Social media marketing has become an important part of any successful online business. They are important for offline businesses as well, but critical to an online business. Because it’s a relatively new concept very few companies effectively use it in their marketing efforts.
Most business owners create their profiles in social networks like Facebook and Twitter and resort to posting updates about their product or service. You can get away with this if you’re a big brand but when small companies do this they look like spammers. Below are few things you can do to fine tune your social media marketing efforts and make you look awesome in social media.
Tracking Tweets, Likes and Clicks
You can’t fine tune anything without tracking, so this is a must in your marketing efforts. All the main social networking sites have plenty of tools to do this very easily. If it’s a Facebook page you can check the insights tab to get detailed information about your updates. You can see who liked your page and how the likes are increasing etc. You can see which updates are popular and post more similar updates.
Twitter also provides some basic information in the “mentions and more” tab. You can see who followed you, who re-tweeted your posts and people who have mentioned you. If you want tracking done up to link level you can use link shortening service that offers analytic tools. When you have these information you know which posts are getting popular, what is the best time to tweet, who are the power users more likely to tweet your content and much more information.
Scheduling Tweets, Facebook Updates
Once you have the data it becomes easy to target your audience. Once you identified the best times to post updates you can schedule them using a service like HootSuite or BufferApp.
However it is important to combine you social media data with your other data like sales figures. If you have more buying customers from Europe and USA it makes sense to target them, even though they are not the most responsive of your followers. It is a tricky balance and you will find the right balance only after experimenting.
Sharing Other Useful Information
To be successful in social media you need to attract people to your Facebook page and Twitter profiles. Best way to do that is by posting useful and interesting content. Just posting updates and information about your product makes you look boring and uninteresting. Instead post other stuff relevant to your niche. Your followers will appreciate this and recognize you as a source of cool information. They will start to share your updates with their friends exposing you to a wider audience.
It is important to remember that one re-tweet from a Twitter power user can bring you a flood of followers and it’s one of the best ways to increase Twitter followers. Great photography, funny quotes are some of the universally accepted things that can be used in any niche, so make sure to mix them up with your regular tweets. Another advantage is when you start sharing content of others they will also start to take notice. They will also reciprocate by sharing your content and this leads to more exposure. Social media is about giving, and the more you give more you will get.
Tracking Competitors, Keywords
Tracking competitors and keywords helps you find new opportunities and deal directly with potential customers. You might come across a tweet looking for alternatives to your competitors and you can introduce your product to that person.
It’s the same with keywords, as long as you are tracking them you can join the conversation and introduce your product or service. The key thing here is to add value and not to look like a spammer. A great way to find interested buyers without spending a dime.
Conclusion
There is no specific method to do social media marketing. It changes according to your brand presence, niche, followers and many other factors. The most important thing is to track your actions and modify the process according to the data.
Thanks for sharing this informtive article. I really loved it,
I have only used Hootsuite for scheduling me tweet and it works fine. I haven’t really trued BufferApp. I might just try it out.
Something it’s difficult managing out time on social media. I only work on it 1 hr a day, most of my tweet are scheduled. So far have been able to get lots of new visitor to my blog with social media.
Thanks for sharing these great tips.
Great point about tracking your efforts. It is important to track as it helps you to zero in on what is working and what may not be working and make the adjustments accordingly. I am still yet to try Hootsuite, but will get to it shortly I trust.
Best,
Joe
HootSuite does offer scheduling but I prefer BufferApp because of its simple analytic tab. I use HootSuite for tracking mentions and to set up keyword, competitor search etc. Time is always a problem with social media, which is why using tools like these is a must 🙂
thanks for sharing these great tips, I haven’t really been tracking my facebook, tweets etc.
I am like joyce, I used hootsuite to schedule my tweets 🙂
I also didn’t track them in the beginning but when you track them you can see which ones are doing well, which ones gets the most re-tweets and a whole lot more data. You can them use this data to fine tune your future tweets.
Great advice here, and I definitely need to be tracking and scheduling more of my social media efforts! Same challenge as everyone else – finding time to do it all 🙂
It’s been interesting to watch the larger corporations (who were slower to adopt social media than we were I might add) finally start to incorporate Facebook and Twitter into their mix.
The one area I’ve neglected with social media is using it to track my competitors (though I guess many of my online friends could be considered competitors!)
Have a great weekend!
Tracking can’t be apply in every niche, especially in broader niches like MMO and SEO. However at product level these details are priceless.
I did not realize that you could schedule tweets, I’ve been using twitterfeed which checks for new blog posts to tweet at whatever increment you choose but it only tweets a post one time. I need to look into those tools!
@Natalie, Yeah, time is a big issue, especially if you are doing this part time, but I think social media will play a key role in future internet marketing and even search engines are starting to use social media data, so I think you should embrace it now and get an early movers advantage.
@Stacy, There are so many tools and many are coming out everyday, so it is not easy to keep track of them, there could be better tools out there 🙂 .
I’m totally agreeing with yours each points. Sharing Useful Informations through socialmedia is really good idea for getting some unique visitors.
Social Media is very powerful and for those who invest the time wisely it really does complement all other marketing.
I do not spend enough time to be honest but at the end of the month when my other sites are where I want them to be and I get a break between clients, I am really hoping to focus more on the social aspect of my business.
Thanks for sharing!
Jayne
As a social media consultant and mentor every company, regardless of their size should have a social media strategy. As you’ve said, they need to be providing great content and the key to real success is providing loads of value and not spamming.
Social media is so much more than just Twitter and Facebook too, for example, I’m a huge Twitter fan and yet rarely log onto Twitter and use the various Twitter tools instead.
I like how you’ve said how important it is to track what you’re doing – so many people don’t realise the benefits of tracking your social media. Not only that but if you can track your own results you can also keep on track of what your competitors are doing whilst managing your own brand.
Good tips, Nishadha. Though I’m still a social media newbie, I agree with all your points here. As with one’s blog posts, with twitter it’s smart to think ahead and schedule. It’s also smart to use all the tools available to track whatever one’s doing on the social networks—and evolving & adapting accordingly. Otherwise, it’s like driving around in a city blind-folded. 🙂
Useful information about how to keep track on who re-tweets, follows you and so forth. It’s essential to make sure your tweets are sent at the time your customers are most likely to read them. By the, way apparently there has been trouble with Buffer recently. Don’t know if they have solved it but they tweeted links it wasn’t possible to click on.