Have you ever wondered what separates successful social media marketers from those that struggle?

Or why one business will succeed on social media while another staggers along?

The answer isn’t as complicated as you might think.

Those that achieve exponential growth commit to daily activities, habits and strategies.

These critical elements shape and form their future.

And the good news? You can use the same ingredients in your social media marketing.

In this article, I share seven quick action steps you can take today.

Each one has been time-tested and proven to make a difference. That is, if you’re willing to commit.

Read on to learn how you can add these ideas to your marketing mix to encourage social media success.

How To Succeed On Social Media (7 Quick Action Steps)

  1. Know WHY You’re Using Social Media

If I were to ask you why you’re using social media, would you know the answer?

Have you taken the time to define how social media will support your marketing goals?

Until you know what you’re looking to achieve, social media will feel hard. And worse than that,success will appear elusive.

Not sure where to get started? Here’s how to find your WHY and use it as a differentiating factor.

How to Discover the WHY Behind Your Social Media

Begin by answering these eight questions.

• When you first hopped on social media, what was your number one reason? (e.g. to reach a targeted audience, cheap advertising, better connections – be honest)
• What’s your number one reason today? (explain how it’s changed)
• What three problems do you solve for your potential clients?
• Can you articulate your solution to those problems across social media?
• What do you see in your competitor’s use of social media that you feel needs to change? (what’s broken, not working, inconsistent)
• Will social media help you build trust and rapport?
• Is their a market eager to buy your product?
• Is the purpose behind your use of social media aligned to your business objectives?

Unpacking your responses to each of these questions will bring clarity. Rather than random acts of social sharing, you come to the table with a fresh perspective.

You know what you want and why you want it, just like Steve Gutzler. Steve is a business coach who works top leaders, inspiring greatness through emotional intelligence.

Across Steve’s social networks, it’s easy to see how social media supports his vision. The consistent use, topic focus and community building keeps his audience engaged.

23 Apr

Steve Gutzler ‎@SteveGutzler

Five-Leadership Traits:
1) Abundance mind-set
2) Develops trust
3) Think win-win
4) Shared thinking
5) Including others#leadership

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Mark Faris ‎@MarkFaris1

@SteveGutzler Don't forget that great leaders teach & develop others selflessly

11:16 PM - 23 Apr 2016

 
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  2. Know Your Boundaries (and be explicit)

Since social media’s early days, it’s been evident that we (as a community) need to reign ourselves in.

How often have you seen a verbal vomit episode online? One that spiraled into a debilitating (possibly tragic) outcome?

I’m sure many just popped into your mind. While some bounce back, others find their career left in ruins.

The key is to know your boundaries.

Identify where you draw the line and what conversations you’re willing to engage in. And more importantly, which ones you’ll avoid.

This becomes a roadmap to social media engagement. It makes hopping into conversations and monitoring the ones that matter most to your business easy.

How to Create Your Social Media Boundaries

• What’s your business focus? (industry, niche, vertical)
  • List the problems you solve.
  • Specify how you solve each one of them.
• Who is your target audience? (Demographics – geographic area, age, income, race, gender)
  • Describe who they are, what they do and why they’d want to connect with your business.
• What’s your social media engagement and conversational style?
  • How will you interact on social media? Are you fun or serious? Know your tone and voice.

Now stay in appropriate conversations. Don’t deviate.

It’s like learning how to use crayons as a kid. Coloring books kept us within the lines. We knew our limits.

Knowing your boundaries on social media will keep your business safe and in the “verbal vomit” free zone. 

  3. Embrace Your Key Differentiator

Are you connected to me across social media? You’ll see this in action. Me being me. Both as a brand and a person.

You might think I’m a born extrovert, but you’d be wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a good party and love being among friends. I also appreciate moments spent surrounded by a community, audience or group of peers.

And yet, I’m not the life of the party. I’m the girl who retreats back to her hotel room to decompress and gain a little peace and quiet.

But, given the fact that my DISC profile is an off the charts D and I, I can also be somewhat of an enigma.

My D has been the driving force behind each success within my life. It allows me to step out in faith, believing that my strong sense of “what’s right for me” will also be my best guide.

Meanwhile, my “I” pushes me out in front of a crowd. Giving me the courage and strength to attempt anything once.

Have you determined what makes your business unique? You need to find that one thing you do better than anything else.

How to Find Your One Thing

Steve Maraboli said in his book “Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience,”

“There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a person being themselves. Imagine going through your day being unapologetically you.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Ready to embrace your one thing? It’s not as tough as you think.

• Be fearless! Get out there and break things. Try something new. Dare to be bold in your decisions. Know what you and your business stands for.
• Stand UP for what you believe. If you don’t take a stand for your business, who will? Do what you know is right for the direction and focus of your company and brand — every single day.
• Know that you might be able to do all things, but that you cannot do everything. Give away everything that doesn’t serve you or the best interest of your company. Focus on your highest and best.
• Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Identify who you serve and give back to that community in meaningful ways.

  4. Blaze Your Own Branded Trail

Are you clearly articulating what sets your business apart from your competition? Is this spelled out in your social media branding?

If not, you’re walking a dangerous line.

Heard of a tactic called “me-too marketing?” I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s on display across social media everywhere you look.

It’s a term that means you look at your competition and say, “hey, I like what you’re doing. I can do that to.”

But instead of using that knowledge to create differentiation, you mimic every aspect. Right down to a revised version of their logo.

Why, oh why would you do that? Blaze your own trail. Be unique.

See how busy social media is? If your branding is cookie cutter at best, you’re going to have a hard time standing out.

From your colors, to the font you use, create a consistent look and feel.

Strong branding equals an instant connection with your audience.

Coca-Cola, one of the most well-established companies around, has created an unforgettable brand.

And it’s no surprise. Their content is captivating, consistent, and unique in tone and voice.

  5. Define Your Version of Success (and know how you’ll get there)

Tony Gwynn, Hall of Fame Baseball player said,

“The minute you’re satisfied with where you are, you aren’t there anymore.”

And so it is with social media marketing.

Just when you think you know what success looks like, change comes along and sweeps you off your feet.

If you’ve struggled to build momentum, it’s time to define what success looks like to your company.

What drives your social media decisions? Have you nailed it down?

The sooner you do, the quicker you stop wasting time on social media.

  6. Align Social with Your Marketing Strategy

Are you posting without a plan?

Is your content an afterthought and your social media strategy non-existent?

If this sounds like you, you need to get aligned with your marketing goals.

With a plan in place, you post on purpose instead of randomly.

You also roll your social goals up into your company goals. This leaves no doubt in your mind how social supports growth.

Before you begin to create your social media marketing strategy, it’s time to brainstorm.

Answer the questions below. I’ve given you examples.

Once you have the answers, you’ll begin to weave social into your big vision.

Example Strategy Brainstorming Session

Plan Ahead: Where do you want to be?

• Global industry leader through a clear, measurable and achievable company marketing strategy
• Dominant player in market through WOM marketing, influencer marketing, integrated marketing plan and defined customer acquisition campaigns
• WOW factor established – plays significant role in customer retention and satisfaction
• Inbound marketing model is 100% in alignment with company goals and strategies
• Team trained to nurture leads through established customer journey – speak to a clearly defined customer persona

Get Clear: What are your social media marketing priorities?

• Increase Awareness
• Generate New Users
• Attract and Retain Users
• Innovate (Thought Leadership)
• Engage (and Activate) Audience

Know Your Goals: What are your objectives and key results?

• Define a Consumer Facing Strategy
  • Have 3-4 primary campaigns defined (acquisition per segment/ persona, retention per segment/ persona, loyalty/ affinity per segment/ persona).
  • Have Q1 secondary campaigns defined within 60 days,
  • Have specific assumed lead nurturing (customer journey) path defined for each campaign within 60 days,
• Create happy customers
  • Clearly identify segments and personas for current 20% users within 30 days
.
  • Send segmented surveys – within 45 days
.
  • Require team involvement – train team on execution and support within 45 days
.

  7. Assess and Adjust – Test, Test, Test!

Once you know what you’re looking to achieve and you’re measuring results, it’s time to review.

Use the data you’ve accumulated to calculate and estimate how you’re going to improve your social media marketing.

This is critical if you’re looking to continuously improve. It also requires that you take a look at previous goals.

Were they attained? If so, it’s time to crank them up. Set bigger and bolder goals.

And always look to your analytics. See what content resonated with your audience and what flopped.

Adjust your strategy and your content when appropriate to keep your social media contentfresh and your information relevant.

Final Thoughts

There are many ways to market your business with social media.

There are also a multitude of ways to kill your momentum and drive results into the ground.

But that doesn’t mean using social media effectively has to be hard.

In fact, knowing how to best use it to market your business will give you a big leg up.

You see, your competition is still flailing around trying to put a plan in place.

Take the time today to determine what success looks like to you and how you’ll get there effortlessly.

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5 Critical Pieces of Social Marketing Advice

All eyes are on social marketing. Social marketing has become an expansive part of the marketing organization as a whole, and we’re constantly seeing updates to each network’s ecosystem and algorithms. 

This is challenging for those of us that have been tasked with keeping up with both social media’s advances and the Joneses. I’ve been officially employed as a social media marketer for a few years now and I’ve got to say, if it weren’t for these five really good pieces of advice, I would’ve pulled my hair out by now.

#1) Don’t try to be everywhere at once 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, don’t try to do it all! The majority of social media teams only consist of 1 – 3 people.

Don’t overextend yourself and your team in a futile effort to be #1 on every social media channel. Pick where you want to be and do it to the best of your ability. It’s about quality, not quantity.

#2) Don’t be afraid to experiment

Social media is rapidly growing. There are constantly new networks, features, and best-practices popping up.
Although I do believe that you shouldn’t overextend your social presence, don’t be afraid to try something new! Social media is ripe for experimentation, so have some fun and see what sticks.

#3) Never fly blind

Someone once told me that social marketers should spend 60% of their time planning, 10% of their time executing and 30% analyzing and reporting.

Initially, this didn’t make sense to me. Attributing 60% of my time to pre-campaign planning seemed crazy! However, after many hits and misses, I’ve come to find that the stronger the plan, the stronger the performance. Never go into a campaign blind — always have a plan. 

#4) Set S.M.A.R.T. goals

Back in the ‘80s, Peter Drucker came up with a way to think about goal setting called S.M.A.R.T: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Bound.

Utilizing the S.M.A.R.T. technique can actually transform your social strategy by inserting structure, KPIs, timelines, and a sense of direction into every campaign… down to the Tweet.

#5) Define success for YOUR brand

Before you run any type of campaign on social, you need to identify what success means to you.

For some marketers, it’s engagement, for other’s it’s conversion, or traffic, or impressions…and so on, and so on. There is not a one-size-fits-all metric for success. You should pick a success metric based on your goals as a marketing function.

Well, there you have it! What are the best pieces of social media marketing advice you’ve ever received? 

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The SAFE Method To Hack-Proof Your Social Media Accounts

Back in 2013 a group of hackers changed Burger King’s Twitter account name to “McDonalds” and it’s background image to “Fish McBites”. In the time it took for the officials to do damage control, the hackers were able to send a series of questionable and offensive tweets to thousands of their followers. Ironically this particular attack landed their Twitter account 5,000 new followers in the first 30 minutes since the take over. However, typically, attacks like these can destroy a company’s credibility and online reputation.

No one is immune to these internet tricksters, so what’s a socially active company supposed to do? Lucky for us, there are ways to hack-proof our accounts and reduce potential risks. Learn from other company’s mistakes and follow the S.A.F.E method to keep your social media accounts safe.

S. Secure your passwords

The two most popular passwords still being used to date are 12345 and password. Yes, I’m still in disbelief too! This is one of the only things standing between your company’s social media accounts and it’s hackers. Your business’s reputation is on the line if you get hacked, make sure that each social profile password is strong and that you change them as often as your bed sheets. Try replacing letters with symbols or use a uniform capitalization format that all your employees would know. For example, if your password is ilovedogs substitute one of the letters for a $ sign, so your password will look like this: ilovedog$. As complex as this may seem, it’s one of the easiest ways to prevent hacking. You may want to invest in an advanced sign-on technology that will allow employees to use their own unique passwords to sign into the account to make posts and changes, the more variety the better.

A. Account awareness

Hacks don’t always come from the outside and at times could even come from rogue employees. You may discover that your employees have started dozens of “corporate” social media accounts, often without official permission. By centralizing control over all your social accounts with a platform such as Hootsuite, you will be able to tighten security and strengthen your brand’s online presence across various social profiles. Platforms such as the latter help you to control all social activity in one place. But, infiltrators can still magically find their way in. There are ways to prevent hacking into your beloved accounts with an app like LogDog, which sends you automatic warnings before the hacker potentially compromises a business account. These apps are worth the investment as they help you take social as seriously as you should be.

 F. Follow privacy policy changes

Most social platforms like Twitter and Facebook adjust their privacy policies and security settings quite often. The platforms constantly come up with new ways to keep profiles secure to avoid any security breaches. Keep up to date and follow all the new policy changes on a regular basis, and check out for any options that have been updated that will make life difficult for the hacker. This should be a routine part of your duties as a social media manager as some policy changes have been big enough to alter social media as we know it!

E. Educate your company

It’s only been a few years since social media was in its infancy. Today, it’s one of the pillars of marketing and sales for many companies. So it’s in your best interest to school your employees on basic social media education. By providing your social media managers with structured training on security, compliance issues and even best practices ensures that they are set up with the tools for success. We recommend using Lynda’s extensive library of social marketing training to keep updated on the industry. Specifically their “Up and Running with LinkedIn” and “Pinterest for Business” classes can do wonders for your social media awareness.

Keeping your company’s social media accounts safe is simple, just make sure you’re using the perfect tech systems, appoint the right employees to the task and be in the know on your network updates. And with that, your social will always be S.A.F.E!

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21 Social Media Mistakes To Avoid

We have all made mistakes when it comes to social media; but the best way to avoid them in the future is to draw attention to them.

Following are 21 common social media mistakes I see business owners making all the time, along with how to avoid them!

1. Spreading yourself too thin: Just because a social network exists doesn’t mean you need to be part of it! It is better to focus on a few networks where you know your target market is actively looking to engage with you than to try to do it all and failing because you are spread too thin.

2. Posting what you want (not what your audience wants): Instead of posting about whatever’s on YOUR mind, focus on the needs and pain points of your audience. 

3. Not being consistent across platforms: Your design, values and voice should be consistent across all platforms to present a recognizable face on social media. 

4. Not engaging: This is a big one! Too many businesses are still too focused on posting, and not focused enough on responding, interacting and engaging their audience. 

5. Not using images: Images on social media account for 93% of the most engaging posts. Not using images is a HUGE opportunity lost!  

Image courtesy of Social Bakers

 6. Not using hashtags: Hashtags are one of the best ways to attract new followers on social media. 

You can use them to find new conversations to take part in or to attract potential clients or customers who would otherwise never find your content. For more on this, see my post How to Use Hashtags to Find Prospective Clients. 

7. Posting sporadically: Using social media for business is all about building trust, and only posting when you want something (traffic, sales, attention) is a great way to break this trust!

8. Not having a social media strategy:  Having a plan in place allows you to tie your social media efforts in with your business goals, and ensures you are using social media most effectively.

9. Not understanding that social media posts function as headlines: If you want your followers to take a specific action, understand which headlines work best on social media.

10. Not measuring your social media efforts: If you don’t understand what’s working and what’s not, you could be wasting your valuable time AND missing out on tons of opportunities!

11. Not thinking strategically about when to post: The best way to figure out optimal posting times is to do some testing and then look at your own analytics; and a great place to start your testing is by looking at the research!

Image courtesy of Dan Zarrella

12. Posting too much: How much is ‘too much’ will vary from business to business and industry to industry. Do some sleuthing to figure out how often YOUR audience wants to hear from you.

13. Being inappropriate: I often talk about the importance of showing your human side on social media. This DOESN’T mean, however, airing your dirty laundry or speaking negatively of others!

14. Not networking: Yes, social media is a platform for your business. But don’t spend all your time engaging on your own page or with your own content! Reach out to others by @ mentioning them, tagging them and responding to their blog and social media content.

15. Not posting a variety of content: Keep it interesting by changing things up – share links to your content, ask questions, shared curated content, post a fun image or video…variety is the spice of life (even on social media!).

16. Not using social media tools: Not using tools can mean a whole lot of wasted time. For some of my favorite tools, see my post 9 Social Media Tools to Save You Tons of Time.

17. Not being active where your customers are: Do you know where your customers hang out online? Do you know where they want to connect with you? Searching for your keywords on various social networking sites is one way to figure out the best place to invest your time.

18. Not sharing other people’s content: You don’t have a monopoly on awesome content…be sure to spread the love by retweeting or sharing other people’s awesome content too.

19. Not having a consistent voice: I’m not just talking cross-platform here. For instance, how do you want to come across on Facebook? Do you want to be friendly and casual, or more professional and reserved?

20. Too much selling, not enough engaging: Long term success will mean building relationships over time; constantly focusing on selling may drive a few sales in the short term, but will alienate you from your audience in the long term.

21. Focusing on quantity rather than quality: This can apply to the quantity of your fans or followers, or to how much content you create. Far better to have a smaller but targeted following, and to produce smaller quantities of high-quality, highly relevant content.

 Have you fallen into any of the traps above? Which mistake(s) are you determined to avoid in the future? Share below!

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