Social Media Strategies

Know what you're doing.

Is it important to have a Social Media strategy?

You can’t escape from social media and, at this point, it’s probably not a good idea to try. Social media is fast becoming a key part of an ecommerce business strategy; they all offer an easy avenues to customer engagement and product exposure. Several also offer paid adverts to boost your reach. The trouble is, of course, that it can be a little confusing as there are now hundreds of different platforms. Anyone wanting to succeed in social media needs a strategy and we are going to help you build yours.

 

First, set a goal

Before you start, you need to know what you want to do. I'm assuming that the long term goal for everyone is to increase their profit, but is that the direct purpose of every post?

So, what do you want to do?

Do you want to simply highlight new products or offers to existing followers? Or would you prefer to promote your visits to trade trade shows and other events? You could simply be looking to increase awareness of your brand.  Regardless of anything else, your aim should be to increase traffic to your website. The golden rule is that social media should drive visitors to your website, not the other way around!

Social media marketing has strengths and weaknesses. By its nature, people use social media socially; they aren't going to want products shoved down their throat at every opportunity. That said, when they see something they like, they'll share it.
 
Exponentially. 
 
That's why this is one of the quickest ways to promote brand awareness or to reach a wider customer base. The trick is to make sure you get them to visit your ecommerce site and convert the shares into sales. 

First, do some research

You are not the first to the party. 

But you do have a friend in there letting you know what everyone else is wearing. So you have a choice; do you want to fit in, or stand out?

Before you start posting, take a look at how other people do it. Once you start to look around you'll see that there are examples of superb marketing everywhere; take inspiration from these! Alternatively, check how your competitors are doing. Are they missing a trick, or doing something well? Learn from them. Learn from the success stories, but look for the failures too.

Next, pick a platform

Where are you going to post? Well, the short answer is wherever your customers are. Which platforms do they use and which ones do they avoid? All you have to do is to pick the popular ones.

The longer answer is that you need to pick the platform that is right for your goals; remember when I said that each one was unique?

Blogs provide unique content for your site which is good for SEO, but doesn't actively add traffic on its own

Twitter is best for short informational posts and is brilliant for reaching a wide audience with hashtags

Facebook gives you the most options for content types, allowing links, images, videos 

 

YouTube requires some specialist skills to update but does give a nice SEO boost

 

Instagram is all about sharing pictures and short videos with your followers

 

LinkedIn is best for business to business relationships, less effective individually

 
Finally, measure success

It's essential to know whether all of your efforts were worthwile; understanding the ROI on any business decision is fundamentally important. Luckily, there are whole suites of tools available to you for free.

You should start with Google Analytics, which should already be providing you with a wide variety of information on your customers' habits. You can isolate and measure traffic coming from social media platforms onto your site. Using this data, you can see the sorts of posts to which your customers are responding, as well as when they are most likely to respond. You should use this information to drive your campaigns, informing what, when and where to post. It's also worth knowing that platforms also now offer access to internal metrics. Facebook gives Insights into your pages while Twitter provides its own Analytics; both are essential tools.

There are a lot ways to do it, so look to match solutions to your goals; simply pick the ones you need for the job. This is the key to creating a successful social media stragegy. First, set a goal and then, its measure success. Once you've met that first goal, set a new one.

Just keep it simple.

25th March 2018

We went live much earlier than our original plan suggested!

Brian Hume, Martec International

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