With the popularity of social media channels, many businesses have lost sight of the fact that these are only tools with which to achieve their goals. Your objective should not be to "be on Facebook" or to "have a Twitter account" but rather to drive sales, extend brand awareness, improve reputation, or increase search engine rankings. Each of these goals can be measured through different metrics and various tracking platforms.
Taking a step back, you have hundreds of different social media channels to choose from, each of which catering to individuals with the broadest strategy or the most specialized niche targeting. They all tend to fall into one of the following categories, many blurring the lines between them:
- Social Network
- Blog / Microblog
- Multimedia Sharing
- Bookmarking
- Community Forum
As you develop your social media strategy, keep in mind your initial goals and choose social media channels that lend themselves to achieving these objectives. Once you have your accounts set up, populate them with content. This could include Wall Posts, Tweets, Images, Videos, Bookmarked Sites, Forum Posts, Blog Posts, etc. The balance between informational content and calls-to-action will depend on your specific business and industry.
Once you have a presence on each of your chosen social media channels, do not forget to interlink them. This not only means adding buttons or links to your website, but filling out the profiles or information sections of each social site to link to the others (and of course your business website). You may also want to publish content from one social media site on another. For example, there are ways to update your Facebook friends or Twitter followers every time you post a blog. Another example is adding YouTube videos or SlideShare presentations to your Facebook Page. As you connect your different social media channels, you benefit from the ease of which people can find your brand’s presence on their channel of choice and interact with you in their preferred medium.
The following image visually displays some of the paths of interconnectivity for a few of MoreVisibility’s social media channels.
If you need assistance with developing a social media strategy, please contact us to learn how we can help you. Additionally, our design team is very talented in customizing social media channels. Feel free to view our social media design portfolio
