The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing

It’s very easy to distil social media marketing down to something it isn’t.

There’s a lot more to social media marketing than posting stuff to Twitter and Facebook. That’s before we even consider paid advertising. Social media marketing is a vital part of every digital marketing strategy and it is entirely instrumental to your content distribution. Remember: your content is only powerful if other people actually see it. Even if you’re writing purely for SEO, a captive audience makes it a lot easier.

Social Media Marketing breaks down into 4 cs, each as important as the other:

1. Content
2. Conversation
3. Community
4. Connections

Content

So step one: social media marketing and content!

Content, social media marketing, and success are inextricably linked. They are a trifecta that work wonders in the digital era. The problem is that it takes a lot of time to do it right, and many businesses quit too early into the game. We, for example, rank on page one for the vast majority of our chosen keywords: for everything from content creation agency to digital marketing, we’re there. It’s taken a solid six months but we’ve laid the groundwork so we’ll be hanging out there for quite some time.

The truth: there’s no magic formula to social media and content.

So how do you optimise your social media marketing’s content?

1. Choose your platform wisely.

User base, gender-bias, target your audience.

2. Scope out competitors and the giants of your industry and learn from them.

There’s a lot of shtick about going viral, and much of the advice out there is from brands who already have 200k followers. It’s easy to say: “make good stuff and people will come.” This isn’t true. Pare your expectations down to match reality.

A client of ours has nearly 30,000 likes on Facebook because she occupies a niche and she’s constantly creating content in the form of posts and providing funny pictures. That works for a certain audience i.e. the mommy ‘blogger’/momtrepreneur section, but it won’t work so easily for a garage, for example. Tap into your network. Why are they on your social media page? Use that.

3. Visual content is gold.

Pictures and videos drive up engagement. Don’t be afraid to do something crazy. (Budget, allowing.) Remember this?

4. A clever tweet is worth a thousand words.

Hop on a trend with a funny tweet and you’re home and dry. Yesterday, for example, Garth Brooks blew up because of the cancelled concerts. Within ninety seconds of the news breaking, #GarthBrooks started trending. A couple of silly tweets later, and we were up on engagement and follower count.

 

Remember: an awful lot of people are clamouring for that same platform. Be fast!

5. Pinterest is a silent giant.

Pinterest gets relegated to the beauty/interior design type bloggers a lot. Admittedly, we’re passive Pinners. The key take-away here is that Pinterest is great for generating links and small, quick SEO boosts. It won’t send you shooting up the rankings, but each pin to your blog or website keeps things trundling away.

Remember: social media marketing–and digital marketing too!–relies on the sum of the parts.

Conversation

Social media marketing is so powerful because it gives voice and personality to a brand. There’s nothing as bad as a lifeless Twitter or Facebook account. You know the sort: they occupy a niche so all they do is tweet/post about how they are best at it or how you should buy from them.

Social media marketing works as a relationship builder.Even if you represent a brand and are hidden behind a company logo, you still have every opportunity to establish a voice. Be funny or charming or conversational.

Quick tips:

1. Check your mentions a couple of times a day. Only 51% of social media marketers do. Bad move! 69% of users expect a response within a couple of hours.
2. Respond quickly.
3. Don’t respond to negative comments.
4. Ignore trolls entirely.
5. Use monitoring and listening tools e.g. FollowerWonk to figure out your optimal times to be posting. It makes sense: there’s not much point coming up with a clever post at 3am when no one will see it.
6. Don’t be afraid to ‘like’ your own stuff if no one else has. It’s usually encouragement for someone else and it’ll pop you back to the top of the timeline.

Community

If you can forge an online community, then your company is in for a massive boost.

A community doesn’t just happen, it evolves. But how?

1. Be engaging. Talk to people. Don’t be afraid to hop on a trend and join in. That’s how everyone got started.
2. Share knowledge. Learning happens from experts and peers around shared interests.
3. Use every connection you’ve got. Be shameless about it!
4. If you’ve got a product, build social into it.
5. Keep track of everything. Maybe it’s the digital marketing/analytics nerd in me, but track everything. Data tells a story all of its own.
6. Remember: ENGAGEMENT is far more rewarding than sheer numbers. Get both and you’ll be Justin Bieber in no time.
7. Advertise. In 2013, 6.1 billion was spent on social media advertising. We’ll be doing a round-up of social media marketing and advertising in the coming weeks. We can’t have this blog post turning into a book, now can we?

Connections

Connections/PR/leads are the entire point of social media marketing. There’s no real point shouting into the abyss if you’re not getting anything back from it. Take a step back and consider what you’re doing and why it’s not working for you if that’s the case.

What’s the best way to leverage your social media marketing into a real, viable thing?

1. Turn that online rapport into an offline one. Meet up with that business person you’ve been suggesting coffee to for a few weeks. Go ahead. Have that coffee. Talk business. Make plans!
2. Don’t just take. If a connection generates leads, do the same in return where possible.
3. Add value to the community you belong to. As much as you’re there to be noticed, it’ll only happen if you are valuable. Make people laugh, be smart, be useful and you’ll be heard. Slowly but surely, you may even become an all-hallowed influencer.
4. It’s not about you. It’s about your customers/leads/followers, etc. Provide the best user experience possible.
5. People are at the heart of every successful social media campaign. Remember Batkid and the Dove Real Beauty campaign? Exactly.

How’s that for a bit of optimism on a Wednesday?

Batkid seems an appropriate way to wrap this post up. Realistically, unless you’re a very special company doing wonderful things, you won’t make a Batkid video. But! Use the 4 cs and you will see the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign dramatically increase. Approach it with the attention and care it deserves and you’ll reap the benefits.

Don’t have the time or the inclination? Get in touch and we’ll do it for you. How was that for a smooth call-to-action? In the meantime, think we’ve missed anything? Tell us as much on Twitter!