5 must-do’s to use social media effectively

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5 must-do’s to use social media effectively

1) Identify your objectives

What are you trying to achieve by having social media presence? Gain leads and increase sales? Gather data for new product launches or future marketing campaigns? Get feedback on your products? Improve brand positioning? Keep your audience informed of new trends or updates in the market?

2) Choosing your target audience

If everybody is your audience, nobody is your audience. Be selective, how can you best describe your optimal audience? Age? Gender? Location? Individuals or institutions? What are their values and beliefs? How do they relate with the environment?

3) Selecting the right media channels for outmost engagement.

Each channel has specific advantages and the right one will depend on your objectives and the type of message you want to deliver. Some examples:

• 3.1) Facebook has extensive coverage up to nearly 1.5bn users and has one of the highest interaction rates. Ideal for events, new products, getting feedback and promoting your brand.
• 3.2) Twitter is great to get a trend going. Monitor, follow and share the right hashtags for best results. Link your company to others as well as key influencers in your industry. For example, if your target market is health-conscious consumers then linking your company to influencers such as the body coach could be beneficial.
• 3.3) Instagram: Similar to twitter but using images and videos that people can quickly relate and connect to.
• 3.4) LinkedIn: Less interactive than those described above but great for creating professional leads and connections to influencers in your related industry. Remember it is about quality of the leads not quantity.

4) Creating your messaging

3 tips to ensure your message has the impact that you want it to have:

• 1) Clearly define the topic and determine if it is relevant to the current environment. Is it related to something that has happened recently in your location or worldwide? What are people talking about? Look at the trends and try to use them to amplify your brand. If a new superfood is hot in the press, get feedback for potential new product development using it as ingredient; ask the audience for ideas and you’ll be surprise with their response!! If recent news show the devastating effects of weather conditions in your area, use it to promote how your company has managed to wave some the effects with effective contingency plans.
• 2) Define the style. Do you want it to be promotional? Promote your new range of products. Informative? Inform you have recently been awarded a quality award. Persuasive? Provocative? A new legislation affecting your industry is in the pipeline, use social media to gather feedback and support from your audience. Understand what response you want from your audience will help you identify the right style to communicate in the right way.
• 3) Select the right medium to communicate the message. Is it better communicate by picture? Video? As a question? Take into account how your audience will receive the message? First thing in the morning on the phone? Using a tablet on their way to work? On their screen during lunch breaks?

5) Managing your social media presence

• 5.1) Agree who will be responsible for the day to day management.
• 5.2) Decide when and how often updates will be made. The frequency of updates will depend on the type of interaction with the audience. Whilst Linkedin can effectively be updated once or twice a week, twitter and facebook require more frequent updates up to 5-6 times a day.
• 5.3) Monitor if objectives are being met. Analyse what campaigns where most effective against your targets, find trends and adjust for future campaigns.

By Luciana Vecco