Social Media Marketing Steps To Success?

Six simple steps that make social media marketing less overwhelming..

You've probably heard the term "FOMO" by now. Fear of missing out is the sensation that everyone else is doing something you should be doing. And it's a feeling that is often triggered by seeing someone's social media post.

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To a lot of business owners -- especially small business owners who wear many hats -- social media marketing itself feels this way. Should I use every social platform that's out there? How do I even get started? Am I missing out on something fundamentally important for my business?

I've heard these questions time and again while traveling the country with the Small Business Revolution, a national movement that shines a spotlight on the importance of small businesses. People get overwhelmed thinking about social media marketing. It locks them up. It keeps them from doing anything.

This is a shame, as a sturdy social media presence is important for search and many other reasons. The key is to be strategic. Build your presence deliberately (and, yes, slowly). Analyze your efforts. Adjust as you go. Keep your customer front of mind. You don't need to do everything. You just need to do what makes sense for your business. Here are six steps to help you determine what that means for your unique situation.

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Find Your Customers

You're likely familiar with major social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Perhaps you use them yourself. That's good.

Now ask yourself which platforms your customers use. Not sure? Ask them. Although it may be tempting to use every platform out there, you don't need to. You just need to be able to meet your customers. Also, check out what your competitors are doing. Where can you find them online? Evaluate their efforts. Can you communicate with the same audience differently? Better? Go for it.

If you're starting from scratch, figure out one key platform that fits the demographic of your customer base. This serves as your starting point.

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Start Small

Social media marketing is beneficial in many ways -- for generating brand awareness, driving sales, engaging with consumers and more. It can be tempting to try to achieve everything at once. But if you're a newcomer, start small.

What is most important to you right now? Write it down. Then look at what you wrote and proceed confidently, knowing that this is your top priority and you should focus on this specific goal.

Of course, you can branch out from there, depending on the results. It's the results that will determine where you go next.

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Hone Your Message

You know who is your wisest social media consultant? Your mother. It might sound like a joke, especially if terms like "Snapchat" would elicit little more than a befuddled look from your mom. But I'm serious.

Remember the lessons she gave you when you were a child? "Don't just talk about yourself -- be sure to listen." "Be kind and caring." Those are essential social media attributes. The biggest mistake I see companies of all sizes make on social media is talking about themselves too much. Don't do that. I cannot stress this enough.

Your job is to solve problems for your customers. Reflect this in your social media messaging. My approach with the Small Business Revolution is to share the stories of remarkable business owners. They're inspiring. They talk about real-life challenges, and we show the way they adapt and move forward. We can all learn from these insights.

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Prepare to talk about your customers more than yourself. If it helps to have a ratio in mind, go with 80-20. Make 80% of your communications about your customers (and the things that make their lives easier) and 20% about yourself. As you go along, you might even take that up to 90-10. It's about developing trust over the long term.

Make Time For It

When you're getting started, social media marketing can seem deceptively easy because so many of us are already social media users in our personal lives. But there's more to social media marketing than social media participating. For one thing, it takes time. A consistent presence is crucial. You need someone to check your feeds every day. Someone needs to create and share content. Someone needs to respond to customers.

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Maybe that someone is you. Maybe it's a third-party expert who allows you to focus on the aspects of your business where your unique skills can make the biggest impact. Either way, budget time for it. To be successful, social media cannot be an afterthought. If you remain committed, social media marketing can pay big dividends. Just don't expect your world to change overnight. Stick with it. Make it a priority.

Integrate Your Efforts

Think of your social media marketing effort as an extension of everything you do. Integrate it into all of your branding work. Are you communicating the same messages online as you are in person? Is the tone of your customer interactions consistent?

Before hitting "post," make sure you're reinforcing all of your brand attributes. Social media is a unique opportunity to provide the same personalized experience to consumers as they would receive face to face.

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Relax. You can always make changes. You should always make changes

The one immutable law of social media marketing is that it always changes. The strategies that make sense for your business today might not make sense six months from now.

This is what makes it an amazing time to be a digital marketer. With social media, you can constantly refine your efforts. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Learn from them. And get back in there.

Guest Authored By Amanda Brinkman. Amanda is Chief Brand and Communications Officer at Deluxe and Exec. Producer of the Small Business Revolution. Follow Amanda on Twitter.

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"Fortunately, it's easy to analyze and adapt.

If you're not getting the conversion rates you're looking for, foot traffic, coupon redemptions or whatever preferred objective you wrote down.

Change things up.." -AmandaBrinkman

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  Post Crafted By:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

YOUR Social Media Addiction?

Like it or not, social media has become the addiction of techno choice for the conceivable future. People are plugged in at work, at home, on the go, with strangers, and out and about with friends..

Any day, at just about any hour, if you take a look, you’ll find many people physically, metaphorically, mentally, and, well, downright literally hooked into their laptops, mobile phones and iPads. One way or another, we’re hooked.

Name your poison: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Tumblr, Google+, apps, games and pretty much anything else connecting us to some kind of software and through them to other people. It’s good, it’s bad and, depending on the user, it can get ugly.

The best part of the internet is that everyone has access to it. And the worst part is also that everyone has access to it. But we tend to love it for the most part—it’s connected us with so many like-minded souls from one end of the globe to the other. What did we do without them?

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And what would many entrepreneurs and businesses do with them?

Social Media Dealers

Despite all of this, I find many entrepreneurs asking me the same questions: How do I make the best use of it? How do I even find the right customers via social media? How do I come to understand their needs? And how can I facilitate their needs to my business?

That’s the ultimate goal of your brand’s marketing team: how to score some serious social media addiction from others. As all reliable social media content junkies knows, you want to offer something that keeps them coming back for more.

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But what makes them come back for more? Simple—something that inspires people to part with lots of time and attention, and hopefully, money.

Here’s my quick guide to your average social media addiction:

• Vine and Instagram = Social Media Light Beer. Videos and pics are easily found, cheap, and don’t last long—people always want more. A few quick hits per day, and your good to go.
• Facebook = Social Media Wine and 10% Beer. It lowers inhibitions, inflates reality and makes people talk nonstop. A marketing party dream!
• Twitter = Social Media Hard Drugs. This one is considered the narcissists main jolt. Addictive, self-centered, quick, brief and wears off just fast enough to need another dose.
• Google+ = Social Media Marijuana. Depends on how deep you take it all in.
• Pinterest - If anyone figures this one out let me know.

Understanding Why People Get Hooked

Some time ago, I interviewed Dr. Pamela Rutledge, and she explained:

“Social validation is important; a Facebook like is a social signal. It affirms our existence the same way that someone nodding at you on the sidewalk does. We have a tremendous double standard about what’s ok.

“Sharing inconsequential events is superficial; liking 'likes' is dangerous; if you post a selfie you’re a narcissist. All these worries reflect a level of moral panic or techno-fear about relatively new technologies.”

It’s more important than ever for brands to realize that they no longer hold the reigns as to what people want to see, think or buy. Understanding this shifted balance can make or break your social marketing campaign.

Another sage piece of advice: how social media works is not very important. It’s what drives people to use it and how they use it that counts the most. That’s why, when we make a purchase online, it follows us everywhere. People’s needs and wants drive social media. Never forget that.

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Five Traits That Drive Social Media Use

1. Fear of Missing Out

The love of being connected is a trait more than any other that has led to the curse of “fear of missing out” (FoMO). Hardly a new “fear,” but it’s a biggie on social media. (Check your FoMO ranking here.)

2. Ego

Easily the best tool for social media analytics. But marketers have largely ignored the underlying motives. Consider this: every Tweet, Linked In, Facebook and Twitter share amounts to personal branding. We don’t care if others engage so long as they share it.

3. Perceived Value

I’ve said it more times than I can recall: Perception = Reality. Regardless of how poor the person’s receptors are. At the very least, a successful social campaign delivers one thing: incentivized value, one that meets the needs of the customer base.

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4. Control

In Seth Godin’s book, We Are All Weird, he said:

“As soon as consumers enter the marketplace, they gain power, because power comes from choice. Consumer power is a brand new force, and it’s growing exponentially as a result of more affluence running in parallel with more choice.”

5. Social Comparison/Self-Esteem

In order to assess feelings, strengths, weaknesses, abilities and perspectives, people often make comparisons (again, it doesn’t matter how wrong they might be). Social comparison also relates to people’s self-esteem.

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Dr. Rutledge said: “It is not surprising that people might experience an increase in self-esteem after having their social connections (and support) reaffirmed. Social connections are a valuable asset. That’s why we call it social capital.”

Getting Social Media Junkies Hooked

So now you want to earn people’s time and attention. Good. That means your branded content has to be leveraged across the right social media channels. In other words, you can’t wait to be found.

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Like working out so as to build muscle, you gotta push it. And in this game your one of two things: the dealer or the producer.

• Dealer. You supply the content people need, and along the way, advertise other things they might need. You’re slapping your brand name on user-generated content in exchange for time and attention.
• Producer. You create the content and control the user experience. Videos, games, audios, entertainment, apps, whatever. Anything that might get them hooked on your brand. This also ensures they recommend your brand to their friends and followers.

Time and experience has given us a better level of understanding about social media than we had five or even two years ago.

Whether or not you go with the same flow as the next best content creator, or create an innovating stream of content, the best advice anyone can give you is to blend in and become a part of the crowd you want to impress.

Guest Authored By Tom Lowery. Tom is a writer, author, training specialist and entrepreneur. He writes on his blog, Thinking Out Loud, about life, people, business and interpersonal relationships, which means, in essence, he's combined literature and business to create his own career path: He's a "Lit-re-preneur. Having spent over thirty years within the 9 to 5 world, Tom helped others make millions while he busied myself making much less, writing articles for magazines like Cinescape and Hollywood Then and Now; producing special events for larger projects like UKwithNY, a few dozen stage productions and special events like MainMission: 2000. More recently, he's been contributing to Huffington Post, CMS Wire, collaborating with Cheryl Snapp Conner on Forbes, working on his first mystery novel and debating with everyone! Follow Tom on Twitter.

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“Just one word of caution:

Don’t become a social media narc.

People will turn off even faster than they turned onto you. And you don’t want that—do you?..”

• 

  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at GetMoreHere.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

Follow Me Yonder..