Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the process of generating leads, traffic and attention while reaching influencers using social media networks. Social media marketing encompasses activities such as social selling, content marketing, audience reach and status updates.
Social media marketing also impacts on SEO or search results as content marketing (articles, blogs, whitepapers) and status updates (news, press releases, stories) when shared or published leads to search engine discovery around a set of keywords or a title. Research also shows that people also search on social media sites like LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Facebook etc. to find relevant social media content. Social connections who share a company’s social media links can also impact the position they show up on search engine results for keywords, whether within a social media network or on Google.
In marketing, harnessing the power of content marketing, social selling and social influencing can deliver big increases in traffic, audience and customer engagement. Before a business talks about marketing automation, social bookmarking, social sharing or social data they should discuss how to get the fundamentals of social media marketing right. Whether your social media marketing is designed to drive traffic, generate sales leads or reach a wider audience, following these ten simple rules will help lay the foundation to serve your marketing, customers, brand and business better.

#socialmedia rule 1. Listen
Listen to the sounds, chatter and conversations on social networks. The success of social media and content marketing efforts follows the rule of more listening and less talking. No point talking about what has been talked to death. Read your target customers and competitor’s on-line content, join social discussions in a meaningful way (not for self-promotion) to learn what’s important to them. Only after listening and hearing what is being shared can a business create content and ignite conversations with well-crafted words that add value not clutter to people’s lives.

#socialmedia rule 2. Be a hedgehog
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In social media it is better to specialise on topics you know than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A focused social media plan and content marketing strategy will be more successful in engaging a target audience and help build brand awareness than social media activities that attempts to be all things to all men.

#socialmedia rule 3. Quality counts
Quality over quantity. The beauty of quality words will be remembered long after the promise of a low price has faded from memory. It is far better to have 100 influential social connections who read, share and talk about your content to their own network than 1000 connections who disappear after reading your sales pitch.

#socialmedia rule 4. Be patient
Patience allows content the time to fall into place and make an impact. Social media results and content marketing success will not happen overnight. Quality always stands the test of time, social media requires time to filter around so have the patience to work steady and focused to achieve results.

#socialmedia rule 5. Publish often
Social media is not a one hit wonder. The article may be a masterpiece but one swallow never made a summer. Publish quality content regularly to build the on-line audience of followers and fans, quality content published at regular intervals is far more likely to be shared on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and on other blogs.
The network effect of the sharing content or article links on social networks and the discussions that follow regarding the content will tap into search engines like Google, so the content will show up for keyword or phrase searches. These links could grow from ten to hundreds or thousands, reaching out to connect you with people searching on-line.

#socialmedia rule 6. Connect with social influencers
Social influencers can be a conduit to spread your content to a wider range of people who could be interested in your products, services and business. Seek to be and connect with social influencers, spend time building relationships with them through the power of words. If a blogger or brand is seen as an authoritative, interesting source which shares really useful information, the likelihood of your content getting shared with social influencers follower’s increases, which can put the business message in front of a huge social audience.

#socialmedia rule 7. Be a teller not a seller
Craft and tell great stories to get people to listen, too many businesses believe social media marketing is about promoting their products and services. This has the effect of people switching off. Create content that adds value to social conversations. Jumping in on existing social conversions has limited value, better to be known as who creates amazing content. This is what really develops and builds relationships with social influencers. In time, those social connections will become a powerful channel to spread the word on your business.

#socialmedia rule 8. Build ties even weak ones
Social networks ties people together for shared interests and conversations. Building relationships and connections is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person including weak ties who reaches out to you or favours your content as six degrees of separation means that everyone is just six steps away by way of introduction from any person in the world.

#socialmedia rule 9. Remain constant
Apart from publishing content on a regular basis, you need to be available and have a constant presence with your audience. You need to participate in conversations, share other people content, get involved, and be seen to be engaged and active. Eaten bread is soon forgotten and social media followers can be fickle. They or your competitors will replace you if you are not seen on social networks for weeks or months.

#socialmedia rule 10. Share and show
In social media there is always room to share for a story that is not your own. Show people you care about the industry by sharing content, it is unrealistic to expect others to share your content and talk about you but you won’t do the same for them? So, plan to have a portion of your social media marketing showing content published by others. Showing you value content, articles and social conversations that are not your own will make you a social influencer.