Harnessing the power of content and social media marketing can help boost your audience and customer base dramatically. However, getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.
It’s important that you understand social media marketing fundamentals before you start.
Listen
Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Check your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. By doing so, you can create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.
Focus
It’s better to specialize than to be a master of none. A highly focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.
Be Mindful of Quality
Quality is always better than quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who engage with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you for the first time.
Be Patient
Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen at a click of a button. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.
Focus on Compounding
If you post quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook etc.
This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches.
Be an Influencer
Find online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with them and build relationships with them.
Focus on the Value You Offer
If you spend all your time on social media directly promoting your products and services, people will stop following you. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.
Don’t hard sell.
Acknowledge Your Audience
You wouldn’t turn a blind eye on someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of having a successful social media marketing campaign, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.
Be Accessible and Easy to Reach
Don’t post your content and then disappear. Be available to your followers. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversation threads. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.
Observe the Law of Reciprocity
You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t share their posts as well. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and engaging your audiences about content published by others.
