Social Media Digging Deeper Pt 2

5 Steps To Success in Social Media

      What are the things you need to do on a regular basis, day in and day out on each social media platform to be sure you are adhering to best practices?

1 Listen. Listen to the conversations that are going on in social media. Pay attention to your potential customers conversations so you can reach out and help them. Know your key phrases like shellac, or pedicure or minx, you can search for these words on any social media platform.

2 Building community. You need to get people to like, friend and follow your business. After community building you want to start number 3.

3 Broadcasting. Talking to our customers and potential customers in social media.

4 Content. So seeing as broadcasting is the hook, content answers why they are going there in the first place. This is where we can lead with value and help our customers make educated buying decisions. Content needs to be valuable enough that they will read and share.

5 Conversion. All these efforts must result in our potential customer asking for additional information from us or about our business. Make sure there are plenty of opportunities within your content and on your pages to assist them in taking action.

     What is the best way to build community? Paul Slack uses the acronym BAM. We've got to build community before we can activate community, before we can monetize community. The easiest thing to do is to utilize the traffic you already have coming to your site. Simply make sure that the follow us information is on every page of your website. He recommends these icons placed in the top right of every page. Make it easy for your visitors to connect with via social media. Another recommendation is to cross promote. let visitors know on Facebook that you are active on twitter , maybe you have an active you tube channel or are on linked in. Send out an email to your database that you are active on social media. Constant contact has templates specifically designed for these types of messages. His number one strategy is search engine optimization. He believes social media marketing and seo are synonymous today. Offer a reason to follow you, maybe alerts for specials and contests. Tell people to like you follow you and share your content. Social media marketing is traditional marketing turned inside out and upside down. we are no longer in control of the conversation, our customers are. we are simply along for the ride, not pushing our products and services but providing help and opportunity when appropriate. The number one platform he recommends is a blog.

     Your blog should be your central command post. The shelf life of blog posts are infinite as opposed to a tweet or status update. When your blog is at the center of your social media you are in a much better position to capture customers over in the long run. Remember we don't own the database on any other platform but this. If you get locked out of Facebook your contacts are lost. So what does a winning blog campaign look like? You must have remarkable content. Your followers must want to read it and share it. Stories are a great way to deliver content, a good blogger is a good storyteller. Figure out the questions your customers want answered and answer it by telling a great story. make sure your content is organized. No one wants to read a thousand word copy with no images. Write in bullet points so your information is easily scanned. Make sure you have great headlines and great sub headlines, asking a question is always good. Make sure what impact your blog is having by measuring how much it is shared. We also want to be able to measure conversation, by how many people took that next step. You also need a strong content plan. he refers back to the universal marketing funnel.

      Awareness stage, creating appealing content. Evaluation or is your content helping your potential customer make a buying decision. Lastly decision content should explain to them why they should buy from you and no one else. Plan your content strategy a quarter at a time. That would look like one blog post per week, 12 every quarter. 2 should be decision pieces e why they should buy from you, 5 should be awareness pieces, something that would benefit them even when they are not in the market for it the other 5 should be evaluation pieces, helping them decide what their buying criteria is. These posts intermixed will address different buyer types at the various stages of the buying process. Next you have to have a promotion schedule. Tune in next week for part three.