Once you have found your social media strategy, your plans will turn into action. When it comes to social media, many marketers use the approach of “try any social media platform to your business and see how it goes’’, not only this approach will harm your business plan, but it will also indicate that you have a very limited knowledge about marketing. Social media should be practical, therefore it’s better to use ‘’the Big Four’’ (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn). In a way or another, these are the main primary social media platforms to consider for both purposes whether to build a sustainable engagement or to reinforce your marketing plan. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to market on other social media sites, but if companies focus largely on these specific ‘’Big Four’’, it ensures the greatest marketing ROI.
Creating prospecting lists is obviously important for anyone in sales. Therefore, the best way for you to define your social media strategy is by following the P.O.S.T methodology, whereby, ‘’P’’ stands for people (who is your target audience?), ‘’O’’for objective (what do you want to accomplish with your target audience),’S’’ for strategy (what is your engagement strategy?) and ‘’T’’ for technology (what is the most adequate social channels to engage with your target audience?).
After defining all of the above, you need to take into account your context, your environment and behaviours to make your plan work as a win-win situation. For instance, the way we behave at home is different than how we behave at work. Same applies to Social Media; it requires certain behaviour, ethics and attitude. It’s important to figure out how to natively tell stories on each social media channels and what type of content to use. Needless to say, quality truly trumps quantity. To harness the power of ‘’the Big Four’’for big results, consider the following best practices for each.
Facebook: On the top of the list or in other words ‘the king of social media’. First of all, you have to know more about your audience, based on the segmentation (work you would have done previously). Second, you have to post what interest your audience (don’t be too egocentric). Just keep in mind that Facebook is not a billboard, but a community platform where you can find multitude of audiences with different backgrounds and different interests (from which you can choose from – based on their shared social graphs). Not to forget to mention the low organic reach (less than 2%) that pushes you to boost your posts in order to reach (and convert) a bigger audience. Last but not least, don’t forget to always build your posts and content with your set objectives in mind. A call to action posts can easily lead your audience to either click on a landing page, on a section of your website or on your mobile app. Whatever the reach achieves, it must be a positive result. Here are two posts’ examples from Rinboo and CIH Lebanon that have achieved good results for the intended objectives.
Twitter: It’s well known that a Twitter account is for engagement and discussions where businesses and customers exchange their opinions. First of all, always monitor trending hashtags because it has a better chance of getting more engagement from non-followers. Also, you can start a conversation by asking a question that is hard to ignore. Successful posts come with open intriguing debates and discussions. The more you ask, the more you get to know about your followers. You can find out from their “favorites” or “retweets” where their interests might be. It can be a tool to optimize your services or improve your products quality. If you manage to stop for half a second to ponder, then you have got him in your ecosystem.
Instagram: The inside world of the company and what goes around. First of all, it’s all about fostering a two-way conversation where customers feel valued and appreciated. Once you’ve drawn a line in the sand between your personal and business operations, it’s time to talk about content posting preferences for the various ‘’Big Four’’. Second, the trick in selecting your social platform lies in your target audience. The question would be who is the target audience you would like to reach? Third, consistency of posting is key, following the same pattern of interest. Keep in mind, the more you act human, the more you win. Instagram is all personal and for those real-life moments. Last but not least, to make your page more appealing, images speak louder; each image should tell a story in its unique way. Also, the content should be catchy and linked to the brand using tags. Here’s one of the successful posts by MEA that achieved its intended objective:
LinkedIn: Those who have profiles on LinkedIn are either looking for a professional network that links B2B or just looking to create a social business presence for themselves. In order to make the best use of this social media platform, try to participate more in PR groups where discussions take place and opinions are exchanged.
We often make connections with people at conferences or events and then loose contact; therefore a professional network like this can do the trick by finding those people and learn more about their background. Second, using LinkedIn contacts as a CRM system provides the opportunity to stay connected to these people and touch them lightly so they know you’re still around. Last but not least, if you want to attract a broader crowd, try blogging very interesting topic and share them to the same group network you have followed. Adding to that, discipline and sustainability is one of LinkedIn’s rituals. The more you keep tracking and updating those who are following your blog, the better chances to be recommended to someone from their own network. Here’s one of the successful posts from Debbane Saikali Group that achieved its intended reach:
Unfortunately, most people think of social media as distribution channel and use the same messaging on every platform without fully exploiting the features wisely to their benefits. One must make sure they are comfortable with the volatility that is part of owning high assessment. Therefore, the ‘Big Four’ is all about creating the real image and making it last long enough to reach its intended goal.
