A large number of companies that are already serious about content marketing are thinking about how effectively they can spread content through social media channels. They are still struggling to pick out the right strategy and capitalize on their content distribution and promotion on social media channels.
Social media is not restricted only to having a page on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other such networking site. It expands to internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, pictures, videos, microblogging and podcasts.
Although it’s difficult to say what will work for you, but you can make consistent efforts to build relationships with your audience with an aim to converting them from your readers into active customers. There are some basic steps that you can follow to make your social media more effective. Let us go through them one by one and see how each phase works.
1. Content Strategy and Social Media Channels
The first step consists of deciding social media channels that you’re going to make use of to establish a connection with your clients through content. Besides understanding how these channels work is also the main task here. It may consume slightly more time but it’s worth. It is also about analyzing and finding out how these channels interrelate and how a particular content can be used on all the channels.
Content strategy is another element that you need to focus on. Decide goals for each of the social media channels that you’re going to be present on. Define the touch points that will help you reach your customers and meet your social media objectives.
In addition to this, it is essential to understand that the social media channels are interrelated and one can be routed from one channel to another through internal linking. So define trigger points for each channel and ensure to use them at the right time and at the right place to support traffic generation from one channel to another.
Social media can be traffic builders for your business website; however, you need to have a well planned content and link building strategy in place.
2. Reach Building
The hardest part is to maintain a balance between content creation and using it to attract readers. Whenever you decide to capitalize on social media channels through content, it is advisable to start building your reach right from the beginning.
There is some portion of “reach” that needs to be built fast and the other portion of reach can be built gradually over a period of time. Let us see how you can adopt fast approach and what slow approach includes.
Most companies do not show that much patience when it comes to expecting the results from their content marketing campaigns. So, here are the elements of fast approach that you can consider to strengthen your social media channel.
Boost Conversation
To see quick results, start investing in social media campaigns right in the beginning, which can catalyze conversations. Such conversations are woven according to your offerings, with an aim to attract more and more people so that you can build reach fast.
Organizing Events and Giving Free Stuff
Giving away free stuff is associated with a risk of attracting low-quality or low-profile followers or readers who are, most of the times, only concerned about the free stuff. It is very difficult to expect loyalty from them. However, it’s one of the quickest ways to grab attention. But once they know about you, the next step is to make them stay.
Partnering or Collaborating with Other Brands
You can always look to enter into a partnership or collaboration with other brands that have a large social reach. However, the main pre-requisite to make it possible is to have a good relation with them because they will entertain only when they know about you and can see some benefits in collaborating with you.
Involve Your Employees
Remember, employees are your first customers. So, get them on-board and make them participate in your social media campaign. Let your employees follow your content to make everyone else in their circle take time to read the same.
Slow approach brings recognition gradually. But that doesn’t mean that you should completely rule it out. Keep this active in the background while working on fast approach to lay strong foundations of your social media popularity.
In order to be successful in this approach, ensure to create exceptionally good content maintain a continuous rhythm to publish content and experience patience and persistence.
3. Influence People during Interactions
Once you are successful in attracting a significant number of browsers, the next phase is to influence them during interactions and keep them interested in your stories. For this, you will need engaging content to persuade them to read the information, express their feelings and expressions.
You need to take care of following things in this phase of strengthening your social media channels. They are:
Editorial Calendar
Have a pre-planned editorial calendar so that you have a fixed time to publish the content on various social media channels. It’s important for small as well as intense content marketing campaigns.
Conversation Management
Listening to what your readers and followers are saying is important in this phase. An understanding of their requirements helps you know what, when and how to converse with them. Reaction is necessary to evoke further response. Be fast in listening to your readers and offer them prompt response in case of really urgent matters.
4. Conversion – From Followers to Ambassadors
This is the final stage when you’re looking to convert your followers to brand ambassadors by winning their hearts through content. The challenge is to make your followers promote your brand in their respective circles.
Not only this, ensure to reward your customers on promoting your brand so that they are motivated to do positive and impactful conversations about your brand.
These are four major steps in strengthening your social media channels; however, they may be overlapping at certain point of time during the life cycle.
Start your journey by deciding what and how you want to share on social media.