In a recent survey, the number of small businesses making a commitment to social media is at 63%, up from 50.5% in 2010. Businesses are seeing the opportunities in online word of mouth, lead generation, keeping up with their industries, and improving customer experience.
So what if you find yourself part of a steadily growing number of small businesses taking the plunge online? You opened a Facebook page or had your web designer include a content managed system (CMS) like WordPress installed on your website.
Now what?
Here are 7 tips to use as a checklist to help you get better ROI/SM (return on your social media investment)!
1. Rethink blogging. CMS pages or sites don’t have to be ‘blogs’ per se. You must have a site or at least a single ‘page’ on your site that you can frequently update with fresh content that is search-engine and customer friendly. But neither the site nor the page has to be called a blog. It can be called ‘News’ or ‘What’s New’ or something more specific to your industry that features new developments on your team, or new products or services.
2. Link. Linking your social media channels together is a must. The reach of your CMS pages or your old-school static web site, your Facebook Page, or your Twitter account, are all multiplied when they are linked together. There are all kinds of apps that auto-link your content as soon as you publish it. Use them or risk leaving your social media content running on idle.
3. Use Social Media management tools. Using the web-based sites for Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, etc. is time consuming and ineffective. Popping from one page to the next does not give you the big-picture view of your social influence. Tools like Gist, Sendible, Sprout Social, Windows Live Writer, and many others, bring all of your social media threads together in one place, allow you develop content off-line, and schedule content for timed release. Time is the most significant investment in social media marketing and using the right management tools is one of the best ways to minimize that cost.
4. Dig deeper. Like many digital tools we use: Excel, Outlook, or Photoshop, for example, social media tools have layers of options. Most of us don’t go very deep when using any of those tools. Take the time to explore the considerable options that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and so many other channels offer. Pay-per-click advertising, location-based promotion and networking, event marketing, and embedded video are just a few of the tools that can add significant horsepower and return on your investment.
5. Dance with who brung ya. Social media effectiveness, while growing leaps and bounds, still doesn’t compare to websites and email newsletters for ROI. 63% of small businesses may be taking social media seriously, but that doesn’t touch the 90% who continue to invest heavily in their websites and email campaigns. These two platforms must still be the anchor of any business’s online presence. The option of including search-engine friendly CMS pages as part of a business’s web presence only make that anchor all the more secure for now.
6. Design your funnel. Simply showing up is not enough. Not only do you have to have a presence on all the main channels (a CMS site like a blog, Facebook and Twitter at an absolute minimum), and not only do you have to link them together, you must design a funnel that drives potential customers toward a clear outcome. Conversion matters far more than numbers of followers. You must have a clear brand strategy, and clear destinations for your visitors. If they follow all of your links, where do you want them to end up? Signing up for a newsletter? Developing trust in your authority? Purchasing something from your online store? Picking up the phone to take advantage of a special? Your success depends on clarity about the outcome, and designing an online funnel that drives your market to that point.
7. Give us a reason. Great content is the fuel on which all this runs. Do everything else right but provide weak content, and you are wasting your time. Great content must be at least two things: engaging and remarkable. Engaging content is content that your customers care about. You must learn what your ideal customers care about and create content that addresses that interest. Remarkable content is: different, edgy, provocative, rhetorical, unique, personal, emotional… anything that makes your followers ‘remark’ on it to others. Content that engages your existing fans has value. Content that is remarkable enough that your fans will share it with their friends (‘going viral’ in Social Media Speak), has 10 times the value.
Want to find out more about really making social media work for your business? Check out my Social Media workshops, or download my eBook Building Connections for Small Business.
