Social Media Strategies, align your strategies with Top Social channels

Social Media has an important role in modern digital marketing, Like inbound marketing, judging the success of your social media strategy takes time. It’s not an overnight quick-win – and the C-Suite needs to realise that investment in social media marketing will offer a genuine ROI, but only in the mid- to long-term. Each social media network has a different set of users. Therefore, you need a different strategy for each platform. What works for Twitter might not work for LinkedIn.

For example, Facebook has a more diverse user base. Therefore, it can be used to promote any kind of brand. LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B companies. They can use it to promote business related content to corporate influencers. Spend some time researching what people are looking for on various social networks. Then, align your strategies with these channels.

Some Tips for Top Social channels - Big players:

Strategy for Facebook:

• Post Videos. According to research, Facebook gets 3 billion views per day.
• Use High-definition images.
• Use online video streem - Go LIVE
• Come up with posts that capture the mood of the season or a holiday
• Change your cover to promote an event
• Keep your post brief and interesting
• Post Questions – it’s one of the best ways to strike a conversation (For example, “Which burger do you like the most? McDonald or BugerKing?
• Add call-to-actions

Strategy for Twitter:

• Optimize your bio – include a link to your website, tell people exactly what you do and how you can help them. Be precise.
• Use the advanced search feature to search by keywords and find your ideal potential customers. Go through their profiles and try to learn more about them. Then, customize your content when you are engaging with your target customers.
• Incorporate images in your twitter posts – tweets with images 313% more engagement.
• Engage with your followers on a regular basis – retweet and reply to their tweets.
• Find experts in your niche and interact with them often.
• Tweet regularly.
• Use relevant and trending hashtags

Strategy for LinkedIn:

• Pick a niche (topic) that connects to your business and keep posting consistent and interesting content.
• Come up with great headlines – this element creates the first impression of your business.
• Use Rich media to effectively convey your expertise to your prospects. (videos, slideshare Presentations and other interactive tools).
• Plan your publishing times in a way that gives your posts maximum exposure, for example schedule your posts during business hours 09:00am - 05:00pm or later afternoon over weekends.
• You can go for a sponsored ad if your budget permits.

Strategy for Google+:

• Make sure you have claimed authorship with your personal Google+ page.
• Link your website with your Google+ page. Incorporate a Google+ badge on your website, this will enable your users to follow your business on Google+ without having to leave your website.
• Try to use hashtags with every post, this will give you an added exposure. But make sure that the hashtag you are using is in sync with your topic.
• Use clear and illustrative cover photos. You can use this picture to display your new products or advertise any upcoming event.
• If you find webinars expensive, you can host Google+ hangouts. Although it supports only 10 active participants, you can stream it online to unlimited viewers through youtube.
• Join communities in your niche. If you can’t find one, you can create your own using your personal profile page.

Strategy for Instagram:

• Optimize your profile – include a link, have a consistent name and an eye-catching bio.
• Use a mix of short videos, graphics, images to know what type of content people react to the most
• Comment on other people’s content – use industry-related and brand-related hashtags
• Use fun images from your business – your office or your employees
• Follow your followers and also, reward them sometimes
• Keep a flexible posting schedule – use trending hashtags
• Carefully choose your filters
• Hold photo contests

Strategy for Pinterest:

• Make a business page (and not a profile). Thus, you can get access to analytics and advertising features which is not possible on a Pinterest profile.
• Take some time out and comment on other pins – relevant pins in your niche where people commenting can be your potential leads.
• Optimize your pins with a high definition images and classy text templates.
• Add videos to your pinboard.
• Organize all your client testimonials on a separate testimonial board.
• Go for Rich pins – it will add extra details to your pins.

Strategy for Youtube:

• Use your keywords in your channel description and make sure you include a link back to your website.
• Post simple yet unique videos.
• Interact with your fans and subscribers – thank them for their support and always reply to their comments
• Have a call-to-action at the end of every video
• Link to related videos at the end of the video
• Optimize your video description with important keywords and give a brief and precise information about the video content. Also, don’t forget to add a link your website.  

Summary of Social Media Strategy

Social media strategy success can be tracked over long periods of time, enabling you to change, tweak and hone your social targeting to improve impact rates even further, A key task is to ensure you understand why you are deploying a social media strategy in the first place – and that you have clear KPIs. 

Results of these KIP's would be very helpful to describe the achievements of your social media strategy, your efforts against each $ spent from marketing budget and your personal efforts on social marketing on promoting company brand or even generating sales leads.

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