The Do's and Don'ts of Social Media Strategy

Have Distinct Goals.

You want your social media campaign fit your current marketing strategy. Generic branding creates word of mouth and identity. We want to make it easy to let our customer tell a friend about your business and what you did for them. The younger generation likes to be able to check you out online, so social media marketing is your new storefront.

Your goal for social media marketing is specifically, to generate word of mouth, cultivate brand identity, generate leads, and to support your current customers. Maintaining and engaging the generation that is used to reading blogs and checking facebook, people who are used to being interactive.

Don’t just start social media marketing without an idea of what the goals are.

Have a calendar, an editorial calendar, something that will keep you on time, organized, and clear on when and where you’ll post. I have a weekly schedule of what I need to do so that I can remain consistent. The way you get people to visit recurrently is consistency. If you do it randomly, it’s a waste of time; it sends a signal that you’re probably not going to be interested in them as a customer. I know that as a small business owner, it’s hard to be consistent with social media, it’s a time sink, there’s no direct result, conversion rate, or pay, but it’s worth it. I have a weekly show, a monthly meeting, a blog, and at least once a week I spend 2hrs doing social media postings. I could probably spend 6 hours and it still wouldn’t be overdoing it.

Search Engine Optimization

Type your field in google and as the suggested searches pop up, write them down. Sign up for google ad words, type in those words, and it will show you how many people a month type in phrases like that. Use search engine optimization in your writing and you boost your post, it will elevate your site in the rankings. Visual content adds to your ranking improving, tag your pictures with the correct words. Use common turn of phrase; visual content makes you more fun and more approachable to clients.

Create video vignettes, 30 sec to 3 mins of you talking. You can record straight through Youtube for free. Have visual content, find royalty free pictures that don’t require credit attribution. Check the license and you can always buy pictures from shutterstock, dreamtime, bigstock, istockphoto.

Don’t make your social media all about you and your business. Leave space for others to talk about themselves as well. Ask questions. What do they like, what do they care about, how can you help them? You want to engage people and make them want to tell others to check you out.