How to Create a Sensible Social Media Strategy for Your Business [Infographic]

Many businesses find social media overwhelming - there are so many networks available, and they’re always adding new features for you to learn and integrate into your plan. If you don’t have a full-time team of social media experts at your disposal, your success depends on creating a simple and sensible strategy that fits your resources and goals.

Here are a few steps you can take to focus your energy:

1) Define your target audience

If you haven’t already identified and documented your buyer personas, start by defining the key demographics of the audience you’re trying to reach - age, gender, occupation, income, hobbies and interests, etc. Think about the challenges they’re faced with, and what problems they’re trying to solve on daily basis. Try to focus on the 3-4 types of people that represent the majority of your buyers - don’t get hung up on all the exceptions, or you’ll never get started!

2) Start blogging

Fresh content is the linchpin of a successful social strategy, so you’ll need to commit to creating fresh, quality content on a consistent basis. Brainstorm a list of the most common questions you hear from your prospects, and commit to writing at least one new blog post a week focused on addressing these questions. 

3) Create educational content

Consider creating downloadable content like ebooks, checklists, videos, and infographics that address your buyer’s pains. If the content is truly helpful and educational, people will be more likely to share it on social media and extend your reach.

4) Focus on a few key social channels

Most small businesses don’t have the bandwidth to establish and sustain a great social media presence on more than a handful of channels. It can also be overwhelming to learn the rules of engagement on a bunch of different networks at one time. Start small. Research key networks to learn where your target audience is most likely to spend time, and focus your effort on building, nurturing, and sustaining a community there before moving on to another channel.

5) Develop a recipe card to guide you

Social media isn’t an exact science, so you need to establish a consistent posting and engagement schedule to start seeing results. Start by developing a reasonable recipe card you feel comfortable sticking to. Set goals for how frequently you'll post content and engage your followers, and hold yourself accountable to following your recipe. 

6) Measure your results

There are a million things you can track related to social media, so start by looking at how much traffic is being driven to your website or blog from social media. Watch your posts to see what people are responding to, and look for trends related to particular topics or keywords that generate more interest than others. Once you have a sense of what's possible, set goals for key metrics and start keeping a scorecard to measure your progress. Be sure to chose metrics that are easy to gather - if it's too time-consuming to track, you'll fall off the wagon!

• Net new fans and followers
• # of interactions
• Visits to your site from social

7) Adjust your tactics

Unless you're a celebrity, social media doesn't start working overnight. It takes time to build a following, establish yourself as an influencer, and start seeing results.  You'll need to experiment a bit to find the right combination of channels, content, and messaging that works for your audience. Over time, you’ll be able to adjust your recipe card, content, and personas based on the information you’re gathering - which will help you fine tune your strategy and generate more consistent results!

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What I Learned About Successful Organizational Social Media Strategy

To maximize your social media efforts and truly be effective, a plan is a must. Social media strategy isn’t only applicable when an organization is launching channels, but can also be applied after a presence has already been established.

Social media is such a new field that many organizations built a presence on channels before anyone understood how those channels would operate and evolve. Now, though, social media strategies must be instituted for organizations to thrive — even if they think they’ve been operating successfully without one. Such a position is exactly where we found ourselves at Harvard Medical School not all that long ago.

Regardless of your industry, simply having a documented strategy is a competitive advantage. Chart from Content Marketing Institute/Marketing Profs “B2C Content Marketing 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America” study.

If you do not have a written social strategy, you are far from alone, and if you do, it’s a good idea to revisit it regularly. The following are some of the key takeaways I came away with after having gone through the process of creating a strategy.

A Plan Doesn’t Exist Until It Is Written Down

Just because a plan is not written down does not mean there isn’t a direction in place, but it is absolutely necessary to get it down in writing.

This piece became evident at HMS when we started hiring social media staff and didn’t have a go-to document to get them up to speed on our social media goals and voice. A written plan will allow you to be organized for your team, grow your channels, and be consistent to your audiences.

In our case, a strategy has allowed us to prioritize our efforts and clarify our objectives; track our progress and regularly provide informed ROI; and execute on all of our efforts with a shared purpose in mind.

One thing that has also been beneficial for us is to treat the strategy as a reference point and a living document. Some elements are fundamental to our content marketing structure and will not change, but a lot isn’t set in stone and will continually evolve as we improve what we’re doing and as new technologies emerge.

You’ll Find New Opportunities by Figuring Out What Your Competition Isn’t Doing Well

In the process of putting together a plan, one of the first steps we took was to perform a competitive analysis.

After determining our audiences and content mission, we next looked at where our audiences’ needs were (or were not) being met and where they were going for content. In doing this, we were able to learn a lot about the other medical institutions we compete directly with, accounts outside of our immediate industry that provide similar resources, and see what some high-performing accounts were doing.

This process has informed our benchmarks and allowed us to assign success metrics to the usually ambiguous top-of-the-funnel components such as share of voice, brand awareness, and brand equity. Additionally, it enabled us to see what our direct competitors weren’t doing well and isolate opportunities to have a competitive advantage over them.

Keeping a consistent eye on how your competition stacks up, like in this Facebook Competitive Analysis from Simply Measured, will help you set informed strategies.

In our case, some of these opportunities included incorporating more visuals, using more direct copy, repurposing popular content, and identifying new channels where we could gain traction. 
The Need for Specificity

It is easy to want to be big and broad, because you don’t want to alienate or turn away any audiences. However, this instinct can actually be detrimental, because organizations end up speaking to no one in trying to speak to everyone. Instead, focus on specific audiences and speak to their needs using the most effective channel(s) for your brand.

Find out which social channels you’re having the most impact on, and focus there.

By going small and niche with your messages and marketing, you will foster a deeper relationship with these groups that will be stronger and more conducive to scaling further down the road. Beyond audience specificity, precise and defined metrics, goals, and objectives make a strategy more attainable and clear.

Looking for such clarity at HMS has made our messaging and objectives clearer. By speaking clearly to specific audiences, we’ve also been able to begin cornering a niche within our market, which in turn has allowed us to exponentially grow our marketing reach and brand advocates.

We didn’t stop with audience and message specificity, either. We’ve created channel-specific plans (these can be as short as a page) that build up to our overall social media strategy that builds up to our overall content marketing strategy. Having an eye on what success looks like at each level of our marketing structure ensures we’re staying on track and takes the guesswork out of determining the value of our marketing tactics.

The Process Will Force You to Ask and Address Important Questions

In going through the process of establishing a strategy at HMS, we were forced to ask a lot of questions about why we operated in the way that we did.

So far, I’ve talked about looking outward at audiences, trends, and competition, but the hardest part is turning that lens inward. A lot of initiatives in the social media world start off with the best of intentions, but become legacies or indoctrinated into processes. By looking inward, we were forced to question certain practices, such as why we operated on specific channels; why we shared certain types of content and where; why we had a certain posting frequency; and so on.

In doing this, we’ve been able to evolve from some bad habits that weren’t achieving our objectives or, worse, holding us back. We’ve also been able to establish standardization, consistency, effectiveness, and efficiency on individual channels and across our overall social media marketing.

It Will Make Your Life Easier

Pulling all of this together and making a strategy can easily seem daunting at first, but the hardest part is getting started, and the reward is well worth it.

Certainly, going through this process takes discipline and can seem unattainable when there is so much to get done in the day-to-day, but having a written plan makes a big difference. On our social team at HMS, it is now easier to prioritize work and clarify what we’re trying to achieve with a documented plan.

Having a strategy has not only made our social media efforts more cohesive, but has also provided greater internal buy-in by being able to display a direction and value. It has also been vital to have something to reference when considering new opportunities and to keep us focused in our social media efforts.

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10 Questions to Help Define Your Social Media Strategy

Have you ever had great intentions to clean out an area of your home like your hallway closet or garage but once you got started became so overwhelmed that you just abandoned the job? Developing your social media strategy might feel the same way. While the payoff is definitely worth it, it’s natural that due to the all-encompassing nature of the job you might be initially deterred. When you begin thinking about your social media strategy, it’s guaranteed that you will have countless questions. With such a large undertaking, it’s difficult to know where to start, and how you should focus your energy and efforts.

10 social media questions you need to ask

To help define your strategy and execute a social media plan, we’ve put together the following 10 questions that you should ask yourself so that you can dive in, rather than abandon ship.

1. What are your organization’s goals?

It’s been long-proven that setting goals is a way of improving your chances of success, so before setting out to create and implement your social media strategy, you need to establish solid goals. You must consider not only what your organization is looking to achieve as a whole, but what your primary goal with social media will be. Are you hoping to focus on improving your social media customer service, perfecting your promotion strategies, or increasing your number of followers?

When looking to set your goals, we recommend using the S.M.A.R.T method as a guide. The acronym for this model emphasizes setting goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Our post “Don’t Just Create Social Media Goals—Reach Them” offers a detailed look at how the S.M.A.R.T method applies to setting and achieving your social media goals.

2. Who is your target market, audience or persona?

When setting goals for your social media strategy, it’s obviously important to carefully consider who you are trying to reach. Think about who your ideal customer is, and how you can leverage this information through your social media strategy. Consider what social media channels your target market is on. Are they expert Tweeters or Instagram buffs? Furthermore, think about where they go to seek information. When they need to know something, where do they turn? In all of this, you will gain a greater understanding of what is important to your audience, and therefore know how to tailor your content to best suit their needs. 
To help solidify and organize your audience targeting efforts, it’s also good idea to create personas as a way to really focus on the people you are hoping to reach. For help with this, we’ve created a guide on How to create buyer personas with social media data.

3. What are your audience’s pain points?

In knowing who your audience is, and establishing the different personas you’re targeting, it should be easier to recognize what their pain points are. Think about what kinds of problems your customers are facing currently, or could be facing in the future. Anticipating and staying ahead of potential problems your customers could experience is a way to truly show your value as a brand. In this, you should also recognize how your product or service can be of help to your audience and customers. How does it solve certain problems better than others available on the market?

Make it as easy as possible for your customer to recognize that your brand offers the solutions to their problems through showcasing these resolutions on your social media channels. Provide tips and tricks targeting those in your service or product’s specific industry, share short but helpful videos, and pay attention to the things your audience complains about.

4. What is the voice behind your brand?

There has been much written and discussed about building a brand voice, and for good reason. Your brand voice is your most valuable marketing tool, and establishes how your organization is perceived by the public. Your brand voice is the tone you portray behind your social content, and includes everything from the visual design of your brand, to the way you communicate with your social media community. The Muse offers four great ways to develop and establish your brand voice, as the following:

• Build archetypes (know who your voice is targeting)
• Fill in some blanks (i.e. I want my brand to make people feel ______)
• Create a test group (Ask third parties what they think about your brand, how it makes them feel, what words they associate with it, etc.)
• Find your muse (look to other brands you respect to see what they’re doing right)

5. What type of content do you want published on social media?

This seems like an obvious question to be asking when trying to define your social media strategy, but it’s apparent that many post without any premeditation. Think about each post concept and ensure it fits into your overall strategy. With this question, you also want to think about what you want your readers to know and feel after seeing your content. What message are you trying to send, and how is this conveyed through each and every one of your posts? What action, if any, do you want your audience to take after seeing your content?

Furthermore, consider what type of content supports your overall business objectives. Will a video help drive you to gain more followers, or is a Twitter chat the way to go about this? What kind of content will encourage higher engagement, or see successful conversion? These are all areas you want to consider, and where the answer will vary depending on your target audience.

7. Who is accountable?

In any organization, there are structures in place to acknowledge the roles and responsibilities of all team members. When developing your social media strategy, it’s key to clearly define roles and understand who will manage, monitor, and engage on each account. Who will be responsible for certain tasks, and at what stages? Depending on the size of your team, this could be a very simple task. Figure out who will be responsible for things such as the creation of visual and written content, social media advertising/paid social, social management, and social media customer service (if relevant to your business). Once you have secured these roles, the direction of your social media strategy will be much clearer, and you will be able to use tools (such as Hootsuite) to assign tasks to specific team members, stay organized, and ensure follow through takes place.

With social media a key form of business communication, it’s also important to establish responsibilities for the potential risks involved. Our detailed guide on Mapping organizational roles and responsibilities for social media risk offers solid solutions to help you get started and define these boundaries as easily as possible.  

8. Should I run social media ads?

While engagement and community building are essential to your social media strategy, you can extend your success even further through taking advantage of social media advertising. As Inc. shares, “eMarketer, a world leader in research in the digital world, reports that between 20 and 25 percent of people who see a social media ad on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest, will then respond by visiting the store or website on the ad. In addition, they reported that between 14 and 17 percent went ahead and bought a product or service.” To help you get started with your social media advertising efforts, our Beginner’s guide to social media advertising offers suggestions for each of the major networks.

Furthermore, Hootsuite’s CEO Ryan Holmes offered the following six ways you can use social media ads to grow your business:

• Use free social media to beta-test your paid social ads
• Take advantage of targeting features
• Rotate ads frequently
• Use small samples to A/B test your social ads
• Understand how ads are sold
• Design your ads with smartphones in mind

9. How frequently should I be posting to social media?

If only there was a surefire, guaranteed answer to this question. While there is no clear set number for the recommended frequency of your posts, this is definitely something you want to think about and be aware of. The frequency of your posts should be considered in relation to the kind of content you are sharing, as well as your audience members and what they respond to. While of course not set in stone, some very general guidelines exist for popular networks, which you can test out to see if they work for your business. These are as follows:

• Facebook: 1-3 times per day
• Instagram: Once a day
• Twitter: 8-24 times per day
• Google+: Once per day
• Pinterest: 4-10 times per day

While these are great starting points, the best way of finding a general answer to this question for your specific brand or organization, is through good old fashioned trial and error. Post certain content at certain times of day, and with varied frequency. Take note of where you see the biggest successes overall, and adjust your strategy accordingly. Each social media network will see different results, for example our guide here describes three ways to find the best times and posting frequency for Twitter.  

10. What is our social media strategy’s most important metric?

This question is one that encapsulates all aspects of your social media strategy. Touching upon the need for goals, your audience, advertising, and countless other components of your plan, it’s necessary to know how you are measuring success. With this, you need to think about what you are monitoring for each social media platform, and why. As we explain in our Social media metrics you’re (probably) forgetting post, “According to Altimeter, only 34 percent of businesses feel that their social strategy is connected to business outcomes. To prove ROI, you need to show these connections to business outcomes by setting the right goals and the right key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs should always tie your social media efforts to broader marketing goals, and ideally to the money in your business’ bank account.”

While it’s easy enough to measure new follower numbers or the number of likes on your last Instagram post, there are other metrics you should consider, such as:

• Click-through with bounce rate
• Share of traffic driven
• Social share of voice
• Leads and attributed revenue

Now you have a good idea of what questions to ask to help you form your social media strategy. If you feel I have left anything out please comment below. 

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16 Tips to Dominate Social Media

It’s that time of year where we all look ahead to the endless possibilities of the future. You’ve seen all the “success stories” – talking about their exponential growth, sure-fire tricks, and guaranteed business propulsion tactics. Why can’t you do that? What are they doing that you aren’t?

Is social media going to be the silver bullet that rockets you to success this year too?

To be honest. Probably not. Most likely not.

You see, social media isn’t some fancy overnight trick to all of a sudden grow your business by 1248% (or whatever other ridiculous growth projection these people are flaunting).

What social media is, is a tool, in your entire business strategy. And it takes work. A lot of work. You need to know what you’re doing. Then you have to do that well. And then you have to do that over and over and over again.

I’m not trying to make it sound like it can’t be done. Because, yes, social media can absolutely transform your business. I’m living proof of that. But, you can’t just “try” social media. And you can’t just do a couple small things and expect it to work overnight.

So, if you’re still with me, want to stand out from the competition this year, and are willing to understand what it will really take to dominate social media in 2016, here are my 16 tips.

1. Put in the Work

I just said it, so let me say it again.

If you actually want to see success with social media in 2016, you need to put in the work.

This can be 30 minutes a day or 8 hours a day. Or anywhere in the middle. The amount of time doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s the quality of the work you put into it. And how well you use that time to actually produce results.

It means doing the next 15 tips and more. Consistently. It means not going down the rabbit hole of content on social media for hours and then calling it a day. It means actually doing the work.

2. Set up a Strategy

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know how much I advocate for a solid social media strategy.

No, if you build it, they will not just come. If you keep trying to see what sticks, you’ll waste more time than you have to spare.

So, figure out what you actually want this year. Then make a plan to actually achieve it.

If you want help with this, I offer social media strategy support or you can buy my book on how to create your own social media strategy.

3. Target Your Ideal Customer

If you’re not speaking directly to the people who will buy from you, you’re wasting your time.

Figure out who your ideal audience is. Is it existing customers or potential customers, or both? What are the demographics of this audience – age, gender, education, geographical location, income level, etc.?

Then start writing your content as though you are talking to that specific person. The more your message and content is targeted to this purpose, the better results you will see.

4. Use Quality Visuals

Visual marketing has been the buzzword for multiple years now. And this year is no exception.

But, it’s not “just” visuals anymore. It’s all about quality visuals.

Everyone is using photos. More and more people are using videos. People are live streaming now. So, if you want your content to even stand a chance of getting seen, it better be the best dang visual you can create.

Take better photos. Edit them to make them even better. Don’t post anything that isn’t worthy of your brand.

Take better videos. Get better audio equipment, use better lighting, add post-editing functions like graphics and music. Whether you film live or record it, make sure the setting is the best you can create. And, no, this doesn’t mean you have to go spend thousands of dollars on equipment and software. But you will have to get smart about the tools you use.

5. Write Better Captions

We live in a sea of overwhelm when it comes to content. If you actually want people to stop and read your content, you have to make it worth their while.

Gone are the days of posting a link with just a post title. No. That’s just not going to stand out. Take a little time to tell people what’s valuable in that post.

Don’t just share a photo or video either. Explain it. Tell a story. Ask a question. Whatever you do, write better copy and captions to actually invite your audience to participate.

6. Share Your Story

We all have a story. And people want to connect with people. People share stories. So share your story.

Find fun ways to talk about your story. It could be a short item you share every week (maybe a #throwbackthursday post) or a monthly editorial about why you started your business. Maybe it’s what inspired your new product.

It doesn’t have to be the over-sharing, super personal story. But behind everything is a story.

Whatever it is. Tell your story.

7. Provide Real Education

We’ve all talked about the value of sharing quality content and educating your audience. This year is no different. In fact, you should focus on this more.

More people are reading blogs, listening to podcasts, watching live streams, and following every social media platform to LEARN. They want to know how to do something for themselves, do something better, try something new, or just be smarter.

If you can help educate, you can grow your audience and your success.

8. Run Contests

Some platforms are easier and produce better results when it comes to running contests so you’ll have to determine what works best for you and your business.

If you really want to grow your audience effectively and quickly, a well-executed contest can produce unmatched results.

But, you have to do them well. And your prize, purpose, and targeting needs to be focused on your business.

9. Offer Exclusive Discounts and Promotions

If you really want social media to drive sales and results, offer discounts or run promotions exclusively to your social media audiences. This may mean you run a discount only on Facebook. Or it might be something you offer to all of your social media profiles, but not your list or in store.

Doing these types of campaigns will allow you to push the attention to your social media account(s) and push sales to these exclusive audiences.

Yes, you can (and should) promote to other sources (social media platforms, list, etc.) that you are running this campaign on the other platform. Cross promotion grows your audience with your other existing fans and still rewards them, while pushing your results higher.

10. Ads

Yes, I said it. You have to start investing in ads this year.

There are plenty of ways to use social media without investing real dollars into ads. But, if you want to boost your results, get faster results, and push ahead of your competition, you’ll need to use ads in some context.

Almost every major social media channel provides paid advertising options now. Find out what makes sense for you, set a budget, and start using these ads.

11. Take Advantage of Advocates

There are already a lot of people who want to help you. You just need to find them and capitalize on their willingness!

These could be employees, long standing customers, new happy customers, mentors, and many others. If they love your product(s) or business and are willing to speak out on your behalf, find ways to encourage them and reward them.

12. User Generated Content

Many of your advocates you will find when they post about your business. They may post a photo or comment about their positive experience with your company. These testimonials and showcases of your company are incredibly valuable to your business.

You can also encourage your customers to create this content. Give them clear instructions on what kind of content you like to share from your customers. Invite them to use a hashtag or tag you when they share content.

Ask that person if you can reshare their content (comment, post, etc.) to your account. Use this impactful user generated content to boost your company’s reputation and build your business.

13. Engage

It’s one word. Engage.

This year, more than any other in the past, you are expected to actually engage with your audience. Respond to questions, offer assistance, handle customer service issues, thank someone for saying something nice.

If they have taken the time to mention you in any way, you can pretty much assume that they are expecting you to respond. So do it.

Oh, and do it faster than slower. The faster the response, the more your audience will appreciate it. And in today’s super active online world, customers expect quick responses.

14. Know Your Legal Constraints

Social media has been a relatively rogue environment in the past because it has grown faster than any government oversight can keep up with it. But that’s changing now. And there are plenty of legal implications you need to be aware of.

Know your local, state, federal (or other) laws regarding marketing, advertising, running contests, gambling (yes, a contest can be considered gambling), promoting products, sharing an affiliate link, using someone else’s image or copyrighted content…. the list goes on and on.

Don’t fall prey to “everyone else is doing it” or “I’ve always done it this way”. These can – and will – backfire.

15. Track Your Analytics

How do you know if social media is actually working? Because you track stuff.

As much or as little as you can. But you need to track it in order to know what’s working.

Some platforms and advertising tools offer analytics. Other tools are available as third party sources. Some are free. Some you have to pay for.

But you need to be tracking your data in order to know if it’s working.

16. Give it Time

Even after you’ve done all this, and more, the reality is that you need time. Social media doesn’t transform your business overnight. It could take months to see any real growth or measurable results. But that doesn’t mean it’s not working. It just takes time.

Understand that this isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s not going to triple your business by the end of the month. But it will transform your business, grow your audience, build brand awareness, and drive sales and traffic.

Just. Give it. Time.

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A Social Media Approach Every Small Business Should Be Using

Are you a small business owner looking to expand your online presence?

Would you like to know how to use social media to connect with your target market?

While the effective use of social media continues to elude many small business owners, there are proven benefits to establishing a solid online presence.

Sure you know that social media can create relationships, establish trust and earn a client for life. However, dominating your niche or market requires a strategic approach.

So, how can your small business benefit from social media?

Below is a 7-step social media approach that every small business should be using. Put these pieces in place to increase reach and grow your business!

Social Media Approach Every Small Business Should Be Using

1. Build a Credible Reputation

If you want to build authority in your industry, social media can establish a name and reputation.

From content to conversation, getting involved is a great way to get started. For many, it’s taking an established offline reputation and transitioning it into online currency.

Sound overwhelming? It doesn’t have to be.

There are many ways you can do this.

• Pay attention to what your fans, followers and clients are saying about you or your company. Now inject yourself into the conversation.
• Respond with helpful comments or timely information. Tools like Mention make it easy to track real-time conversation around your brand.

• Solve problems on a daily basis and always put your best foot forward. Be a giver first  – give of your knowledge, expertise and experience.

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” ~ Samuel Johnson

How to Make This Work in Your Business

DAVIDsTEA has built a reputation through their social channels as lively, engaging, and always entertaining.

One look at Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter and see why a consistent presence matters.

Create an easy checklist that you can follow daily to maintain consistency. Spell out  each step you’ll take, which social channels will support your goals and what objectives you look to achieve.

I love to do this with mind-mapping software. It makes visualization so much easier and all of a sudden the task now becomes manageable.

Here’s an example of what this might look like.

2. Attract Potential Clients

In a fast paced online world, the competition for attention is tremendous.  In order to stand out and attract potential clients, you must combine strategy with creativity.

Social media marketing is a perfect tool to assist with that.

Make use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest andInstagram to share your company story. Tell it in a way that motivates and inspires potential clients to connect and engage.

Where do you get started?

How to Make This Work in Your Business

To begin attracting your perfect client across various social networks, consider these tips:

• Spend time identifying where your target market spends their time. Is it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest? Once you know where they want to receive your message, then begin to craft it.
• Take time to determine what you will talk about. This is not a time or place to be spammy or promotional. You want to offer insight and give away your knowledge freely to begin earning trust and building rapport.
• Like, circle or follow competitors and other local businesses. Pay attention to what they’re doing well and where there’s opportunity to do better. Pay attention to who they’re interacting with and how they’re engaging their community.
• Ask questions! This is a quick and easy way to find out what matters most to those connecting with you online.
• Be the solution! Once you ask the question, it’s time to solve it like Tiny Buddha does in this tweet.

3. Connect With Like-Minded Business Professionals

Connecting with other business professionals might be counter-intuitive to how you’ve done business offline. But in the online world, relationships are everything.

Social media is an excellent way to connect with like-minded business professionals and build a mutually beneficial relationship.

However,  there are right ways and wrong ways to connect.

The right way? Strategically reaching out to people within your industry, niche or community.

The wrong way? Randomly sending out requests or long DM’s (with no prior relationship) to simply “add to your numbers.”

How to Make This Work in Your Business

Join LinkedIn Groups, Google Plus Communities and Blog Tribes to connect with others talking about and sharing similar content to your own.

Take the time to comment on their latest post or offer feedback on an interesting tweet. Have a Facebook Page? Your newsfeed is a great way to do this!

From your page, go to your page by clicking on the “View Pages Feed” link directly under your cover photo. Now scroll through and begin to share their content and actively engage.

Networking with professionals within your industry and then sharing their content creates goodwill and reciprocity.

It also stretches your reach beyond your network, tapping into their established following.

4. Diversify Your Marketing Efforts

In traditional marketing, would you limit yourself to only one outlet? I can’t imagine the answer is yes.

Likewise, don’t box yourself into a corner with social media. Spread your wings, try something new and determine what works best for your business.

By mixing social media with online advertising and PR efforts, you will be able to expand your business further than you ever imagined.

How to Make This Work in Your Business

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Repurpose evergreen content into new media.

Test an Infographic, video, podcast or graphic quote on different social channels.

Keep your content fresh and your social networks alive and interactive through a variety of media types.

Test, test, test to identify what’s working and what’s not.

5. Make Your Time and Money Count

Do you find yourself hopping from one social network to the next?

Do you often get sucked into Facebook, only to realize you’ve lost hours out of your day?

You’re not alone.

Creating a solid social media strategy can streamline your efforts and simplify your daily to-do’s. It gives life to your mission, vision and values and provides a roadmap towards success.

Stop wasting time and money on one-off tactics and get clear on why you’re using social media. Once you know your why, it’s much easier to understand the how.

How to Make This Work in Your Business

Get clear on how you can tackle social media in a productive and meaningful way. Take time to map out the keys to your success.

Your 6-Step Action Plan

• Define Your Goals
• Stand Out Online
• Research
• Create an Integrated Strategy
• Translate Your Established Brand
• Track and Measure Your Success

6. Drive Traffic to Your Website/Blog

As a small business owner, your website and the content on your blog are the backbone of your online presence.

Not convinced that blogging is the right marketing solution for your business?

As Neil Patel with QuickSprout points out,

“Blogging generates the most traffic for companies, and when you’re consistent at it, blogging leads to more search traffic. In fact, blogging is the #1 traffic-increasing factor, while SEO is #2.”

So beyond the benefits mentioned above, what else can a blog do for your business and personal brand?

• Establishes you/your business as an industry leader
• Builds credibility through the know, like and trust factor
• Decreases marketing costs through an integrated strategy
• Allows potential customers to self-select and move through your sales funnel
• Generates the right kind of leads, bringing your perfect customer to your doorstep

Where do you begin? Identify your WIN.

How to Make This Work in Your Business

If you want to build a successful blog, you need to know who you’re talking with, what problems you solve, and the opportunity within each of those.

WIN: Who, Issues, and Needs

• Who: Who will you be talking with on your blog? List your target market. Mine for example is small business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers.
• Issues: What issues is your target market dealing with? Mine would be finding enough time to manage social media, juggling a business online and offline, budget, conversion, results.
• Needs: What are the needs of your target market? This is where you’ll start to identify opportunity. What problems can you solve and what solutions will you provide?

7. Nurture Relationships

Social media is extremely useful when it comes to keeping in touch with your past and current clients.

By connecting with them on Facebook and other social networks, you can build a bridge that can prove extremely beneficial in the future. Not only will you stay top of mind, but you’re creating relevance.

With consumers attention spans hovering around 8 seconds, the more brain cells you can earn, the better off you will be once they’re ready to make a purchase or connect with your business.

How to Make This Work in Your Business

Sharing an experience is important, but crafting it and having a purpose is even more important. Focus on the “telling” of the story.

The goal is to help your audience and potential clients relate – whether it’s to you and your business or to a past client through a positive testimonial.

Start creating your own stories and watch how people react. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to draw in a client when you allow them to understand who you are and connect with you on a much deeper level.

Final Thoughts

There are many benefits to your small business getting active on social media.

How can you better position your business across social media to welcome new customers? And how can you use social media to endear customers to your small business?

Answer those questions and unlock the benefits and power of social media in your small business.
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