Emerging Media – Its Time to Think Strategically
The face of emerging media is a rapidly changing environment. Does there seem to be a new social media platform introduced before you’ve figured out how to maximize the last one for your business? Realizing that you have limited resources, which ones should I focus your attention on? Which one will actually help my business? If you’ve asked yourself any of these questions – its time for you to think strategically about emerging media.
(Graphic Credit Buildfire)
Buildfire highlights potential strategies for social media success. The first thing to consider is, what does social media success look like for you? Increased website traffic, increased sales, increased newsletter sign-ups, or improved customer service – first define your objectives.
- Always be human: People expect personal messages that are written by a human not a robot. Be interesting, intelligent, funny, and most important be real.
- Separate the channels: Every social media channel has a different demand and user base, one post cannot work across the board. Facebook copy can be fluffy, Twitter needs to be brief, and LinkedIn needs to be business focused.
- Scout the competition: Pay attention to what social media channels your competitors are using, and what they are posting will give you an idea of where to start. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
- Develop a content strategy: Start with a content calendar (here is a free example from Hubspot – download here) and library of images, blog posts, info-graphics, videos, and technical pieces. Have a strategy for the frequency and content of your posts.
- Target specific channels: Do your homework, determine where your customers are and focus your efforts there. You could be wasting valuable time and resources creating content for a media outlet that doesn’t make sense for your business.
Hootsuite mentions a critical step in the process: Test, evaluate, and adjust your social media plan. Build testing capabilities into every action you take on social networks. Track your reach, and customer responses by content and channel. Record your successes and failures to gain valuable customer insight to what works best for your business and continually rewrite your social media strategy – it’s a living document.
Useful links:
How to create a social media strategy:
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-strategy-for-your-business#sm.001bk9oor9onfr111up2lbx9xi3b0.
What’s your social media strategy:
https://hbr.org/2011/07/whats-your-social-media-strategy
michaelseabrookblog
This post was a great breakdown on social media for businesses. What stood out to me was “The first thing to consider is, what does social media success looks like for you? Increased website traffic, increased sales, increased newsletter sign-ups, or improved customer service.” Every business evaluates success differently. Some may value online traffic as you say and some may want to see concrete data which signing up for their sites can create that. You mapped out the steps perfectly. There are so many different social media management tools as Hootsuite, and as my previous blog talked about Buffer. I believe the smartest thing is treating each social media platform differently. Develop and personalize content for each platform and don’t use one for all. It will not hit your target audience the way you want it too. Developing a tweet is different than a Facebook post.
brohardblog
Thanks Michael, glad you found this information useful.
Stephanie
At Insta Academy, Sue B. Zimmerman teaches that to launch an Instagram channel marketers should have an arsenal of sixty images prepped and ready to roll. Zimmerman also stresses the need to see what competitors (direct and indirect) are doing on the channel to succeed, as well as testing one’s own content to net the best results. Do you find that when budgets/resources are limited it makes sense to attack one channel at a time rather than attempting so many channels that efforts are diluted?
brohardblog
SK, In my opinion its better to do a few things well, rather than a lot of things poorly. Yes, focus on attacking one channel before moving on to another.