A Social Media Strategy is an essential component of a broader marketing plan for any business in today’s world. We accept that Social Media is a powerful medium to connect with prospects and customers but because Social Media is so new, we’re just not sure how to effectively market our business using Social Media.
If you were applying for a business loan the first thing your bank manager would ask is, Do you have a business plan?
If you’re venturing into Social Media for your business the first thing you need to ask yourself is, What’s my Social Media Strategy?
Having one or more Social Marketing Strategies in place before you enter the big wide world of Social Media will help you gain clarity and direction for your business.
Do you think the World’s top athletes begin a race without a strategy? No way, anyone serious about achieving results in any field knows they need to have one or more effective strategies in place PRIOR to beginning their venture, event etc.
While marketing principles remain the same, the manner in which those principles are applied within the Social space will vary depending on the platform you’re using to market your business.
The four most known Social sites are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Each represents an opportunity for businesses to target prospects in a different way.
For example, are you a B2B business wanting to market your products or services to other business owners? Use LinkedIn.
Would you like to educate prospects and customers in a short, quick and easy to understand way, use YouTube.
Would you like to create a community of enthusiastic fans and engage with them in a personal way? Use Facebook.
We know that a strategy is simply a method or series of steps we must take to achieve a certain outcome. Creating a Social Strategy requires a detailed analysis of who you’d like to target and how you’re going to target them in the most effective way.
Some initial questions you might like to ask yourself to formulate your Social Media Strategy are:
- Who is my target customer?
- Who REALLY is my target customer?
- What are their buying motivators?
- What are the 6 primary thoughts or questions they would think prior to buying my product/service?
- What is the best way to target my prospects?
- What is my outcome? Do I want to: Receive more new business leads, build closer relationships with customers, Receive more referrals from existing customers, Create a community of people passionate about my product/service/topic, Build my database…?
- Who else has the same customers as me?
- How will my marketing funnel look like?
- How can I hold my prospect’s attention span?
And when creating your Social Marketing Campaign…
- What can I give them that no one else can?
- Will they purchase instantly or will this campaign simply initiate the buying process?
- How can I present my offer in a way they’re not accustomed to in order to deliver massive value to them?
- If I were my customer, what would motivate me to take action to purchase?
- When they read this (headline, copywriting), what will they think and/or how would they feel in response to this?
- If this doesn’t work, what else could work?
- Who most often buys from me, male or female? Are they single, married or in a relationship? How old are they?
- Will they buy from me once, or will they purchase regularly?
- What are the steps to take my customer through to purchase?
- What marketing principles will work most effectively in this campaign? (Scarcity, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, Reciprocity)
- What testimonials will be most effective for my target market? Will they respond better to written or video testimonials?
In developing your Social Media Strategy it’s essential that you answer these questions not immediately, but throughout the formulation of your Strategy.
If you miss your mark the first time, keep trying until you get the formula right. With every campaign, you’ll come closer to cracking the code that is your customer’s mind.
If you can get inside their head, you’re on your way to a sale. The majority of your prospects will have the same questions, queries, concerns and turn-offs. If you can figure out what these are you’ll create a compelling Social Media Strategy and you’ll enjoy amazing results that most others can only hope to attain with their Social Marketing.
Here is a list of 20 sites to find images for your content:
Shareasimage Pro supplies you with images each week, plus you can make your own quotes
Unsplash will send you 10 gorgeous images to use how you like every 10 days
Graphic Stock is $99 a year and where I get the majority of my images
Yay Images is great for images you don’t see everywhere else
Free Digital Photos is a good source of internet marketing images
Canva – a great tool for creating your own images and I highly recommend it
Dreamstime have a free and a paid section for images
Free images used to be sxc.hu and I’ve used this extensively in the past
Free stock range also has tutorials as well as a good range of images you can use
Free photos bank is a new one to me, and they have a range of gorgeous nature images
I’m free shares a stunning range of pictures from icons tonature
Pixabay has a cool range of images that can be run through Canva to be branded for your own site
Death to Stock photo is a great site for lifestyle bloggers, the visuals are superb.
Free media goo has a good range of contemporary, modern images
Dollar Photo Club is becoming incredibly popular with each image costing $1 (these come in good sizes too)
Morgue File is another site popular with bloggers, again, these images can be used in a tool like Canva to give them a unique edge
Shutterstock is brilliant. They sponsor the images on Birds on the Blog and they have everything from celebrities to topical images.
Fotolia has a free pic of the week range, and they’re very diverse
Snap Wire enables you to book a photographer or purchase a custom image.
Stockvault has some beautiful images again, these would suit lifestyle bloggers really well.
The right article image will break up text and make your point visually!
Use high-quality images to demonstrate a point. For instance, if you’re writing about a DIY project adding pictures of each step will help the reader visually re-create the project. The last picture should be the end result, the finished project in all its glory. Being able to visualize the end results helps your readers take action. That’s exactly why so many DIY and food bloggers go through the trouble of offering step by step images for their projects and recipes.
Take this step by step image I show here as an example. By the way, click the link to find the instructions on how to make wooden pallet furniture.
Don’t just use any old/cute photo you find on your computer. The image has to be relevant to the article and what you’re talking about. Imagine a Pinterest fan clicking on a cute picture of my little pooch Lily only to land on an article about website design. Oh, how disappointing!
Blind people read blogs as well. So please always keep that in the back of your mind and use a descriptive “alt” tag that makes sense to your readers. Keep the ratio of images to text fairly low so it will still make sense for a blind person to follow along.