Six Social Media Strategies That Work For All Industries
Whether you are marketing in a B2B or B2C market, these tips will help you make more strategic use of your time online.
While I specialise in social media and content marketing for the healthcare industry, the principles of online communication are applicable across industries.
Getting the most out of social media marketing involves more than just setting up social media accounts and periodically sharing updates. To make the most of social media, you need a solid strategy.
Regardless of whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer in a regulated industry, these tips can help you make better use of your time online.
1. Analyse What’s Working for Your Competitors and Industry Peers
Your competitors and industry peers are valuable sources of insight.
Take a look at the content your competitors are creating. Identify which content is performing well based on social shares, comments, likes, etc. Now imagine how you could rework a piece of content they've created with your own unique take.
Take Action:?Undertake a full audit of how your competition operates on social media with my competitor audit guide.
2. Choose The Right Social Network For Your Audience
Not all social media is created equal. Different platforms attract different audiences.
You need to focus your social media efforts in ways that will generate the most return for your efforts. If you have limited resources, this is especially important.
Why waste time on a social network if your audience isn't there? Also, do not spread yourself too thin by being everywhere all at once. With every platform your business uses, you'll need to spend additional time and effort creating tailored content for that platform.
Take Action:?Before becoming active on a social network, try answering the following questions to help you choose the platform that is right for you.
(i) Will this platform help me achieve my marketing goals?
(ii) Is my target audience active on this platform?
(iii) Will this platform match the content I create?
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3. Create a Social Media Style Guide
A social media style guide helps build trust with your audience through steady and consistent brand messaging.
Having a social media style guide will ensure that you present consistent communication across all platforms. Whether you're a team of one or have several employees posting to your social media accounts, you should create a style guide that details how posts should be written and presented.
Take Action:?Your style guide should define the following:
4. Research Long-Tail Keywords
93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, so good keyword research is critical for your content marketing.
Identifying the terms that people are searching for will influence the type of content you create and how you optimise it. Long-tail keywords are those that are more specific – and usually longer—than more commonly searched for keywords (50 percent of search queries are four words or longer). They receive less search traffic but have a higher conversion value because they are more specific.
Take Action:?The Google Keyword Planner within Adwords is a useful tool to find ideas for content based on keyword searches.
5. Add Images To All Your?Posts
Study after study confirms that how you create and share content matters — with visual content leading the way.
You’ve surely heard this before, but it’s worth reiterating: images matter — a lot. Visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
Take action: Add an image to all your online posts — even those that are text-based. To aid brand recognition and create a strong visual identity, maintain consistency across all your images by sticking to the same colours, fonts, and layouts.
6. Set Up A Social Media Monitoring Dashboard
Use listening tools to become not just a master listener but a master responder.
Social media is a two-way conversation that requires you to listen more than you talk. Recommit to listening, genuinely responding, and engaging with those people who take the time to interact with your social profiles and your content.
Take Action: There are many free and paid monitoring tools that can help you monitor social media. These tools vary in scope and range across the number of sites, the sophistication of analytics, integration with other applications, and of course, price. An easy — and free way — to get started is to set up simple Google Alerts for your own name, your brand name, and industry-specific keywords.