A Social media strategy is exactly the same as planning your December vacation. First you look at your budget, define where you want to go, then search for available places in the area and make a booking. Sometimes you need to decide which vehicle will be the best for the vacation months before your trip. You start to plan your route, which routes to take, where to stop for breakfast and approximately what time you will reach your destination. Planning your social media is exactly the same – your need to plan your strategy upfront and everybody in your company needs to know which vehicles to use and the direction you are going in.
Let’s start with your destination: Say your destination is building a large fan base, your roadmap and vehicles will defer from a destination of having a high engagement rate. For a high engagement rate you will post richer media e.g. images, ask for likes and comments whereas for a large fan base you will rather run a competition.
Choose your vehicles: If you want more engagement you need to choose Facebook and Twitter as your vehicle to get to your destination. You need to keep your target market in mind and also what you want to share. On Facebook you can easily share blog posts, videos, images and ask questions. Twitter, however, is best for short to the point updates. On Twitter 54.6% are women and 45.4% are men.
The statistics will also help you define your vehicles.
Plan your route: Start every month planning your route to get to you destination. Sit upfront with your campaign and schedule all your updates and tweets for the month. Remember to re-view, revise and re-schedule your plan, there might be news in the middle of the month that you can share.
My key, my car, I’m driving: Remember that your social media platforms are your company’s voice to the public. Never post negative comments on your wall, don’t be aggressive, have a crisis management strategy in place just in case someone wants to bad-mouth your organisation.
Lastly, you are part of the social media world, whether you have a Facebook page/ Twitter account or not, people are talking about you!
Happy Marketing!
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You might have heard about the traditional 5 key metrics in measuring your marketing and online marketing success:
But what if there was a different approach we should be taking in our measurement? One that will clearly define whether or not we need to rework and refine our own messaging and positioning in the marketplace? The 6th Key metric, in fact, encompasses them all, and lies in the term we (not so) loosely term: Customer Value Management.
So let us explore…
It’s not about what you say, but about how they interpret it.
People don’t care what we know, until they know that we care.
Our measurement in engagement value should provide the flexibility and insight to measure whether or not the market is letting us in.
Most of us love the idea (still) of speaking or broadcasting our ideas and values. The world has changed and is changing as we speak. New measurement metrics are key to keeping abreast of our client partners, and in this measurement, crucial to our realignment of voice and strategy.
Influence and Collaboration: Robin Pullen, BCI
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Social media is all about, well, being social. The platform was developed to interact (again and more frequently) with the people around us as we live in a more-and-more isolated environment.
As this media evolved and took the shape of groups, chats, instant messaging, professional contacts and job portals, some of the pioneers in ‘social for corporates’ have, it would seem, missed the point.
We are bombarded by a myriad of marketing messages daily. Emails take the average user approximately 2,7seconds to analyse and assess whether or not it will be opened, read, or instantly deleted. Ad breaks on television are almost longer than the program itself and almost every website you enter has flashing advertising banners screaming for you to hear their message.
What we want, more than anything, is to be human. We want to have people (and companies) to interact with us in such a way that it is kept fun, inspirational and even emotional. We want to be respected for our likes and interests – not some marketing faux.
Direct marketing used to know us by name – social media allows companies to ‘know’ us for us.
Getting a company or brand liked by nations on a social space, is certainly then not a marketing message. It is an interaction. A care. Based on the knowledge gained by constant interaction with the ‘we’ following your company or brand.
Social media is a platform, thus, not for marketing products or services per se, but to be and remain social with the people who care about your brand as much as you do… People who believe in your ethos, trust you, and know that your brand development would mean the development of self.
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Why are companies with Facebook profiles on the hunt for more “Likes”?
It could be one of the following reasons or in most cases all of them:
To gain more social media fans, to gain brand exposure, to position their brands in the eyes of the consumers, and ultimately to effectively utilise this medium to run competitions and promotions.
As the Social Media Expert at SAbest it intrigues me as to why Facebook users do not want to like a Company or Brand on Facebook. I did some research to see why and what expectations people have when they do interact with a Company or Brand socially.
There are various reasons why Facebook fans don’t “Like” a Company on Facebook:
If a Facebook fan likes your Company page, it is very important to observe that they do so with an expectation. People don’t just “Like” every page on Facebook, they “Like” it for a reason. Fans like Company pages to gain access to exclusive content, events, sales or promotions.
47% of users “Like” a page to receive updates about the company, persons or organisation in their newsfeed. 26% want to interact with the page owner. The survey also shows that only 24% want to be contacted through other social media channels such as Twitter once they have interacted with a company on Facebook. 37% do not expect anything to happen.
Media such as photos and videos always perform well on Facebook. It grabs attention in newsfeeds and it is easy to share.
Just ask. People like to interact with each other so ask for those opinions on topics, and if you want your fans to share favourite content, go ahead – ask them.
One of a fan’s expectations is that the page owners will thank them for their replies and for sharing their opinions. From time to time, talk about things other than your products. Wish them happy holidays. Ask them fun questions or to share their personal stories.
Remember, if a fan likes your page; interact with them, because it’s one of the biggest expectations any Facebook Fan has.
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Google is in the process of simplifying user experience by scrapping products that haven’t met their goals, or merging them as features into other products. Though I myself hadn’t heard of some of these features, I was interested to research what tools they had experimented with in order to achieve the Google we all love. Google’s continued pursuit of innovation and user experience perfection is inspiring to say the least. Below are some of their test products that didn’t quite make their ‘Google cut’.
These are just a few of the products Google will be scrapping, their aim: “to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience”[1], which, in turn, will benefit not only users but advertisers as well.
To find out how we can help your site to rank better on Google, take a look at our Search Engine Optimization page
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