Social Media Marketing Tips to Give Your Company An Edge In 2013

Self-proclaimed social media gurus are a dime a dozen. They’ll give you x number of steps to engage visitors, but they fail to take into account that each organization’s social media strategy is different. No two organizations are the same, and no two social media users are the same. What you need is a way to get the most mileage out of your social media plan.

Instead of telling you exactly what to do, we’re going to give you some useful tips that will help you in your planning sessions in a way that makes your social media strategy work for you — not you for it.

Organize Your Social Media Strategy

Nail down what social networks make sense for your company to use. For instance, if you’re a B2B company, you will probably place a large focus on sites like LinkedIn or Google Plus. On the other hand, if you’re working directly with customers, you’ll need to focus on customer-centric sites like Facebook and Twitter. This is not to say that any type of business can’t use any and all social networks they please, it just means that you may want to think about your social networks in terms of how your company deals with prospects on a daily basis.

From there, you’ll need to develop a content schedule. This is where — not unlike a newspaper — an editorial calendar comes in handy. Plan your posts in a way that makes sense for your brand.

Now that you have a social network in place, go ahead with the implementation phase. This means a lot of things, but before you go crazy with sending out Tweets and Facebook blasts, condense your social networks under a single, consolidated dashboard like TweetDeck or Hootsuite.

Review SEO Strategy

How does your social media strategy gel with your overall SEO plan? This may not seem like the most intuitive question to ask at first, but it’s actually an important question to answer. Another way to phrase this question is how does your social sharing strategy improve your search strategy? If you’re scratching your head, you’ll need to review how your SEO and social media strategies can be more cohesive. Social media sites like Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook all rank well on most search engines. It’s important to sync your site keyword strategy with your social media content.

Tailor Your Post

One of the many golden rules of social media is that if your content is good, no one will question it. A big part of creating good content is knowing what the people in your social media community want. The best way to do this is by talking to them. Custom-tailor your social media posts to your audience. This will take some time to get this right, but repetition is key.

If you’re doing this as a large team it’s often difficult to manage all the posts. This is where a cloud storage or backup solution comes into play. By using Google Drive and other free online backup services, small businesses can safely store and share company information in the cloud.

Monitor Metrics & Recalibrate

In the world of social media marketing, data is your friend. It separates fact from fiction. It helps you better carry out all of the previously mentioned tips. Keeping a close eye on metrics gives you a birds-eye view of what is working and isn’t. In your plan, regularly review this and don’t be afraid to change anything that’s causing problems on a moment’s notice. In fact, it’s likely that you’ll fine tune your strategy on a daily basis.

This is a guest post from Lauren Mead.  Lauren’s a small business lawyer who shares tips and strategies that help small businesses flourish.