Social Media is the Catalyst for Reach, Traffic & Leads
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This document discusses using social media as a long-term commitment, not just a marketing gimmick. It recommends having clear goals when using social media for traffic, leads, and reach. It also suggests becoming a true participant in communities by introducing value through each engagement, acting on what you learn, and moving beyond just marketing and sales messages. The document contains statistics on awareness, interest, and consideration from a 2013 Pew study on how social influences the decision process.
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Social Media is the Catalyst for Reach, Traffic & Leads
- 1. By Jeff Hough ISU Workforce Training
- 6. Edutopia
- 10. Source Pew Media Research - 2013
- 20. Clear Goals
- 26. What Do I Track?
- 30. Social media is a long-term commitment and not a marketing gimmick.
- 40. Find Solve Content Schedule
- 43. Become a true participant in each community you wish to activate. Move beyond marketing and sales
- 44. Don’t speak at audiences through canned messages. Introduce value, insight and direction with each engagement.
- 45. Don’t just listen and placate — act. Do something.
- 57. A Big Thanks:
Editor's Notes
- Poll Title: Are you using Social Media for Recruitment? http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/uWuQzHDbmvLpmKI
- Poll Title: What is your primary channel: http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/v25KTBWpHB9Zrcd
- Poll Title: How often do you post to Social Media? http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/CFiuHITD59iKOsQ
- Poll Title: Do you feel like you have the time to do it right? http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/WEuN4FY9eERHPlf
- For many youth, Social Media becomes their voice
- With so many choices out there, often participating in Social Media seems overwhelming, but it is where our customers are.
- The world of social media is a young and constantly changing landscape filled with new terms.
- Social Media is an integral piece of your entire digital Marketing Program.
- Social media alone using organic content creation and engagement holds value but definitely only in the short term. Without an integrated approach, social media programs will fail. If you integrate social media with your other marketing programs, then the long-term success will show a value that is more than just feeding the funnel but it will show social media as the catalyst that enriches and drives prospects through the funnel.
- The First step in the process of social media success is to set clear goals of what you would like to accomplish. You goals will serve as your roadmap for where you are trying to go as you travel through the social media landscape.
- One of the first goals that everyone thinks about is driving traffic to the website. But I would ask you, what is the purpose of your website? Is it informational, is it used to sell, does it interact with your customers at all? What do you want them to do once they get to your website? Does the way you got them to your website match what they will see when they get there?
- The next logical goal would be to generate sales leads. Of all the people using social media, which ones are you looking for, and how do you find them?One of the big buzzwords in online marketing is “Inbound Marketing”
- Inbound marketing is primarily comprised of three things: Social Media, Blogging or Content Creation, and Search Engine Optimization efforts.Inbound marketing is designed to bring the customers to you, rather than you to them. This type of marketing is different than traditional marketing where you blast out information, and try to reach everyone. Inbound marketing is about targeting specific individuals and creating content just for them, and putting it in places they can easily find it.Inbound Marketing does away with traditional demographics and begins to focus on specific behaviors, likes and dislikes.
- A third goal would be to increase your reach. By increasing your reach, I mean beyond your local community.Serving your local market is important, but there are many people out there who would use your service or buy your goods if they new about it.Internet marketing makes it easy to reach the world, if that is what you would like to do.
- The fourth goal you may have is to increase your customer support options.Social media give you an avenue to be able to listen to your customers and really find out what their wants and needs are.You now have many channels that you can tap into to get a clear picture of what is going on.
- How do you track your goals?Google AnalyticsFacebook Insights, Twitter CounterCall Volume for your customer support
- make sure your upper-management team believes in social media and that the first goal is not to sell, sell, sell. In other words, if your business is jumping into social media because “everyone else is doing it” or because you want to sell product rather than to build relationships, please step away from social media. Social media is a long-term commitment and not a marketing gimmick.
- Begin to build the plan by Research, Research, and Research Some MoreRather than jumping into the social media pool with both feet, do the equivalent of the “splash-water-on-self” maneuver so you know what to expect. Develop a list of social media sites where you can potentially engage with people. The list will most likely start off with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a few select blogs and forums.Check out each of the social media sites on your list and do additional research to determine relevancy by searching for your brand name, your competitors, and your target keywords. Listen to what’s out there, identify, and understand your target audience.
- #1: Find Your Target Audience.The first step in social media planning is largely the first step in identifying your brand—determine who you are and who your customers are.What unique aspect of your product or service attracts your target population?Are you a veteran business coach who works with small entrepreneurs? A grandmother and knitter who likes to teach others how to create gifts?You’ll need to determine what your readers want to know from you, what their likes and dislikes are and where they congregate.You’ll also need to find the right tone. The “social” in social media requires a conversational approach, but you still need to speak your clients’ language.Be sure you know the lingo and style that your clients are comfortable with and where they talk to each other—on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs or on social bookmarking sites.Write out a basic profile for your most common type of client or customer. How would you classify them in terms of education, hobbies, tech-savviness and time spent engaging in social networking?
- #2: Solve Readers’ Most Important Problems.Become a reporter/editor.Sharing information on social media is essentially about becoming a reporter/editor for those who take part in your industry or your passion for your product or service. As a newspaper editor asks herself, so must you: “What do the readers really want to know?”Most newspaper editors today have to admit that what readers want is tomorrow’s news yesterday. So be timely. Your clients have specific issues that need solving, whether they’re about your product or service or their own business struggles that you can help untangle.Pick the right sources.Research will be a big part of your social media planning, so make sure your sources are on the cutting edge of your topic.You’ll also want to provide analysis to help guide your readers’ absorption of the information you provide. Most readers today—of any format—don’t feel they have the time to connect all the dots, so tell them why the information you’re sharing is relevant to them.Do the work for them by writing on point, underscoring the impacts and keeping the content valuable. You’ll be rewarded with clients, followers and fans who trust your information and know you won’t waste their time.Sit down now and write a list of burning questions the people you would like to have as fans and followers are asking. Later, you will conduct regular research to keep this list current. For now, the most pressing questions that are top of mind should form the initial core of the topics for your editorial plan.
- #3: Decide How You’ll Fulfill the Content.Who will regularly do the information-gathering, writing and distribution for your content? Is it you? Or maybe you have staff that can do it. Before you can determine volume and frequency, you’ll want to figure out what your business can reasonably deliver.One thing to keep in mind: whatever schedule you set for yourself or your staff will no doubt require more time than you think, especially in the beginning. Getting started with social media content has a learning curve, so be prepared for the extra time needed to get comfortable with the process.According to the recent 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, most business owners can maintain a very respectable social media presence in six hours a week, including research and production time.
- #4: Schedule Your ContentTo schedule your content, consider what formats you will be sending and how often. Applications such as TweetDeck, HootSuite and SocialOomph will let you simultaneously post to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.But a strong word of caution here. Automating posts, when done carefully, is an effective way of pushing content when you can’t be there to do it yourself. But consider the following:Twitter and Facebook both have applications that will push to the other when you post to one, so know if you have set that up.Whatever Facebook RSS app you use to pull your blog posts to your profile or fan page may also be given permission to update automatically.If given the proper permissions, HootSuite and TweetDeck (and others) can push content automatically, without you scheduling it, so they may also tweet a new blog post, for instance, when you’ve already done so using another app.All of these various permissions can lead to an embarrassing loop of repeat tweets and/or Facebook status updates if you’re not careful. Consider going manual until you understand exactly which permissions you have opted into for each platform.
- Step three is all about engagementInteraction with you community, networking within your industry.Think Rock Star!!
- Quality Over QuantityYou don’t have to post every day to create an effective presence with your social media. Find the frequency that makes sense for your business and go with that. Remember, quality must always trump quantity. If you can’t maintain the quality level of your content at the rate you’re trying for, reduce the frequency until you can.Whew! Seems a lot to do, right? Well, the beauty of content planning is that it will create its own cycle. Use responses and questions you get to one area of content to begin planning your approach to deepen understanding on a given topic or to explore another.The single most important component to your editorial planning should be your ability to absorb new information and create valuable content from it.