The people you are trying to reach on the social web with your social media marketing campaign should constantly be reminded of your social media presence to encourage them to visit your community more often or for longer periods of time. When you have built your social media community on any of the many social media channels available including your blog and the novelty wears off, your community members may become tired and leave if everything that you do always stays the same.
Integrating social media into your business is not a one time event and it’s important that you continue building your social media following/community by diversifying your strategy. If you are already have a social media marketing campaign in place and you want to keep your approach fresh and innovative, find a couple of tips below that can help you with this.
Building your community
Create magnetic content: Provide engaging and useful content that your targeted audience will enjoy. It is very important to keep distributing this content on a schedule so that your audience will expect it and return to find more.
Engage with your network: It is vital that you engage with your network on the social media channels that they are using. If you are unsure, ask them. Go beyond traditional marketing methods with social media, and let your employees interact with your customers and visitors to expand your social media reach. This can help you humanize your business. By engaging with your network, you will build a relationship with them and this will encourage your network to return.
Go mobile: Make sure to research your mobile reach because many people are now using tablets and smartphones to find information and to access their favorite social media channel. By utilizing mobile technologies, you can ensure that interested people looking for anything that you offer can find you with ease.
Run a promotion: This is really easy if you think about it. Offer your community a free incentive such as a discount coupon or a free ebook.
Make sharing easy: With your “magnetic content”, make it easy for your readers to share your content to their own communities, friends, and family. Social sharing is really powerful if integrated correctly with your message. To make it easy to share your “magnetic content”, include a call to action in your message to remind your readers to share it along.
Use other networks: Write a great author blog post on a relevant blog to increase your reach. Also, participate in Google+, and Twitter chats to draw people in.
Use advertising: Where appropriate, use targeted social media advertisements to drive interested people that have shown an interest in what you offer back to the “magnetic” content you have created.
Share content with your email list: Offer your email list small bits from your social media campaign such as latest blog posts. The goal with this method is to encourage them to visit and join your social media community.
Use your website: Use visual elements such as banners and buttons on your website and blog with links to your social media profiles. This is an easy way to encourage your visitors to check what you are doing on the social web.
Use social media with customer services: Encourage your existing customer base to use social media to contact you on the social web when they have a query or a problem. When using this method, it is vital that you NEVER ever leave a query or complaint un answered online where everyone can see.
Use traditional marketing: Announce and promote your social media channels in your traditional offline marketing initiatives. An easy way to do this is by including your social media presence on your signage and any printed materials that you have.
I know this isn’t a quick push a button and get instant new followers blog post, but it is definitely worth it in the end. I’m sure you can buy social media followers, but does 10 000 untargeted followers really mean anything?