Having a social media strategy in place is more important today than ever before because most businesses have a presence on social networking sites.
There are billions of people worldwide who have a Facebook pages and Twitter. These are just two social networking sites. Growth is enormous on most of the other sites as well. Therefore, you just can’t ignore these numbers anymore.
With February around the corner, it is time to get focused on your social media strategy for 2011. To help you get on your way to preparing a plan of action, here are some tips for the year:
Do your homework
Know where your community is and research ways in which to reach them best. Do you find that your customers are using Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Instagram? Are they on a niche social networking site?
Make sure you converse with your community
Don’t just sell. No one wants to be sold to. Make sure you also provide interactive content. Sometimes a comment like, “How’s your day going?” will bring in enormous response from your community, and you can then turn around and start building stronger relationships and ties within that community.
Include geo-location sites
If you have a retail business or a brick-and-mortar business in your community, you may consider jumping on the geolocation bandwagon.
Don’t forget Bloggers
In addition to your “legacy” media program, don’t forget to target online publications and bloggers. Bloggers are quite influential these days and can make or break your product or service.
Video is important
The next big thing is video. Make sure you have a YouTube or Instagram IGTV. And make sure it is a strong representation of your brand.
Cross-promote everything
If you promote a blog or a news article, don’t forget to push it out to your entire community through an aggregator like hootsuite.com.
Be sure to monitor everything
Set up a Google Alert to start. After you dive in, make sure you retain a more comprehensive search tool to make sure you don’t lose anything that was said or written about you on the web.
