What's a first step in your social media marketing implementation? Look at the Buyer Persona section of your content marketing plan. It's a good bet that your target market is somewhere on social media. That means you’ll want your business there, too. The buyer persona will help you choose which social media channels to publish on.
On the channels you choose, you’ll gain access to a largely new source of traffic to your website. And that access is on a higher, more intimate level of engagement. Also, social media is a way to have your customers introduce your business to their own friends and colleagues.
You can build trust in your company’s authority. You can also engage, entertain, and inform your audience on this fast moving, flexible medium.
Why Social Media?
Social media marketing is an effective way for your business to get attention. You then steer this valuable attention to your website. Accomplish this by posting original and curated content. Do this regularly across the social media channels you have decided are relevant to your audience. Also, you can comment and interact with others who post.
About 1/3 of your content should be self-promotional. The rest informational and maybe entertaining. You’re really acting as a publisher. Creating content and publishing blog posts, videos, tweets, and updates.
You’ll interact and share with your own content and read and share content published by others. You can interact with people, retweet, or Like their content. Ask others to do the same with yours. Use these interactions as the perfect opening to contact people directly and get a conversation started.
Create lists and groups to delve deeper into your core areas of interest and activities. Deliver and respond to value within the network, wherever you find it.
Secondarily, you can sell. Maybe announce a special on social media. You might first offer deals to your email list, then get the same offers on social media.
After you’ve picked your primary and secondary goals for social media, it’s time to implement your campaign. (Find out more on social media goals here.)
The Sales Cycle in Social Media Marketing Implementation
This process builds engagement and ultimately trust. It’s the trust and confidence people develop in you and your business that finally leads them to a sale. You’re building authority in your marketplace over time.
Stage One: Create and Curate Content
Your blog posts and infographics are original content that you post on social media. You must appoint an employee to either write posts or gather and edit them from others in the firm. Or hire an outside firm to plan and write posts for you.
Content ideas can come from the questions clients are asking. Or the issues with clients that come up over and over (get more ideas here).
Infographics illustrate your points in pictures. They can contain helpful management inspiration or steps in a process. They're very effective at simplifying a complex idea graphically.
You can also curate relevant content. Curated content is shared content from other sources. It’s content relevant and interesting to your audience but created by others. Make a list of websites that offer good content for your audience for easy reference when you’re ready to post.
Stage Two: Distribute Your Content
Original articles are first published on your website. Then you publish posts, links, and comments on your chosen social media platforms.
Stage Three: Interaction
Publish your own thoughts and links and reply to other people’s posts. Also share the best of the curated posts you find online.
Stage Four: Instill Confidence and Trust Grows.
Engagement results from quality content and interaction. Do that for long enough and you build awareness, confidence, and trust. You become known in your marketplace as an authority.
Stage Five: Acquire New Customers
Once your audience is aware, engaged, and trusts in you, it’s a very small step to convert them into customers.
Stage Six: Keep Your Customers Happy
Social Media can be used as a front line for clients to get valuable information, tips, and ideas.
The Sales Cycle
With these six stages you can see how social media can impact the sales cycle from beginning to end. It can take a leading role in your sales and dramatically increase your bottom line.
Over time, you’ll want to monitor results. Review reports at least monthly with activity across all your social media channels.
Concentrate on content amplification: shares, comments, Likes, favorites, and retweets. Also conversions: email sign ups, sales page visits, leads or sales.
As your social media marketing implementation progresses, you’ll begin to see some exciting results in the bottom line. And remember, unless you’re using Pay-Per-Click, the attention to your business is generated at no cost to any media company. Nice, huh?
Until next time,
Nick
Find out more about me and my content writing services at my website. Subscribe to my email for tips, strategies, and online writing secrets. Also, if you Like my Facebook page, you’ll get content marketing ideas from experts all over the internet.
