Posted on: October 23, 2017
By Megan Crowder, Marshall Communications Account Coordinator/Social Media Strategist
Social mediaFind yourself having a case of social anxiety? Don’t worry, that’s very common when it comes to approaching digital marketing on several platforms. The first step is simple—you know your brand. Now it’s time to know the platforms specific to your brand and how to craft messages that will reach the right people with the best message.
Time plays a huge role in social media marketing; there’s simply not enough time to go around. That’s why we’re here to help with tips and tricks for you to add into your social media strategy. If you find yourself not having any time at all, we suggest taking a look at our services.
We understand that each platform is ever changing and the updates can add frustration to your social learning, so at the end we’ve included some tools that are out there that you might not be aware of.
Today, ask yourself these questions with your company’s goals and objectives in mind.
- Why should my company be promoting on social media?
You may think, well, everyone’s doing it, but that’s not the reason to spend time, energy and a part of your marketing budget on social media. With the right tools, and keeping in mind overall company goals and objectives, social media can be an easy way to reach your audience and provide them with answers to their questions. - Who are we trying to reach?
Social media provides two-way communication pathways to your potential consumers. Social media makes it easy for companies to reach target audiences; markets are there and easily accessible. The key to reaching them is to know who you are targeting and what they want to hear. - Where do they live?
Now, this isn’t just about where they live geographically—we’ll get into to the nitty-gritty of targeting later on—this is about what platforms your target is using daily. Each target is different and the messages provided need to vary depending on the platform. It’s not necessarily beneficial to be spending time and energy on multiple platforms, so we recommend doing one platform well, rather than doing a poor job on several. - Who are they really?
For targeting your boosted posts and creating ad sets for campaigns, add in all the details. Where is your audience geographically, how old are they, what are their spending habits, do they access social from a desktop or a mobile device? Think outside of the box when it comes to their behaviors and interests. All this is for reaching an audience that you don’t already have access to, but don’t forget the audience that is already at your fingertips. Do you have an email list for your current newsletter? Or, a general contact list? These lists can easily be imported into Facebook Ads Manager for targeting. - But wait, is it working?
One word, measurement. See how your boosted posts/ads are working. Test different ad sets, and try different times for posting based on your analytics. It should all come down to measurement. Are you getting the most bang out of your buck?
We know, social media is a huge beast to conquer, but start by asking yourself these questions. Once you’re feeling on target with your social media marketing strategy or maybe looking for new things to try, here are some social media tools that you may not have been aware of.
- Facebook Business Manager – Facebook Business Manager is ideal for businesses looking to make their pages more secure. This is a great tool for companies who manage several pages or have several different people monitoring, posting or engaging with the platform. If someone managing an account were to leave your current company, it is easy to remove their access from Business Manager and therefore make the account more secure.
- Automatically self-destructing posts – As you know, Facebook timelines and newsfeeds are mainly full of photos and videos. Facebook is trying to bring back the popularity of text posts with a new feature that allows users to post status updates that automatically disappear after a set amount of time. Similar to SnapChat, this new tool is geared toward getting users to spend more time on the platform.
- Free version of HootSuite – Spend less time posting and more time engaging. HootSuite is a user-friendly social media management program that lets you schedule posts and monitor within the platform. The free account allows up to three social media profiles, basic analytics and ability to schedule 30 messages.
- TweetDeck – This social media dashboard allows Twitter profile management of accounts. Similar to HootSuite monitoring, TweetDeck enables users to send and receive Tweets and monitor keywords, competitors and hashtags.
- New and improved character limit on Twitter – Twitter recently doubled the 140 character limit for status updates to 280 characters for select business users. This is great news for brands because there is now space to provide more information through Tweets.
- Instagram Insights – Much like Facebook, Instagram now provides insights to brands about their followers, engagement and reach. To access Insights, brands will have to make their account a business page. This is done in settings by adding an email to the account.
