Developing the right Strategy for you and your Business

Digital Marketing and Social Media encompasses many moving pieces that work together to to attract and engage prospects, convert leads into customers, and transform buyers into raving fans.

Developing the right Strategy for you and your business is a critical part to the process, helping you get closer to meeting your marketing goals. This can include…

Developing a Social Media Strategy

First, decide which Social Media networks / platforms work best for your business. For example, if you're a B2B company, or you sell luxury goods, Pinterest and Instagram may not be the best choice for you. If you're targeting a younger audience, Snapchat might suit you better.

Secondly, ascertain what it is you want to achieve with your digital strategies. Are you looking to drive traffic to your website? Or perhaps increase brand awareness? Or maybe sell more of your product? Whatever it is that you are looking to achieve, make sure that all of your efforts are working towards this goal.

Once you have decided on the Social Media networks / platforms that will work best for your business and what it is that you would like to achieve with these platforms, it's time to start planning out how exactly you are going to support these digital strategies.

Developing Paid Advertising Campaigns

This is the fun part of your marketing strategy. Creating paid campaigns includes:

Understanding where your ideal prospects hang-out (your Customer Avatar is a priority exercise), which platforms work best, what size budget, and remember, 80% of Ad share is across Google and Facebook.

Developing well thought out copy that incorporates a call to action for your target audience. This takes time, so don’t rush it.

Fully understanding how the platform you are using works, including the use of pixels to track conversions.

Creating your Social Profiles

This is your Name, Logo, Tag Line, Bio, Description, etc, etc. Ensure these are consistent across your platforms. Create a standard in word, then when you alter it, you know you've got to amend on all platforms.

Create a 6-word bio – how would you describe what you do in 6 words?

Create a 30-second elevator pitch – use the 6 words and expand into more detail about what you do

Create a 60-second elevator pitch – use the 30-second pitch as a springboard and expand further. You should now have enough information to adjust as needed for each platform.

Creating and Posting Content

The trickiest of things to keep on top of, but Routine and Consistency are key here. (Download this FREE Social Media Content Planner to get you started).

Respond to Comments – your followers will expect a response to their comments and questions, so don’t ignore them!

Engage with Other Pages and Profiles – liking, commenting, sharing and tagging will help you gain exposure to new audiences.

Make sure you have your Brand Guidelines in place – so that all your content is consistent.

Share Other People’s Content (with their permission) – It’s important that you are not always selling your own services or products, people like a balance.

Creating a Social Media Schedule

This will be your most valuable tool in establishing a seamless social media schedule. It helps you to stay on top of which social networks you're posting to each day and what type of posts are working best for you.

The first step is to create the type of post that you'll be consistently sharing, whether it's blog content or images and quotes. You can do this by typing up the content in a word or excel document and saving it as a draft or by using tools like Promorepublic to create the copy, graphics and schedule it for a specific date and time all in one go.

Responding to Fans and Followers

Responding to Fans and Followers – Social Media is about engagement, ensure you respond in a timely manner, keep the conversation going with additional questions, building that Know, Like and Trust factor.

There are so many great benefits to social networking for your business; here are just a few:

• Increase brand awareness
  
• Increase targeted traffic
  
• Build relationships with your customers
  
• Establish yourself as an expert within your industry or niche
  
• Learn more about your target market

Tracking Performance

The basics of marketing are pretty simple. By finding the right mix of content and tactics, you can get your message out to the right people at the right time. But even this basic formula has its challenges.

It's important to track how your efforts are working. If you're not tracking performance, then you'll never know whether or not you're winning these battles and making progress towards your goals.

(you can download our Social Media Effectiveness Tracker Here.

Conclusion