. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really make a sound?
It’s kind of like that with social media, says Barone. You can spend a lot of time and energy creating cool content. But if you don’t get it in front of your target audience, what’s the point?
Instead, Barone suggests building an email list, finding followers on Twitter, working harder to get people to “like” your Facebook page, going more all out with blog outreach and so on.
Without these efforts, your great content and awesome social media channels will be just a tree falling in the woods, with no one there to hear a sound: Silent and ineffective.
What ways can you think of to make people aware of your product, business or brand and of the great content you create?
Get Help When You Need It
Finally, if you still find yourself overwhelmed, it may be time to get some help. Barone recommends:
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…
This could be as simple as hiring a social media consulting firm to do an audit of your company and its potential audience.
This step could help you see the parts of your social media plan that are missing the mark and help you develop strategies to take advantage of some of the opportunities you’ve missed, says Barone.
What do you think? Do you need some help with your social media strategy? What efforts are you putting in to make sure your social media message reaches the right audience?
I mostly agree on being a trusted content curator. People are always after content first, and the author last. That means even if it’s not your own content, sharing can still bring people to recognize your materials as long as you acknowledge your sources too.
Aira Bongco
That’s right. If you can create good content, they are more likely to look for your name and follow you just becuase you provide something that they need.
I think that you can add ‘being consistent’ to that list. Few things drive me up the wall like a business which only posts about once every six months on Twitter or Facebook. If you can’t keep up with the marketplace, find a staff member that can… on that note, I better go and update my companies FB page.
A lot of the time, I’m uncomfortable with self-promotion. It’s no different a feeling when I use social media to do it. I feel sort of apologetic when I do it, even when I’m doing it on my own timeline – which is why I don’t promote myself as much as I should. I know I’m gonna have to deal with that though – sooner rather than later.
Lisa R
Measuring what, if any success you are having with your social media efforts is essential. You need to have clear goals and then measure the results of your efforts. Not unlike business in the non online world. Would you pay for advertising that resulted in no sales? If not then why would you place time and effort into social media and not get something out of it, whatever you decide it should be.
Joe Lundy
I so agree with this article, and would like to add that not only is misusing FaceBook a problem, but so is the lack of understanding of how to properly use LinkedIn, the number one professional networking site. If you are a professional, or make your living offering products, or services, to the professional community, then you had better be careful what you post on LinkedIn. Folks don’t realize that social media is not just for their personal lives anymore, rather, they need to approach these platforms with a marketing strategy.