Social Media Marketing
It is 2016 and we are still talking about social media marketing. Believe it or not, there are still companies that have not embraced social media as a means to improve marketing, customer service, lead generation and product development. Believe it or not they WILL come around in time.
Social media despite it having the capability to reach hundreds of millions of users, it offers a platform where new clients can be found and existing clients nurtured and harnessed into loyal brand ambassadors who are proud to be associated with your brand and in that process they become sort of your marketers.
Once you decide to come around and do social media marketing, there are a whole bunch of factors you need to consider. Such as do you have a social media strategy? What will be your brand persona? How will your strategy line up with your business objectives? And many many more.
As such, we decided to help ease of the burden by giving you these free best practices and things to remember when it comes to social media publishing.
1. One Size Does Not Fit All
You know those studies out there that proclaim to tell you what is the best day and time to post to Facebook or Twitter to achieve maximum engagement? Forget them. You and you alone will know what works best for your audience, especially if you are properly reviewing your social listening data. Your audience may engage the most on weekends. And global companies need to take multiple time zones into account.
2. Ensure Consistency
One of the biggest mistakes brands make is not establishing a consistent publishing schedule when doing their social media marketing. It is vitally important to have a consistent message going out via the social media platforms that work best for you and your brand.
3. Indulging in the Platforms that work best for YOU.
There is a veritable plethora of social media platforms to use, including the big boys: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The key is to know what platforms work best for your audience—what platforms help you achieve your goals. Don’t dive right into Snapchat for example. Test it out. But if it’s not the right fit, it’s not the right fit. Period.
4. Be In Sync With Marketing
A huge part of social media publishing is to share content that your company created. And the best way to do that is ensure your social media publishing calendar is aligned with all content and demand generation marketing objectives.
5. Data
Metrics and social media can be complicated. But they don’t need to be. Just determine what key performance indicators (KPIs) matter to you most in terms of aligning with your overall goals and go from there. If over time, your KPIs change, fine. Then change them and measure and track accordingly.
6. Mobile, Mobile, and More Mobile
According to comScore, 76% of all time spent on social media channels is logged with a mobile device. . This should come as no surprise. Your website and blog should be optimized for mobile, but make sure your share buttons are too.
Social Drives the Relationship
Remember, post frequently but strategically, understand your audience by listening, publish content that resonates, engage them, and measure your success, you will make great social strides in this digital world.
Source: Social Media Best Practices | Oracle Marketing Cloud
