Social Media

Social Media Strategy

In the quest to build a successful business, sooner or later you’ll realize you need a social media strategy. When doing so, the down side is all the options, which can overwhelm you quickly. In my blog are articles to look at several different strategies, as well as things to avoid.
Begin by Creating a Mind Map

A mind map is one of the fastest ways of coming up with new ideas. You place your name in the center and circle it, then let your mind come up with all sorts of ideas represented by the lines radiating out. The main heading for each idea is at the top of each arm. From there, you can list other ideas as they flash into your mind. The process takes only a few minutes. As a way of getting started, pick three ideas that resonate most with you and begin there.
Define Your Goals

It’s important to define the purpose of your social media campaign(s). Is it to be a one-time affair? Is it to promote a product/service launch? Is it to build your brand? All of your short and long-term plans need to be taken into account and written down.
The Importance of List Building

When creating a social media strategy, list building (using an autorsresponder) should be one of the top priorities. If you only focus on the one-time goal of selling your product or service, you’re missing out on many more opportunities to sell to the same client over and over again. Selling after the fact is much easier to do with a customer that trusts you. More to the point, the customers on your list are likely to represent as much as 90% or more of your income over the long-term. There are many 3rd party autoresponder providers available. A few of them are: Aweber, iContact, Constant Contact and MailChimp.
Beware of Shiny Object Syndrome

This is the tendency to become distracted by the many tools, opportunities and ideas that are available. Symptoms of Shiny Object Syndrome are: Procrastination, poor decision making, wasted resources and unfinished projects. Going for every strategy that comes into your life can quickly dilute your focus and seriously impair your ability to get things done. The antidote is to choose only a few tools to use, stay focused and work with a schedule. The emphasis is on productivity and reducing distractions.
Outsource Your Marketing Efforts

One challenge you’ll have when marketing is time. If this is an issue, consider outsourcing some or all of your marketing, using sites such as: Odesk, Elance, Fiverr, etc.
7 Cool Ways to Use Fiver

Best Fiver Gigs for Outsourcing Your Business
Note: Be aware that the people who post on these sites might not be competent. It’s a good practice to test them with a small project, first, to see how they perform before giving that person a large project. Another way is to find someone in your network you can trust.
Crowdfunding

One option worth considering is crowdfunding, where you raise funds for your business using a site designed for this purpose. Essentially, you tell your story (video is great for this purpose) and offer perks (rewards) to contributors in exchange for a donation. Some well-known crowdfunding sites are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Among other things, crowdfunding has a viral aspect to it and it can help with raising awareness for your brand.
Top 10 Crowdfunding Sites for Entrepreneurs
Hacking KickStarter: How to Raise $100,000 in 10 Days
Crowdfunding Is About to Go Bananas
Leverage Your Content

When creating a campaign, think about the different ways that you can leverage your content with a minimum amount of effort. As an example, let’s say that you wrote an article. The most obvious thing is to publish it in some of the free article directories, such as

• ezinearticles.com
• GoArticles.com.

Beyond that, you can take that content, rewrite it and use it as a blog post. Then using plugins, such as the ones available with WordPress, you can post it to various social media sites such as:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Tumblr

Once you’ve done that, you can turn that content into a video and upload it on Youtube. You can create a slideshow, which you can upload to SlideShare. You can take the audio and share that as a podcast through iTunes and other podcast directories.
Give Before You Get

As mentioned earlier, list building should be a top priority. To do so, make sure you give before you get. This could be in the form of a report, video, or even a discount off your product or service up-front. This way, people will be more inclined to sign up for your offer. And when they do, you’ll have the opportunity to send them marketing messages after the fact.
Include a Compelling Call to Action
>

This is where you give users a reason to want to be a part of your marketing effort.
Consistent Efforts

In order to reap the rewards of marketing it’s crucial to be consistent in your efforts, whether those are daily, weekly or monthly. This is especially important if you run a blog, an email campaign, newsletter or post to a news site.
Conclusion

As you can see, there are many options. Since it’s easy to become overwhelmed, I recommend taking some time to read up on social media or even take a few classes. It’s also important to test different methods. In time, you’ll find out which social media strategy is a good fit for your business.