4 Traits of Successful Social Media Marketers

Social media success requires a unique blend of personality traits and work habits. Any social media marketer or marketing team must be creative, dedicated, strategic, and have time to carry out a successful social campaign.

3-out-of-4 Not Good Enough

You or your team may posses three of these traits, but that’s not enough to achieve exceptional results. Below I will show you what your social media marketing could look like when your team is missing just one key trait.

Time + Creativity + Dedication = Missing the Mark

Your team is dedicated to social media success and has the time to pull it off - a great combination! As a bonus, you have several creative ideas for campaigns, promotions, and contests. You’re destined for success, right? Not so fast.

Your team may be highly creative and motivated, but the first step in any successful social media campaign is the strategic plan. Without a clearly defined strategy, your creative posts and promotions are just a shot in the dark.

What It Looks Like:

• Posts that don’t follow a particular theme
• Posts speaking to different audiences or personas
• Low engagement, possibly from misguided platform use
• Frequent, highly creative posts that aren’t getting any traction

Start by defining your audience. This should be tied to your overall marketing plan, objectives, and target personas. Next, find out where your audience is hanging out online. Don’t just blindly follow trends. If your B2B healthcare software audience is not using Instagram, don’t waste your time there. Create a quarterly social media theme, carefully plan promotions, and draft a content calendar. Then enlist your highly creative team to craft social shares to meet your goals.

Time + Creativity + Strategy = Short-lived Greatness

When strategic minds and creative minds converge, the results are often a well thought out, original, and inspired marketing plan. Having the time to carry out your creative and strategic social media plans is essential, but time and dedication are two different things. 

Even with all the time in the world, you and your team will not carry out your plans to their full potential without complete social media dedication. Your team must be committed to the plan and should also get buy-in from the executive team to ensure the company as a whole supports social media.

What It Looks Like:

• A few sporadic, creative posts
• A burst of social media genius that fizzles out and leaves followers in the dark

Time + Dedication + Strategy = Lackluster Performance

A marketing team that possesses time and dedication is in a great position to carry out a social media marketing plan. Add in a strategic mindset and your team is well on its way to social media greatness. 

Your team is committed, you have buy-in from corporate leadership, and you have the time to execute your strategic plans. However, if your team lacks creativity, even your best-laid social media plans could fall flat. Uninspired, unimaginative social media posts will not get the engagement or attention needed for true social success.

What It Looks Like:

• Consistent posts following a theme
• Posts centered on industry and seasonally relevant topics
• Riding the wave of industry news and trends
• Lack of variation in post types (very few images, videos, etc.)
• Low engagement, shares, follows, etc.

Creativity + Dedication + Strategy = Failure to Launch

You’ve crafted a strategic social media marketing plan, enlisted creative writers and designers to help build campaigns, and your team is collectively dedicated to making social media work for your business. Check, check, and check.

With everything falling into place, your team is destined for social success! That is until you find there just aren’t enough hours in the day to execute. Even the most talented and dedicated team simply cannot follow through with a social media strategy if they don’t have enough time to do so. Be sure to carve out time in everyone’s schedules to complete social media tasks and stay on schedule.

What It Looks Like:

• Little to no posting consistency
• Some creative posts
• One awesome campaign followed by months of radio silence
• An optimized, visually appealing profile that never gets off the ground

Are You Ready for Social Success?

Compile a dedicated team including creative minds, get buy-in from your leadership team, and schedule execution time and ongoing social media meetings to keep the team on track and ensure the longevity of your campaigns!