As social media is gaining ground in the business world, more and more businesses start realizing that they need to have a social media presence. In this blog I’d like to share some of my learning on social media marketing.
First of all, since there are so many social media platforms, each business needs to consider the right platforms for the individual business. The key in finding the right fit is to know the target audience. Knowledge such as who they are, what they do, where they go etc., helps to determine which platforms are best to reach and interact with them.
Second of all, unlike a marketing campaign, which when finished, we move onto the next one, social media marketing is a consistent and continual effort. Content needs to be published fairly frequently and closely monitored. It does take a lot of resources, which means time, money and people, and it requires a long-term commitment. Also, social media marketing is not a one-way newscast; we want to foster interactions and relationships with our audience, so be engaging, ask questions, respond to comments and provide value to the audience are some good ways to go.
Lastly, like for marketing campaigns, ongoing measurement and optimization of social media marketing is a good practice. It’s worth noting that measuring social media marketing success usually translates to measuring engagement, but “engagement” itself is not a predictor of success. It’s not a valuable activity unless it is tied to the organizational goals such as customer acquisition, brand awareness, new product development, customer satisfaction rate, registrations, etc. Therefore, businesses need to seriously consider what their goals are, and from there, develop social media strategies and specific tactics, while consistently measure the results against those goals to optimize for best return on investment.
