Before now I used to use social media for my own personal use, nothing else. However I have now discovered the influence social media can have for a company, and how powerful it can be to create a brand awareness.
I recently took over the social media marketing strategies of my company, but with little prior knowledge, it was hard knowing where to start.
So I decided that I would need to research the subject thoroughly first. My initial observation was how incredibly competitive the market was for tools to use.
So many different apps were offering solutions to problems I didn’t even know we had!
Left feeling overwhelmed I felt it was time to try a different approach.
It was obvious that to get a good initial understanding I was not going to find a lot by simply “googling it”, I needed to speak to an expert.
So my first piece of advice for anyone looking to create a marketing strategy, firstly don’t go it alone, if you are starting out you should find people who have experience and listen to what works for them.
This was when I stumbled across the website/app Meetup.
This is amazing, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in analytics, marketing, software development etc. etc.
For those who don’t know, Meetup is an app that facilitates events where like-minded people can get together and discuss/learn and share ideas.
So now I had an understanding of how some of the professionals were using Social Media, and I had a direction in what should be done.
So one of the most important things, I think, is to make sure you have a Content Scheduler tool.
We are using Hootsuite, but others that are useful are; Buffer, CoSchedule, or Social Sprout.
These all do similar things, but it is about finding the right one for you and your company, don’t be afraid to change, if it doesn’t work then stop using it and move on.
However on top of that, all of these allow you to try out the product first for free, so you don’t have to commit to something that will cost money initially, as well as offering a free tier to use, although there are limitations so check first!
Now a lot of these applications will also offer analytics that will allow you to track posts and measure the audience engagement.
This is important, you need to learn how your audience are engaging with your posts, are people even bothered with what you have to say?
If you are thinking right now, “I don’t know”, then you need to find out, otherwise why are you posting things online?
Unfortunately though, with these apps, they often require you to be a paid user to view the analysis of your posts, so unless you have enough to foot the bill from the start you are going to want to look at other options.
So here is a list of a few of the tools I looked at to make and analyse the content I was posting:
- Bit.ly — This is free to use and gives you 30 days history. For those who don’t know, bitly is a URL shortener, which firstly means you can squeeze a link into a Tweet without using all your characters, but secondly when people click the links, this app will allow you to track those clicks. For further analysis try to tag your posts so you can then filter out by categories!
- Crowdfire — Again has limited use for free users, but a good place to start, it is used for Twitter/Instagram and is a good way to monitor followers, DM people with important messages when they follow you and quickly remove all inactive accounts you follow.
- IFTTT — This is an app just for life. If This Then That, is a great way to streamline process. By making recipes you can create triggered events that only fire if something happens first. E.g. A post to send to twitter/facebook the same time every week? DONE, you want to sync all your profile pics to be the same? DONE, you want to save all your followers to google drive? DONE, you want an alert to say it will be raining tomorrow? DONE.
- Google Analytics/Search Console (Must have these setup on your company/personal website) — Now there are a lot of ways to monitor traffic to a website, Google is one of the best. You are able to easily track conversions to web pages from social media, and see how it is comparing to other sources, you can even create your own source/medium traffic by using UTM codes so you can create specific campaigns and monitor their success. It gives you a breakdown of how your users are interacting with your site and more importantly things they aren’t interacting with.
- Google Sheets - It's easier to analyse your data when you export it and aggregate it to how you want, so weekly summaries, monthly updates that can show you the best times to post. I say google and not excel because the benefit of a spreadsheet in a google drive means it is easy to collaborate with others. Another benefit is that when you update your spreadsheet, anyone you have shared it with will be able to view this update in near real time, so no need to send updated versions again and again. (Get some even cooler tips here - Marketing Hacks for Google Sheets)
- Twitter Analytics/Twitter Curator — Both of these are useful to measure interactions with your profile and with Curator you can create a news feed using key words to filter it, so you can see who is talking about a particular subject.
- Moz — One of the best social media tools, one of it’s products (Followerwonk) aggregates all the twitter information on your profile to glean deep insight into your followers and their interests and past times.
And there we have it, there is a list of all the tools that should get you up and running with a way to create content and to make use of social media to analyse and engage with users and followers. The final piece that I will share here that I have always been told to follow is, if it isn’t working for you, then don’t do it. When it comes to marketing you need to be brutal, if you feel it isn’t working then don’t be afraid to change tactics, you can always come back if you need to.
References
Dated: December 2015
Before now I used to use social media for my own personal use, nothing else. However I have now discovered the influence social media can have for a company, and how powerful it can be to create a brand awareness.
I recently took over the social media marketing strategies of my company, but with little prior knowledge, it was hard knowing where to start. So I decided that I would need to research the subject thoroughly first. My initial observation was how incredibly competitive the market was for tools to use. So many different apps were offering solutions to problems I didn’t even know we had! Left feeling overwhelmed I felt it was time to try a different approach. It was obvious that to get a good initial understanding I was not going to find a lot by simply “googling it”, I needed to speak to an expert.
So my first piece of advice for anyone looking to create a marketing strategy, firstly don’t go it alone, if you are starting out you should find people who have experience and listen to what works for them. This was when I stumbled across the website/app Meetup. This is amazing, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in analytics, marketing, software development etc. etc. For those who don’t know, Meetup is an app that facilitates events where like-minded people can get together and discuss/learn and share ideas.
So now I had an understanding of how some of the professionals were using Social Media, and I had a direction in what should be done. So one of the most important things, I think, is to make sure you have a Content Scheduler tool. We are using Hootsuite, but others that are useful are; Buffer, CoSchedule, or Social Sprout.
These all do similar things, but it is about finding the right one for you and your company, don’t be afraid to change, if it doesn’t work then stop using it and move on. However on top of that, all of these allow you to try out the product first for free, so you don’t have to commit to something that will cost money initially, as well as offering a free tier to use, although there are limitations so check first!
Now a lot of these applications will also offer analytics that will allow you to track posts and measure the audience engagement. This is important, you need to learn how your audience are engaging with your posts, are people even bothered with what you have to say? If you are thinking right now, “I don’t know”, then you need to find out, otherwise why are you posting things online?
Unfortunately though, with these apps, they often require you to be a paid user to view the analysis of your posts, so unless you have enough to foot the bill from the start you are going to want to look at other options.
So here is a list of a few of the tools I looked at to make and analyse the content I was posting:
And there we have it, there is a list of all the tools that should get you up and running with a way to create content and to make use of social media to analyse and engage with users and followers. The final piece that I will share here that I have always been told to follow is, if it isn’t working for you, then don’t do it. When it comes to marketing you need to be brutal, if you feel it isn’t working then don’t be afraid to change tactics, you can always come back if you need to.
References