We’re getting to the time of year when a lot of people revert back to bad habits, leaving their New Year’s resolutions in tatters.

For a lot of companies and individuals in the marketing industry, 2015 was going to be the year when they finally started to seize social media marketing opportunities. We all know that a sound social strategy can help to drive people to your website, but in many cases businesses struggle to put the theory into practice.

If you have every intention of improving your social presence this year, the following tips should help to ensure you don’t fall off the wagon.

1) Create a strategy and stick to it

You simply cannot run a successful social strategy without having a clear plan in place. Companies that expect to attract new waves of traffic to their websites by sending out a few ill-thought-out, off-the-cuff tweets will be left bitterly disappointed.

You need to research which subjects are interesting your target audience, when they are most likely to be online, and how you can get them to leave Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn in order to visit your website. If you have a strategy in place, you’ll find it easier to stick to a routine, thus reducing the likelihood of you suddenly giving up on your social channels.

2) Use management tools, but don’t overdo it

“I would have tweeted more regularly in 2014, but I was too busy.” How many people will have said this as they created their New Year’s resolutions for 2015?

Time constraints are a big barrier to social media success, but you can get around this by using certain management tools, such as Buffer. These enable you to time your tweets and status updates throughout the day, so you can do everything in one go without having to constantly login.

That said, the whole point of social media is to stimulate interactions with real people in real time, so make sure you are reactive. Sometimes it’s obvious that a tweet has been scheduled a number of hours ago. If Buffer helps you to stick to your social media resolutions, then fine, but don’t become overly-reliant on it.

3) Go mobile and turn your notifications on

As mentioned, a successful social media campaign is reliant on a company’s ability to react to questions or complaints sent in by potential customers. If you fail to provide a response within an acceptable timeframe - usually within an hour - you risk alienating your followers.

It’s easy to forget about your social accounts as soon as you finish work for the day, but you need to be available between 5pm and 10pm, as this is a peak time for social media usage. If you’ve got a smartphone, turn your Twitter/Facebook notifications on so that you know when somebody has mentioned your company.

4) Have an in-house competition

A lot of companies encourage all of their staff to set up their own branded Twitter accounts. If you introduce a competition for ‘Tweet of the Week’ or reward staff for striking up a conversation with a leading industry influencer, your business is likely to get far more traction on social media.

5) Set yourself some new targets

If you’re a lone wolf and don’t have anyone else to compete with, set yourself some targets of your own.

It’s up to you how you do this. Maybe you want to attract two new followers for each tweet you send, or perhaps you want to reach a certain number of followers within a specific timeframe. If you’ve got something to work towards, you’re more likely to stick to your guns. However, remember that social media is all about quality before quantity. Don’t be tempted to send out a flurry of useless tweets in an attempt to get your stats up. The scattergun approach doesn’t work!

 

By Nick Taylor, Forward Role Recruitment. 

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