8 Tips To Help Your Social Media Strategy

8 Tips To Help Your Social Media Strategy
My notes from a Google Hangout with Google Community Managers

Social Media is foremost about listening
Listen to your audience and what conversations they are having. What is important to them? What complaints do they have? What do they like? Dislike? Let there conversation lead your post, discussions and overall social media goals.

Social Media is about support, not really a driver
Social media is the ultimate word of mouth. Use it to spread the word on your initiatives such as sales, events, ect. It should be used as an integrated part of your campaign, but not your sole marketing strategy.

Leverage influencers
See who are the people that are posting good content and leading conversations in your market or area of business. Who is posting content that everyone likes, who has a lot of followers. Reach out to these individuals and introduce yourself. See if they can post content for you in return for a small compensation. Most of these influencers are everyday people and are happy to help others.

Time of day
Know when your customers/users/audience is online. Test different times to post until you hit your sweet spot. In general 9AM works well. West coast people are just getting in to work at 9AM, East coast people are at lunch.

Post twice a day
But only if your audience can tolerate it. Post your serious, productive useful post in the morning and fun silly “cats licking screen” post in the afternoon. Those are the optimal times of day for those categories.

Collect all questions
Collect all questions asked in your social spaces into one place. If questions are frequently asked, you can have a place to direct them rather than answering the same questions over and over.

Reshare
Users love it when you re-share their content. If someone post something interesting, reshare it and tag them in the post. They will be happy and excited that you listened to them.

Create a social Calendar
It will help you to stay organized and help you keep track of all your post. It can even help you  work ahead to plan for special events/dates.

Four kinds of Marketing Emails

Newsletter Email

Newsletter Emails are sent regularly and vary in consistency from daily, weekly to monthly. Newsletters are a proven communications tool that help businesses achieve brand awareness, customer retention, ad revenue, and other goals.

http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/newsletters/37signals/2010-06-08.html



Announcement Emails

Announcement emails are usually sent out when the business has a time-critical announcement to make. Such as 1 day only sales, keynote speaker, grand opening, etc. These are usually very short and contain 1 call to action.

http://thepublishersclub.co.uk/emails/LDN01/