Anita Pinkerton
5 Social Media Marketing Tips
We provide Social Media Marketing services as part of our SEM offerings and over the last year, we’ve learned a few things from doing Social Media Marketing for ourselves and our clients. We’d like to share these with you, and hear what your experiences have been in the world of Social Media. These are general tips on what to and not to do to grow a successful Social Media Marketing program.
Have a Clear Goal for Your Program
Many times, companies will launch a Social Media Marketing program in haste and get so caught up in the idea of doing SMM, they forget to plan and organize the program. The mentality is often, “Let’s just get out there and start talking to people. How hard can it be to set up a few profiles and start typing?” Even though it’s a relatively new area, Social Media Marketing is still MARKETING.
Give Your Program Resources
Another factor companies often overlook is that you can’t just “set it and forget it” with Social Media Marketing. Companies need to assign resources, I mean real live people, to actively monitor and manage their online presence on social media sites. Social Media takes time and effort to do well, and underestimating the importance of assigned resources guarantees failure.
Engage Your Audience
More than probably any other medium, Social Media gives companies a chance to be human. Through sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo, YouTube and a myriad of others, companies can engage their audiences in ways they couldn’t before. It’s an interactive environment that affords the opportunity to get personal and address prospects and customers directly. Any content posted should be relevant to the audience and add some sort of value, rather than just being copied from standard marketing collateral pieces or tired press releases.
Track Progress
In order for any program to be successful and receive internal backing, you must be able to measure the effects of the program. I am a firm advocate of, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This sometimes stretches traditional marketers out of their creative comfort zone by asking them to be a little more analytical, but it is more than worth the effort. Tracking results from a program may be as simple as gauging visits from a particular source or checking to see if Google is capturing links to your site from the targeted Social Media site.
Be Patient! Be Persistent!
Social Media, like most organic traffic generation methods, takes time to show results. It can take 6 months to a year for a Social Media program to fully mature and deliver the results you are looking for. Once you establish goals, and tactics to reach those goals, consistently follow your plan and keep at it!
What have you learned from your Social Media Marketing efforts? We’d love to hear from you.
Love your article. Our company is full of young, highly motivated individuals and we are all about anything “web 2.0″. We have been in the HigherEd industry for a few years now and we are looking for new ways to reach existing and new customers.
We have been using traditional methods to gain insight but also experimenting with twitter, blogging, Facebook as well as others. Thanks for the tips!
I’m moving from software set up to monitor and meausure social media to the analysis and engagement of social media itself. This post covers all the basics–thanks. Social media is like any relationship: an investment that requires sustained engagement and trust.
i do Social Media Marketing specially when promoting a new website or an affiliate product. Social media is more effective than offline advertising in my opinion.