Contrary to some beliefs, social media pages like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter are not solely for wasting time, chatting and sharing memes. If you have a business, your first concern is building a social media strategy. If you already have social media pages, you need to work on building a strategy that will bring in more prospects and referrals. Sure, Facebook and Twitter can be used for entertainment purposes, but if used properly and with business analytics, these “time wasters” can grow your companies’ brand, PR marketing base and fan-base exponentially.
Before you make your social media pages public, consider these suggestions for polishing up your Pinterest, focusing your Facebook and making your Twitter page a marketing machine.
Look at the Metrics
The entire time you were hitting “like” on someone’s status update, or on a fan page, or if you liked a special offer that Whole Foods had exclusively for the holidays, those “likes” have been recorded by Facebook. The records are then translated as metrics that the owner of the page, author of the status, and the marketing exec, who placed the ad, can see in graph form. Understanding what ranks high among audiences can help a business owner understand what is trending and hopefully lead them to understand why something is trending among certain demographics. For example, if stories about Bob Parsons are gaining in popularity in the media, you might know because readers are sharing an article about him on Facebook or tweeting an article on Twitter. In the same way, if you create an ad and post it on Facebook, you can measure who, and what demographic is clicking on your ad, by reviewing the metrics in graph form. MarketingProfs.com points to a useful tool for any business owner: the People Talking About This (PTAT) metric will show you who is talking about your brand, even if they aren’t sharing or clicking “like,” so if you’re GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons, you can track the who, what, when and where of people talking about you. This metric will let you know if users need information about your product and help you to better understand how to reach out to broader groups.
Cross Socialize
Users don’t have time to switch from their Facebook page to their Twitter page. If you’re managing several social pages for your companies’ different departments, you definitely don’t have time to visit each page to re-post or share an article. That’s why many social media strategists use tools like MediaFeedia to manage multiple Facebook pages. To manage multiple Twitter accounts, lots of users turn to TweetDeck and HootSuite and use bit.ly as a url shortener. However, if you wish to post to both Facebook and Twitter simultaneously, it makes sense to sync your Twitter and Facebook accounts together. Tweetdeck (owned by Twitter) is useful, but if your company is growing, you might want to go with a paid-for tool that will allow you to set limitations on what your employees can send out. You can also get a metric for who is looking at and sharing your images on Pinterest through Facebook. This can work especially well if your company is visually based; a printing company or a stock photography company.
Post Often
The absolute worst thing you can do for your social media strategy is ignore your Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages. Even if you don’t have something newsworthy or a special offer for your clients, posting a thought or image is still something for your audience to chomp on and lets your fans know you are an active member of the social media community. Even if social media is not your thing, there are people who check their Twitter and Facebook feeds several times in a day, if they don’t see or hear from you, chances are you will be forgotten and possibly cast into the abyss of un-used social media accounts. You don’t want that to happen. So, the best thing to do is have fun and use the social media tools that you have been so freely given to grow your business and become an online social butterfly. Spread your wings and soar!
