When it comes to exploring a social media marketing strategy for any of your operations, be it a business, a company, a movement or even just a blog, there are no half-measures. You will have to go all the way in or not even bother at all because any half-baked efforts will have your brand crucified publically. And because of how easy it is to take screenshots these days and because of just how many people are out there watching your online presence very closely, the internet is written in ink.
While with something like your own informational site you’re most definitely in full control of what gets published about you and your operation, with social media platforms you’re only afforded a limited amount of control. You are in control of the basics, such as your “About Us” info, your operating hours, your location, etc, but you’re not in control of something like your ratings. You’re not directly in control of the perception your organization carries online, but you’re in control of some factors which can perhaps influence that perception.
So with something like the ratings supposed consumers of your product or service leave on social media platforms like Facebook, what this inevitably means is that some rogue or fake “customers” can leave negative ratings which have no relationship with the actually reality of your offering. This swiftly brings reputation management into the picture as something which forms part of your social media marketing strategy and it’s something of a full time job.
Responsiveness time or “time to respond” is another factor to consider as part of your social media marketing strategy, further bringing into perspective just how much of a full-time job it is managing your social media presence. Someone has to be seen to be always available to answer the queries, questions and complaints clients and prospective clients have. If not then the automatic indicators built into just about every major social media platform will indicate to them that there is someone else who cares about them just a little bit more as customers.
Is it fair? Not at all, but it’s the reality. That only takes care of your survival though. The primary focus of any social media marketing strategy is in actual fact your desire to reach more people, particularly prospective clients to grow your customer base. Once reputation management has been sorted out, this is what your attention will switch to and it’s not as easy as just creating your presence and then magically having followers start interacting with your brand’s page. You might have to dig into the pockets a little bit, but fortunately it’s not expensive at all to run paid marketing and advertising campaigns on the major social media platforms like Facebook.
As far as the actual reach goes however, that’s still somewhat of an experimental aspect of paid social media marketing, with many users reporting rather meagre click-through rates and even worse conversions.
The best approach is just to give your brand some online visibility on these social media platforms.
