4 Problems (and fixes) Your Social Media Plan Might Have

Every day I speak with business owners and marketers that run into two common problems

when it comes to their social media plan. One being that they have a lack of understanding about how to get started, and the second being that they don't understand the impact social media can have on their business. This article focuses on the first issue above in terms of how to successfully implement best practices into your social media plan.

1. Make Sure That You Are Linking to Content On Your Website

This is one of the first things that we look for when people approach us for help with their social media marketing. Too often I see that many social profiles of businesses are frequently posting on several sites but none of the links direct people back to articles, ebooks, or other content on their actual website.

Of course there is a time and place for linking out to other resources besides your own on social media, but when it becomes the heart and soul of your social strategy it only leads to frustrated marketers and less visits and leads coming to your company page.

Try This Instead:

Instead of scouring the internet for articles to post on your social accounts try finding a great piece of "ever green" content on your website that you would like to promote (evergreen content is content that will always remain relevant to your prospects no matter how much time has passed since you have written it).

Take your evergreen content and start scheduling some social media posts around its contents. Many times we will take tidbits of information or quotes and turn them into multiple social media messages. If you do this correctly you can find yourself with a dozen or more social media posts just around a single article you have written. This actively promotes content already on your site and draws viewers in with a sneak peak of what's to come in the article!

2. Take Part In, Or Start Discussions on Social Media

Actively engaging in social media is a great way to beef up your reach and the ROI of your social media business plan. It is extremely important that you reach out to prospects, thought leaders, and others in your social media community. Now and then I will run accross businesses who do actively engage with prospects online but they are approaching almost like a sales pitch. Success online is measured by how much value you are delivering to your community, sales pitches don't work here, you're going to have to work a little bit harder if you want any online interaction to be successful.

Try This Instead:

Ok so lets start getting out there and interacting with our prospects online. One way to do this is through LinkedIn discussions. Navigate to the groups section on LinkedIn and start looking around for groups that are related to your products and services. Start joining and participating in on the conversations taking place in these groups. The goal here is to become a thought leader in your industry and intrigue people with your knowledge in the areas they struggle with. Once you start participating in group discussions you'll need to start a few of your own as well. Write up an article on your blog about some issues your prospects will find valuable and purpose a question in one of your LinkedIn group about it and share the link to your article as additional resources for help, start these discussions in several groups throughout the week that you post the article and you'll see an uptick in your web traffic.

3. Utilize Lists In Your Twitter Marketing Efforts

Twitter is a fantastic tool for social interaction and lead genration, if used correctly of course. If you login to your Twitter account and scroll up and down your stream of followers it can become quite difficult to pick and choose who to interact with, find great new content, or to form new relationships with your followers. Twitter lists are very similar to your main tweet stream but they are simply composed of Twitter users whom you have separated into different groups, for instance, we have a list called "Rochester Businesses" that is simply a stream of tweets from businesses in the Rochester, NY area. We use this list to interacting and prospecting among businesses that are local. So if you aren't utilizing Twitter lists yet:

Try This Instead:

Navigate to https://twitter.com/lists and click "create a list," here you can start segmenting different users into groups based on whatever criteria you want. You can create a list for local businesses, one for influential Twitter accounts in your industry, one for current customers, etc..Breaking down the Twitter stream into highly segmented lists allows you to more easily navigate and interact with everyone in your network. For some more information on utilzing Twitter lists, check out this great article by Dave Delaney.

4. Schedule All of Your Social Media Posts In Advance

A lot of business owners and marketers, believe it or not, are still spending time every day to update their social media accounts, wasting valuable time that could be spent on other marketing activities, like blogging! It can become extremely easy to slack off on your social posting schedule if you continue to do it this way. Something could come up during the time you usually send out your posts and before you know it the day is over and nothing has been sent out to your followers and fans. From there the domino effect starts to begin and before you know it, you're not posting at all!

Try This Instead:

There are several tools available to aid you in your social media posting schedule. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer are great for beginners that are new to social media marketing. These tools allow you to sit down at the beginning of the week and schedule all of your upcoming posts at once. Within a half an hour you can schedule a week or two's worth of posts! Then you're done and you can move on to other things like making sales calls and closing new customers.

So there you have it, 4 common problems marketers have with their social media business plan, and 4 quick fixes. For a more in-depth look at social media, check out our social media tune-up ebook

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