At this point I’m sure that you all know how important a beneficial content marketing strategy is for your business. I already talked about how to implement the best content marketing strategy in this blog post, and that’s why I wanted to talk about content marketing focused on social media.

Social media platforms are crucial for today’s business world. As a matter of fact, I can say that at least 60% of my clients found me for the first time through my social media accounts. However, if we really want to succeed in social media, we need to invest (at least) time to do some planning and elaborate a good strategy. Let’s see how we can save as much time as we can and maximise the benefits of our social media content marketing strategy.

1. Focus on your objectives

I already talked about how important goals are in content marketing, so I won’t elaborate much on this. In social media, these goals normally form four different categories:

• To generate traffic.
• To build a community.
• To promote engagement.
• To increase revenue.

Focus on what you want to achieve and analyse the metrics to know if you’re achieve your goals.

2. Know how you are going to use your social media content strategy

Are you going to look for potential clients? Are you going to analyse what your current clients are saying about your brand? Are you going to pay attention to the needs of your clients?

This must be reflected in your goals. Stick to them, otherwise you will lose time surfing from one social media channel to the other without a goal.

3. Consistency is the key

Plan how much time you want to invest in social media. Normally, at the very beginning, you’ll have to invest more time until you have established your community.

Plan how many posts you’re going to publish every day and what they’re going to be about. I normally use Hootsuite to schedule all my posts and distribute both the posts and their topics. It’s easier and will save you time. However, this isn’t enough; you will have to monitor your followers and how your posts are performing out there.

Take into account that maybe you don’t share the same time zone that part of your audience and plan accordingly.

4. Social reports

Going back to Google Analytics, if you go to Reporting/Acquisition/Social, you’ll be able to analyse the traffic that comes from your social media platforms. As you can see, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are the ones that lead more traffic to my website, and that’s why I focus on these ones.

What about you? Which ones lead more traffic to your sites?

5. Engage in real conversations

Schedule your posts is only half of the battle. Your audience must feel that there’s someone behind the screen.

Engage in real conversation and make them feel that you really care.

6. Hashtags as an art

Using hashtags will increase the visibility of your posts and they will perform better. However, make sure that you use them well, and aren’t spamming your audience.

You can also make the most of any events by using their hashtags to  network with people attending the same event and share opinions and connect with them.

7. Be a human

Find your unique voice to attract more people. Avoid being a robot and giving short answers. Devote time to follow up and you will see more benefits.

I already talked about finding your business soul and the hedgehog concept here.

8. Promote engagement

Create content that people are interested in and shareable posts so your audience can feel themselves identified with what you’re telling them.

Ask them question so you can read their different opinions and approaches and debate in a constructive way. At the end of the day, they are the foundations of your business, right?

9. Use visual information

It’s been proved that visual content is more shareable across the different social media channel. Take your time to find quality pictures and edit them to make them more appealing and shareable. You can read more about it here.

10. Focus on those channels that your audience is using

You can’t master every single social medial platform. That’s why you should focus on the ones that you can benefit them most from. For example, if your content is mostly visual, you’ll be likely to focus on Pinterest or Instagram. On the other hand, if your content is more informative, you can use Twitter or Facebook to talk to your audience.

11. Outsource if needed

If you can’t manage all your channels, you may consider outsource this task. As your business grow, you may consider create different accounts for different type of audiences. For example, if your company targets both a Spanish and a British audience, maybe you want to have two accounts, one in Spanish and another one in English.

Make sure that the person that is in charge of your social media accounts is specialised in marketing and know how to approach an international audience.

 

Are you already using social media to develop your business? Anything that you would like to add to the list? I’m all ears!

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