How to Supercharge Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Does your social media marketing lack execution?Are your social media goals a distant memory?You need a social media strategy!Whether you are a sales professional, massage therapist or healthcare provider, your business deserves a social media presence that supports and encourages growth.

imagine if you could:

• Wake up each day with a strategy in place that created clarity of purpose?
• Know who your target audience is, where to find them and how to best position your content for maximum exposure?
• Have a plan in place that didn't require hours of wasted time on social media?
• Execute on a social media strategy that produces significant results without it feeling difficult or overwhelming?

That's what putting a social media marketing strategy in place can do!Below are three tips to supercharge your strategy and create a consistent message with superior results!

Supercharge Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

1. Identify Goals and Objectives

The words goal and objective are often confused, especially when it comes to social media marketing. While they both relate to what you want to achieve, they differ in the how, when, and what.Think of it like this: the goal is what you are working towards; the objectives are the steps you will take to get there.For example, if you run a social media marketing blog, your goal might be:

“Become the industry destination for all business professionals seeking tips, tools and strategies that support the successful use and implementation of social media marketing within their business.”

In order to achieve that goal, your objectives might look something like this:

• Hire ten social media experts to share real-life case studies that clearly substantiate the value of social media use for business
• Join three top networking groups to increase visibility and awareness of the blog and it’s purpose
• Drive targeted traffic to the blog
• Increase blog subscription conversion by twenty-five percent

Your goals and objectives will vary dependent on your mission, long-term and short-term vision, audience, and product or service.The important thing is to take the time to outline your top goals. Those goals, that when achieved would propel your business forward.Build out your goals with this social media strategy worksheet from Exact Target by Sales Force.

2. Create Bite-Sized Action Steps

Now that you know what you’re working towards, break those goals and objectives down into manageable action steps.In other words, how will you get from:

• Point A (implementation) to
• Point B (execution) to
• Point C (conversion)

Based on the goals and objectives above, the action steps required might be:

1. Utilize the top six social media channels – Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to create an integrated social media marketing campaign that supports growth. Use various forms of content to get company message positioned properly on each social network.
3. i. Images (marketing collateral, blog graphics)
4. Text (blog posts)
6. Audio (podcasts)
8. Video (Google hangouts)
9. Conduct an audience survey to determine where to expand, grow, and diversify company social media presence during each quarter of the year.
10. Identify 10 industry pages with significant reach within the real estate community and build a relationship by liking and commenting on their posts with a goal of raising awareness about our page and driving traffic back through our hyperlink.
11. Engage fans and followers through giveaways and sweepstakes such as a social media business plan or analysis.
12. Monitor trends, characteristics and top posts through analytics and insights. Tweak posts to meet the needs of each social channel fan and follower base.

Next step:Now that you know what you are trying to achieve, put a plan in place to monitor key metrics. For example:

• Referrals from social channels
• Leads coming from Facebook page
• Mentions across social media
• Audience/community growth
• New blog subscribers

Now build it out in a basic spreadsheet. Here's a sample social media strategy for Twitter:

3. Build Out Your Plan of Attack

One you’ve created your goals, objectives and action steps, it’s time to flesh out the details.How will each social channel, including Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest support and promote your overall plan?Create a winning social media strategy that caters to the unique needs of your potential client!

Build out your daily plan of attack into daily and weekly to-do’s.

Here’s an example of what that might look like:

Facebook and Google Plus

• Post on business page once per day including articles, tips, how-to’s, video tutorials, and other people’s content that’s relevant to your fans and followers.
• Join three relevant groups and communities. For example, find local networks that include business professionals similar to your line of work. Begin to interact by commenting or posting interesting content at least once per day.

Twitter

• Go through monitored keywords (e.g. industry terms, business name, local keyword phrases) and respond to any tweets
• Use third-party tool such as Social Bro to follow relevant people back
• Thank retweets
• Use lists to follow key people within industry or niche

LinkedIn

• Update status once per day
• Accept relevant invitations
• Provide 1 recommendation where appropriate

Pinterest

• Share three to five pins and add them to strategically named boards
• Repin three others pins that followers would fight interesting
• Find five new people within industry, field or niche to follow

Setting up a proper strategy on the front-end will reduce many headaches down the road.Take the time to strategically design and implement your social media strategy, then determine how you will stay consistent in your efforts.The important thing is to know your limitations and what you can commit to without over-extending yourself. Using a social media editorial calendar will keep you focused and on track so you don't become overwhelmed.Not sure where to get started? Read these great tips from Peg Fitzpatrick!

Conclusion

If you're eager to improve your social media results, implementing and executing upon a strategy can bring extraordinary results. But a strategy only works if you commit to working it.

Two additional tips before you dive in:

• Maintain a focus on areas of authority. What is your specialty, service or skill-set? Building authority via social media requires an unwavering commitment to consistently sharing knowledge based on your particular expertise.
• Once you have your strategy in place, continue to add adjust and modify. This will keep your message fresh and your content relevant.