Social media has become an indispensable tool when it comes to building a following around your brand as well as distributing content to your audience. This is where your customers live and interact with various contents. When coupled with high-quality content, social media marketing can significantly boost your market coverage and clientele base. However, getting started is a challenge especially if you do not have any experience or insight on the platform.
There are ten basic laws of social media marketing which you need to understand from the very onset. Appreciating and incorporating these fundamentals into your strategy will not only help create a niche for your brand but also turn leads to sales.
1. Listen to the customer
Effective marketing on the social media involves more listening than talking, more reading than posting, at least for the first few days. Until you understand what is important to your prospective clients, you can never create content that captures their attention and attracts comments.
2. Choose quality connections
100,000 followers, though flattering, is a useless statics if only 100 are actively interested in your product. Quality connections are those followers who read and share your content in their circles. You are better off with just 1000 such connections.
3. Patience pays
Though a cliché, it is true, more so in social media marketing. Content marketing success is not a result of luck. Besides, you can rarely get it right the very first time. Even if your product takes the platform by storm the very day you launch it, you will have to work a little harder to turn the hype into sales and grow the customer base.
4. The power of great content
It is the nature of people to share great content on their social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn or blogs. As a result, they open new entry points for you. Also, the more your content is shared, the higher you rank on search engines.
5. Be a master one
You stand a better chance at success with a highly focused marketing strategy than by a jack-of-all-trades' sort of approach. Focus on one aspect of your brand and build it.
6. Build relationships
It is the vital part of a content and social media marketing. Since your connections and followers are also humans, treat them as you would if you met them in person. If one reaches out to you, get back promptly. You might be avoiding your next client. Besides, it sets you apart from every other marketer or brand on the platform
7. Have influencers on your side
When starting, you and your brand have little or no influence online, and so you might not enjoy the vast audience you deserve. The way through this is to connect with online influencers who have a massive audience. Invest in building a relationship with them. They might share your content on their network if they find your information interesting. Such a favor will increase your audience a hundred folds.
8. Focus on your strategy
It is easy to get discouraged when your followers only read your content, but there are no conversions. Fight the urge to change your focus to how to convert visitors to clients. Instead, put the effort needed to grow the value of your content. Continuously improve the quality of your content as well as your relationships with the influencers. With time, these people will reward your effort by recommending or vouching for your business or product in their circles.
9. Be available
Let your online presence be felt. Do not disappear as soon as you post your content. Take part in conversations and publish articles regularly. Your online followers are to remain engaged. If you go missing for a while, they will replace with the first person or brand that appears on the scene.
10. Remember the golden rule
It states, "Do unto others what you expect them to do unto you." It is a rule worth remembering when working on your relationship with followers or online influencers. Do not expect them to share or comment on your content if you do not do the same on theirs. Therefore, set aside a portion of your time and invest in sharing and talking about what others have written.
Silvia Mazzetta
Web Developer, Blogger, Creative Thinker, Social media enthusiast, Italian expat in Spain, mom of little 9 years old geek, founder of @manoweb. A strong conceptual and creative thinker who has a keen interest in all things relate to the Internet. A technically savvy web developer, who has multiple years of website design expertise behind her. She turns conceptual ideas into highly creative visual digital products.
