One Important Way to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

So, you and your team have invested a good amount of time and effort to improve your social media strategy. You’ve set up your Facebook page and Twitter account for your business.  Maybe even an Instagram or Pinterest account too.  You’ve developed a thoughtful content strategy that takes all your priorities, audiences, budgets, and timelines into account.  You have a beautiful editorial calendar over the next 2-3 months.  You might have even scheduled posts in advance on a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer.  You’ve spent hours creating beautiful graphics for each campaign and each platform. You’re pumped about the ad series that you’ve developed for the first phase. You are officially good to go.  Right?

Wrong.

All of these tasks mentioned above are important, vital, and arguably, key to your social marketing–no doubt.  BUT.  If you could do one thing to improve the scenario above, it would be this:

Be social.

Yep.  It’s that simple.  Be social.  Don’t be a one-way marketer.  Or worse, a bot.

Don’t forget or overlook the “social” part of social media marketing.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the mechanics of perfecting your marketing and strategy, that we often forget that Facebook, Twitter, and the rest are SOCIAL platforms.  In other words, you as a marketer should be ENGAGING with the audience you’ve worked so diligently to attract and build.  You should be replying, re-tweeting, messaging, like-ing, and just flat out RESPONDING to your audience.  Show them that you are there and listening.  Especially during these tumultuous times of COVID-19 quarantines, when most of us are working from home and Internet usage is at an all-time high. Schedule in time to cultivate your audience on social; not just build your following, but also to amplify your BRAND.

Here are a few suggestions to be more social:

THANK your customers. Who doesn’t love to be appreciated?  Use your social media to show some love to your audience.  If someone posts a favorable review or comment, say a simple thank you.  In turn, those people could evolve into your best brand ambassadors.

Address those customer service comments.  ALL of them–good and bad. Nearly 70% of businesses do not respond to comments on Facebook.  That’s crazy.  That’s like deliberately not answering the phone at your place of work.  Why would any business owner knowingly do that?

Ask questions. Your social following can be your best focus group! They are following you because they’ve bought into the idea of your brand at some level. So, take advantage of their unique perspectives as your customers! Ask them what their challenges are, ask for their opinions on your products. Ask how you can be of help or improve your current services. Some people can’t WAIT to be asked for their opinions!

It’s one small change with a lot of impact.

Remember why you decided to utilize social media to begin with. Hopefully, it was so that you could set up a direct two-way line to your customers.  Or, maybe it was to be present on the platforms that your audience uses. (Hopefully, it wasn’t because “everyone else is doing it.”  Always a bad idea.) So, fold in time to converse with your customers.  If you ask questions, reply to the answers that have been submitted.  If you’re asked questions, be sure to answer each one.  Create a response strategy for every kind of question you’re likely to field on social media, and share it with your team to ensure a unified message as a result. Consider how your content can be more proactive in building engagement.

The beauty of social media is that it allows you to build relationships and stay connected with your audience through the process of engagement around content.  Don’t skimp on that part.  The negative consequences will be frustrating at best.  The benefits to your business are literally tangible, measurable, and likely supports all the “right” reasons to be on social media.  Therefore, improve your social media by simply being social!

How does YOUR business keep its social media marketing “social”?

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