Do you have a social media strategy? If not, consider this an intervention, friend.
We’re here to talk about your denial of the power and traffic potential of social media and how it’s affecting your website. Remember, this comes from a place of love. We just want you to get better!
Whether you like it or not, social media is where it’s at. Just consider some of these stats:
What does this tell us? Well, there are a ton of people and businesses using social media — and chances are your grandma is, too!
Immense traffic and business potential await you in social media land. But the importance of social media goes far beyond the sheer volume of people using it.
There are plenty of reasons why you need to have and implement a social media content strategy as part of your online efforts.
Here’s a couple of the most important ones:
So, if you want more traffic that is better engaged, diversifies your traffic sources and helps your SEO, then you need to make sure you have a social media strategy in place.
Social media marketing involves so many pieces that it’s often very hard to figure out where to start. So many platforms, so much content to create and a constant barrage of shiny new things to steal your attention away — it can be mind-numbing.
So, we decided to lay out a basic social media strategy that anyone can start up today. Take a deep breath, put one foot in front of the other and get going!
If you’re just starting off on your social media adventure, then your attention and resources need to be focused on the three biggest social media networks:
Once you have profiles on the biggest of the social media platforms up and running, it’s time to turn your attention to the next two in line.
Lucky for you, they are both image-centric, which makes your content creation process a lot simpler and more fun.
Start posting on these sites to start a following on the next two largest social media platforms out there.
Depending on your niche and the type of content your audience enjoys consuming, you might need to consider these honorable mentions:
There has been more content written about these sites than you can swing a cat at.
If you want to delve deeper and get into the real nitty-gritty details on each, there are plenty of resources. But don’t feel like you need to be an expert on each before you start.
Depending on the site and system, there are different specifics you need to address to optimize your social media efforts. But speaking generally, in order to start seeing benefits from your social media efforts you need to:
There is a cardinal rule of marketing your business on social media that you absolutely must follow if you want to even sniff the sweet smells of success…
90 percent of your content should be focused on providing value to your audience. 10 percent can be devoted to selling.
Nobody wants to be sold to constantly. Just like with your SEO content marketing, you want to create content that elevates you to the level of "expert" in the eyes of your audience. Achieve that and they will come to you with wallets open!
Most importantly, be human. Ease up on selling and just try to engage with your followers and fans. Be helpful, just like in SEO, and people will want to do business with you.
Additionally, you will want to focus on visual content. Posts with images, video, infographics and other visual content get more engagement and will endear you to your audience even quicker.
After you have your bases covered with the biggest five social media networks out there, make sure you keep your ear to the digital ground to identify up-and-coming platforms.
These two relative newcomers should be on your radar already:
You never know what’s going to blow up next! If you can have a solid following on a social network before it gets really huge, you’re sitting pretty!
It’s time to face facts about your lack of social media engagement.
It’s not going anywhere, and unless you want to be left behind or depend on one source for your business’s success, you need to get on the bandwagon!
This guide is just the tip of iceberg, but don’t let that scare you. You’re never going to completely master marketing on any of these sites. Even if you’re the Neo of social media and can stop bullets Matrix-style, these sites are always changing.
Mastery is not necessary. Participation is!