Want to leverage your business on social media? It’s good to take a minute and put things into perspective before you dive in.
Social Media has become a major tool of promotion in today’s business world. It connects millions of people from all over the globe, and allows you to market to a wide audience, or a very specific one. It offers a huge platform to launch a new product and attract attention from specific age groups & other demographic factors. However, one should know how and when to use social media for launching a new product or service. It is very important to make an appropriate strategy and target the right people. And in order to get the most out of it, it’s crucial to take a planned approach that is both creative and consistent.
Look Within
First of all, analysing your product is essential. Considering the nature of your product or service will help you make a planned and results-oriented strategy. Start by asking yourself a few questions.
- Who can benefit the most from my product?
- What other interests does my target market have?
- What is the level of education of your targeted audience?
- What industries do they work in?
Write down your answers and refer to them as you set up your accounts and engage in social media activities. These factors will give you direction and help you make a more effective campaign.
Offer Insight
While planning a social media campaign for your product, always aim to benefit your audience through effective content. Your content can be light, funny, cheeky at times, but overall, it must be helpful.
Establish Authority
If your content & posts are truly interesting or helpful, it helps establish you as the person or business to go to when it’s time to learn more or take action. Plus people don’t have time to read long stories or boring content. If you burn them once with fluff, they might not come back.
Require Some Activity
It’s smart to create a few interesting activities in engaging your audience on social media. It can easily be done through small quizzes, photo contests, who has the best idea to name our new product, etc. You can also create product or industry related questionnaires in order to learn more about the interests and expectations of your audience. It’s important to know your audience before spending huge amounts of money on internet marketing campaigns. Not everyone will respond to your requests, but those who do will help you decide where your promotional budget is best spent, and they’ll appreciate getting the opportunity to voice their opinion.
Persistence
And finally, keep posting blogs, articles and small updates regarding your product and industry in a variety of ways and if possible on two or more social media sites. Plan to spend the next few months in reading your audience and its expectations from your products. This is a wonderful chance to learn more about the real people you’re targeting, and to engage them for months and years to come. This CONNECTION will lead to real world sales. This activity will help you save money as you make advertising decisions down the track.
A couple of practical tips for posting on Facebook, Google Plus, & similar social media…
Try to make at least 2-3 helpful/insightful posts in a row before you try to sell them something. If you just hit people up to buy something from you every time, they’ll quickly lose interest.
And keep your posts relevant. Random stuff like what happened on this day in history is not going to help you earn respect as an authority. But if you sell women’s shoes for example, and your customers love all things fashion, you have freedom to step away from just shoe-related posts & explore other topics as they relate to fashion interests.
So take stock of your business offering and how it relates to your audience and other interests they have. And whenever you’re wondering what you should post…start off with things YOU find interesting! Chances are your audience will agree.
