social media strategy

By: Daniela Sanchez – Colombia

Social media is one of the most important topics that businesses have been talking about the last couple of years. However, despite these conversations, it’s still hard for some companies to integrate themselves into the digital world, and thus, they often do not have a good experience with technology nor do they get the great results they want. Below, I would like to suggest five things not to do in devising a good strategy for your company.

1. Start posting without a strategy

It is normal to think that the first step is to create a business profile on all social media platforms, and to start posting about your company on every one of them. However, there is a lot of work to do before even launching your company’s marketing on social media.

First of all, you should:

• Create a strategy that’s in line with your business strategy. It is very important to have a goal in using social media: What do you want to achieve? Do you want to sell or be well known? How are you selling now and how do you think social media can help you to sell more?
• Know your target. To reach who you want to see your content, it is essential to decide which social media platform you should focus on first. Having excellent marketing material on all social media platforms is a lot of work; as you start out, target only two or three. You also need to ask yourselves some important questions: Who do you want to market to? Where are they? What kind of things do they like? How do they communicate?
• Keep your identity clear. Make sure people know they are dealing with the same company when they see both your digital and printed material. And, because social media is such an important part of your company’s image, it is essential to choose colors, language and style that accurately reflect your company before you even start to post.

2. Don’t face up the negative feedback

Reading and paying attention to your customers’ opinions is fundamental for your company improvement. Also, it is normal if someone isn’t a big fan of your brand and he says something bad. Don’t panic. You may READ IT, take advantage of feedback and try to answer in a very polite way. A good idea would be asking the person to call you or write you with more details about the situation and try to resolve the inconvenient as soon as you can.

This is the perfect opportunity to know what people really think about you or your brand, even you can talk with them and know more about their opinions and ideas. Be sure that you really pay attention to negative feedback because they are honest opinions about the user experiences of a product.

TIP: It’s very difficult to face up to a negative comment if you’re not prepared at all. You should think about all the possible situations and plan how are you going to react.

3. Acting always like a corporation

Remember that you are using Social Media. That means that people expect to talk with people, even if you’re a brand or a company. Actually, people love to talk with real people. So you should add a human touch to be closer to your target. This point is essential if you really want to have a connection with your customers, but it is also pretty hard to do.

The best advice that I could tell you is to create a brand personality; think how your brand could be if it were a person. Talk, write and answer like that person, choosing the perfect words without forgetting punctuation and grammar.  People want a sensitive brand which cares about the environment and market situation and in general about the world.

TIP: Customer service starts even before people buy your brand.

4. Using a lot of advertising

It’s not a secret that everyone hates advertising. So please don’t post just information about your brand, that will only cause you to have less followers. Of course, you should post about your brand, products and sales, but not all the time: even if the purpose of your profile is to sell.

Now you should be thinking: what am I supposed to post? Talk about interesting topics related to your market, the environment, things that are happening in your city, identify your team and use phrases that reflect your brand personality. You can start trying to post between 20% or 30% about your products and the rest with different and interesting information for your target audience. It’s not going to be easy at the beginning, but with time you might find the perfect combination.

5. Don’t pay attention to analytics

If you have already done all the steps, you should understand that this is a lot of work. Even though it’s very probable you’ll not benefit if you don’t do this last step. The digital world is moving around analytics. It’s the best and, for me, the most important part of social media. Analytics can change your strategies and help you focus on what you need.

It’s possible to know if your posts are working or not, by just looking at analytics. That’s how you can change things that aren’t doing well or put more effort on topics that are having good results. You’ll be able to know: what kind of information is more interesting for your target? what time is better to post? who is looking at you? and in general, how is your social media working? The advice up to this point is to look at the results of your posts at least two or three times per week, but I really believe that more is better.

Definitely, social media can help you to grow your business. It’s time to work and good luck!