In days gone by, you could create a slack social media strategy, post sporadically, and still manage to engage with your customers on social. Nowadays, 30% of millennials claim to engage with a company on social media before purchasing and then at least once per month after that. So, if you aren’t engaging with them on social media, you will likely lose their business!
Engage with your audience where they hang out or risk losing them to a competitor!
How to Engage Effectively
1. Create Marketing Goals
Social media isn’t about random engagement a couple times per day and hoping that one of your posts goes viral. It takes careful planning and execution in order to gain attention and attract followers.
Set realistic goals that are attainable and focus on building one social media channel at a time. Spreading yourself too thin will easily overwhelm you or your marketing team and you will likely not stick to your plan. Choose whatever platform is most beneficial for your particular business.
Write your goals down! People that write down their goals are statistically 30% more likely to actually achieve their goals.
2. Determine Your Target Audience
79% of adults use Facebook but are your customers actually hanging out there?
First, you have to determine your target demographic.
How old are they?
What gender are they?
How much money do they make?
What level of education have they attained?
What do they spend money on and how often to they make purchases?
Some stats include:
• Women primarily hang out on Facebook with 18-29 year olds being the most prevalent
• Facebook users normally have some college experience and make $30,000 or less
• Instagram is, also, mostly 18-29 year olds with most of them earning more than $30,000 annually with little to no college experience
• Twitter is mostly male users over 30 years old earning less than $50,000 per year or more than $75,000 per year.
• LinkedIn is made up of mostly female users over the age of 30 years old earning less than $75,000 per year with at least half having some college experience.
• Snapchat is mostly female, 18-29 years old, and earning more than $50,000 per year with little to no college experience.
Do those stats surprise you?! Because they certainly surprised me! That is why it is so important to look at who your target market is and where they are most likely hanging out so you can engage with them often in order to stay on their radar.
3. Establishing Metrics
What exactly do you want to measure? And why? Monitoring follower count and likes will only take you so far and doesn’t tell you the whole picture of how you are doing.
Consider measuring the following:
• Reach: How many people are actually reading your content? How many eyeballs are actually seeing it?
• Hashtag Performance: What hashtags are most recognized for your brand? How much engagement have they earned for you?
• Clicks: How are users moving through your marketing funnel ?Is it in the way you planned? Tracking clicks shows how people move through your content.
• Engagement: This is the total # of interactions divided by the # of impressions.
Social media marketing strategies don’t have to be complicated but they should be structured and comprised of the metrics that you want to measure. What would you add to the advice given here today? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Thanks for reading!