Social media makes us lazy.
We think it is a quick fix to our lacklustre marketing efforts – but it’s not.
Throw a few tweets out, blast some connections on LinkedIn and like a few Facebook pages.
That’s all it takes right?
There is a fundamental problem with the way we approach our social media marketing campaigns.
We are forgetting who they are for in the first place – our target audience.
I want to share with you some common reasons social media marketing campaigns fail and provide tips and tools you can use to increase your chance of success.
Problem 1: We don’t identify a target audience
Whether you are promoting products and services or planning a nationwide protest, identifying a target audience on social media is a necessity.
With that being said, a major reason behind the failure of a many social media marketing campaigns is their lack of commitment to identify a target audience.
This results in us sending spammy promotion to a group of individuals who – quite frankly – don’t care.
How do we change this?
First you must ask these two questions.
- Who will use my products or services?
- How does this demographic gather information?
Thankfully there are a multitude of tools on the internet that will assist you in confidently building a target audience, as well as pinpointing a strategy for how to market to them.
Useful tools
MosaicHub is a great tool that helps businesses and entrepreneurs identify the thought-leaders throughout their industry. This will allow you to identify who they are talking to and what they are talking about. MosaicHub also offers a resource center where you can create and share your ideas within your industry.
FollowerWonk is a great tool when it comes to identifying a target audience. This allows you to search Twitter profiles for certain keywords in your industry, allowing you to find and build relationships with important individuals all over the world.
Problem 2: We don’t create the right type of content
Remember the questions we talked about?
The second question comes in here. When creating content to share on social media, it is important create a piece of content that caters to how your audience will want to view it.
All too often we see a business create a monotonous 3,000 word article and try to share it out to a group of individuals who aren’t willing to even read it. That is essentially like throwing a sheep into a pack of wolves and expecting them to have a conversation.
Well, okay, maybe it is not entirely like that, but you get the picture. Certain content just will not do well with certain demographics.
With social media being one of the leading factors in lead generation these days, it is incredibly important that you are creating quality, shareable content on a regular basis.
This is a great way to build yourself and your business up as a leading provider in your industry and establish trust and respect between yourself and the community.
Articles, infographics, contests and videos are all pieces of content that do very well on social media (Disclaimer: The content must be good!)..
In short, there are two things to keep in mind:
- Is it easy to read and/or visually appealing?
- Would YOU share this piece of content?
Useful tools
Buzzsumo allows you to search specific keywords and it will show you pieces of content that were most popular based on social shares across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pintrest, and Google+. This will give you an idea of where your audience is and what types of content they like.
Contests are always doing well in the social media world, and will help you raise awareness of your brand throughout a vast community. FluidReview allows a contest creator to set up and manage a contest efficiently through a smartphone.
Problem 3: We forget about timing
Social media is a tool that you need to be using aggressively to achieve success. In the book, The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, Guy Kawasaki stated,
“If you’re not pissing someone off on social media, you’re not using it aggressively enough.”
This is a great quote to keep in mind when managing your social media marketing campaigns; however, timing is going to be a key factor in the success of your social media crusade.
To get the most out of your social media marketing campaign it is important to analyze your audience and find out when the ideal time to put something in front of their face is.
For example if you are trying to present a piece of content to the business world, it is probably not a great idea to publish it at 5PM. At this time, most of your audience will be heading home from work and by the time they get home, it will be buried in an hour’s worth of other posts throughout their news feed. In this case, it may be better to shoot for a 1PM publishing time when people are getting back from lunch and checking their social media pages before diving into work.
It is important to understand that every audience’s ideal sharing time will differ. It is up to you to analyze this and strategize your content plan.
Useful tools
Buffer is a great way to schedule social media posts. This will allow you to set aside some time in the morning to schedule your posts to publish at the ideal time, and not worry about missing your window of opportunity for the day. It also tracks twitter analytics!
TweetReport will give you a hub of all the relevant Twitter chats in your industry – providing time, dates, and a short description. Keeping a schedule like this can ensure you will never miss a chance to share your insight and establish a name for yourself in the industry.
Overall, establishing yourself and your brand on social media in today’s world is one of the best ways to build relationships with influencers and customers. While it does require a lot of dedication, these tools can help pave the way to a successful social media marketing campaign without letting it take over your life.
Please feel free to follow me on Twitter and share any tools that you have used to assist in your social media campaigns in the comments!
Thank you for reading.
Source
