Your social media marketing strategy should consist of defining a target market, setting goals, determining which networks to use, and developing a content strategy.
Who is Your Target Market
Before developing your social media marketing strategy, you must determine your market.
- Where would your target market hang out, and how would they use social media?
- How will you/your company solve their problems? What are the needs of the market you’re targeting?
- Do your services/products meet the needs of your target market?
- Is your market local, nationwide, or worldwide?
You can’t market to everyone.
Define your niche.
- Is your market Business-to-consumer or Business-to-business? Individual needs vs. business needs: what is the demographic makeup of your market?
- EP/Security is a crowded market. Are your services or products unique? Why or why not?
Let’s take an example of the goal that you want to offer premium, exceptional sub-contracting services to event management companies. What are my steps to get there?
Study your target market, in this case – event management. Seek out event management companies locally and online. Are they hiring? What are the job requirements? What are the issues these companies are having that you can solve? Maybe it’s turnover, price point, etc. You will need to figure out how you/your company solve their problems. What are the requirements for your business on a state and city level to deliver these services? What do you need to do to be proficient at event security? Do you need to take specific training that event management companies look for? Engage, learn their issues, and study the landscape – is there long-term viability? Determine the competition – who else is in the space, what do they do that you can do differently.
Getting Started with Social Media Marketing
Now, your specific market may not be entirely on social media, but the people who you might hire, your competition, and perhaps your future business opportunities are, or you are looking to find your tribe—like-minded individuals who can support what you do and vice versa.
We all know word of mouth in the EP business is enormous. Getting information out or from a trusted source about someone or something is really how this business runs. Using social media effectively is word of mouth on steroids. Huge amplification. Of course, if the word of mouth is about you or your company and you’re not on social media, then you can’t control or defend what is said about you.
Your social media profiles are found on search engines. Having social media accounts opens doors to possibilities you didn’t know existed, it also opens the door to criticism, mob mentality, and anything you say or post is for public interpretation.
Social media marketing can help with several business goals, such as:
- Increasing website traffic
- Building conversions
- Raising brand awareness
- Creating a brand identity and positive brand association
- Improving communication and interaction with key audiences
Even if most of how you get your clients and customers is offline, I still recommend creating accounts on social media for all the reasons I’ve just mentioned. The social media networks I recommend are:
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Social Media Marketing Goals
Social media is a labyrinth with billions of users. You won’t be successful with your social media marketing efforts without setting goals and strategies to achieve those goals.
Using the SMART acronym, your goals should be:
Specific: Not “Increase LinkedIn engagement,” but “Increase LinkedIn engagement by 10%.”
Measurable: Make sure you have a measurement system in place so you can track your progress toward your goal.
Attainable: Your goals should make you stretch and hustle but should not be so far out of reach that they discourage you. You also need to ensure you have the resources to attain your goal within your social media accounts.
Relevant: Your goal needs to apply to your business. Dig deep here. For example, Why do you want to increase engagement on Facebook? What does X/Twitter do for your brand? Who is the audience I’m reaching on LinkedIn?
Timely (or Time-Bound): Not “Increase Facebook engagement by 10%,” but “Increase Facebook engagement by 10% by the end of this quarter.”
Ask yourself – What do I want to achieve on social media related to your business goals?”
Could it be you want to:
- Increase brand awareness?
- Drive traffic to your website?
- Sell a product or service?
- Employment?
- Network building?
- Mentorship?
- What message do you want to send to your audience with social media?
These questions are the basis of your social media marketing efforts strategy.
Content is at the Core of Social Media Marketing
Valuable content should be at the core of your social media marketing. Marketing is impossible without great content.
Creating and distributing valuable, relevant, consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.
Instead of pitching your products or services endlessly on social media, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your target market, prospects, and existing customers and clients to help them solve their issues.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, there are three key reasons — and benefits — for businesses that use content marketing:
- Increased sales
- Cost savings
- Better customers who have more loyalty
Just as you need a social media plan for your business, so do you need a content plan.
Consider keyword and competitive research to help brainstorm content ideas that will interest your target audience. What are other businesses in your industry doing to drive engagement on social media?
Types of Content
Engage in conversation—be positive, ask questions, build trust in your brand, and be reliable. Provide reliable advice that delivers long-term benefits to a brand. Share valuable information—you want to inform, provide analysis, offer assistance, etc.
People want to interact with you and your business on social media. They want to be inspired and hear your story. With the amount of content shared on social media, you must make a concerted effort to stand out from the minutia. Don’t just copy and paste and hope someone clicks on what you are sharing.
The types of content are videos, blog posts, articles, micro-blog content for Twitter, and images. Preferably, this content should be your content with your branding. There is nothing wrong with sharing a news story or two if it is relevant to your market. However, sharing an article for the sake of sharing an article to satisfy your own ego so that people will pay attention to you is not something I would recommend. Remember, you need to be strategic with your time and marketing efforts.
Focus on the end user who will see the post, not your ego.
Give quality, insightful information away for free – and do it often.
Stop selling and start telling your story. Be creative. Think beyond copy, paste, and hope for customers mentality.
Create a compelling, consistent content initiative that answers problems (real or conceived) and positions your organization as the go-to resource. Be Known.
