6 Top Tips For Implementing A Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy
Joel Windels, VP of inbound marketing at Brandwatch, explains how any brand can nail its social media strategy
5. Connect with influencers
Set up search terms to identify people on social media who are popular with your target audience. Then follow them, engage with them regularly via forums or groups and be sure to repost some of their content. You might be able to develop a two way working relationship with an influencers that will benefit both parties. You might also want to pay a key influencer to shout about your brand. There’s no harm in exploring a mix of paid for and organically generated opportunities.
6. Provide customer service
Use your social media channels as customer service platforms. When people are upset, or when they have an urgent request, they want an answer right away. They don’t want to wait 24 hours for their email to be read. Neither do they want to wait on hold on the phone for 30 minutes. So social media provides the perfect opportunity for marketers to respond on the phone to customers in real time. Set up alerts so that you know when your brand is being talked about and humanise your service by communicating with your customers like a human, not a robot. Also be sure to keep an eye out for mentions of your brand that do not include a hashtag or @ symbol, as these can be easy to miss.
Analysis of social intelligence will also be the key to improvement. Rome wasn’t built in a day and businesses shouldn’t feel discouraged if their first crack at a social media strategy doesn’t quite go to plan. Analysis of social activity allows marketers to learn about what works and what to improve on. But analysis should be carried out daily, not after several months or just at the end of a campaign. Real time feedback allows you to better understand your audience, who you should be targeting, the conversations you should be joining and the problems your customers face. Setting up multiple searches to keep an eye on subjects relevant to the business is also part of this process, as it allows you to contribute any useful insight in good time. Social conversation is an ever moving beast and real time analysis is the key to keeping up.
