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  • How to Create a Sensible Social Media Strategy for Your Business

    Many businesses find social media overwhelming — there are so many networks available, and they’re always adding new features for you to learn and integrate into your plan.
    If you don’t have a full-time team of social media experts at your disposal, your success depends on creating a simple and sensible strategy that fits your resources and goals.
    By the end of this guide, you’ll know how to develop a social media strategy that’ll not only drive traffic but will also quell that overwhelming feeling you get anytime you open Instagram or Twitter.

    What is a social media strategy?
    Your social media strategy is your master plan for how you create, post, and engage with your social media content.
    It encompasses your social content guidelines, posting cadence, social media marketing campaigns, creative plans, and engagement strategy.

    Why You Need a Social Media Strategy
    The top three challenges that social media marketers face include reaching their audience, measuring ROI, and reaching business goals.
    Crafting a social media strategy can help tackle these challenges and more. Social media strategies also equip you to set goals and guardrails, track their performance, and tweak your benchmarks over time. Without a starting point, you can’t measure what’s working and how to shift your activity to hit your goals.
    A social media strategy also helps you set expectations for broader team involvement and get everyone aligned on what they should (and shouldn’t) do on your social networks.

    Let’s unpack how to start building a social media strategy from scratch.
    1. Define your target audience.
    If you haven’t already identified and documented your buyer personas, start by defining the key demographics of the audience you’re trying to reach — age, gender, occupation, income, hobbies and interests, etc.
    Consider their challenges and what problems they’re solving daily. Focus on no more than four types of people that represent the majority of your buyers. Don’t get hung up on the exceptions or outliers, or you’ll never get started!
    2. Start blogging.
    Fresh content is the linchpin of a successful social strategy, so commit to creating new, quality content on a consistent basis. Compile a list of common questions from prospects and commit to addressing these questions with at least one new blog post per week.
    3. Create educational content.
    Create downloadable content like ebooks, checklists, videos, and infographics that address your buyer’s pains. If your content is truly helpful, people will likely share it on social media and extend your reach.
    4. Focus on a few key social channels.
    Most startups and small businesses don’t have the bandwidth to establish and sustain a quality social media presence on every single channel. It’s also overwhelming to learn the rules of engagement on a bunch of different networks at one time.
    Here’s a video by HubSpot Academy explaining the social channels on which you can post content for your business.

    So, start small. Research key networks to learn where your target audience is spending time and focus your effort on building, nurturing, and sustaining a community there before moving on to another channel.
    5. Develop a recipe card to guide you.
    Social media isn’t an exact science (and doesn’t work the same for every business or industry). To see results for your business, establish a consistent posting and engagement schedule.
    Develop a reasonable recipe card — one you can actually stick to and get your team to follow. Set goals for your posting and engagement frequency and hold yourself accountable to following your recipe.
    Manage and plan your social media content with our free handy calendar guide and template.
    6. Measure your results.
    There are countless things to track on your social media channels. Start by looking at how much traffic your social accounts are driving to your website or blog.
    Watch your posts to see what people are responding to, and look for trends related to particular topics or keywords that generate more interest than others. Once you get an idea of your average traffic and post performance, set goals for key metrics and keep a scorecard to measure your progress.
    Be sure to choose metrics that are easy to gather – if it’s too time-consuming to track, you’ll fall off the wagon! Examples of simple metrics (to start with) include net new fans and followers, number of interactions, and visits to your website from social.
    7. Adjust your tactics.
    Social media won’t start working overnight. It takes time to build a following, establish your brand, and start seeing results. Experiment a bit to find the right combination of channels, content, and messaging that works for your audience.
    Over time, you’ll be able to adjust your recipe card, content, and personas based on the information you’re gathering — which will help you fine tune your strategy and generate more consistent results.

    Social Media Marketing Strategy
    Social media is a multipurpose business asset. It connects you with your audience, and it also promotes your products, services, and brand. Both functions are equally important.
    Building a social media strategy for marketing is a bit different than the process we discussed above. How so? For example, your benchmarks and goals may be more specific to metrics you track for other marketing efforts.
    When using social media to market your business, ensure the experience on your social networks is a positive, consistent one. All imagery and content on your social media accounts should be consistent with those on your website, blog, and other digital real estate.
    Pay close attention to any questions or comments your audience posts, and be quick to address those (as that engagement could make or break a conversion or purchase).
    Take a look at these social media marketing examples of what to stop, start, and keep doing in 2021.
    Lastly, align the content you post and how you post it with marketing campaigns you’re running on other channels (e.g., email or ads). This brings us to our next section …

    Social Media Content Strategy
    Content is the crux of any social media strategy. Without content, you can’t engage with your audience, promote your products, or measure performance.
    The somewhat fleeting (and brief) nature of social media may lead you to believe that you don’t have to plan its content as much as you do for, say, your emails or blogs. That’s untrue. Social media content may not be as static as your landing pages or blog content, but it’s still equally important for engaging your audience and representing your brand as a whole.
    For that reason, you should also have a social media content strategy. This should include:

    Posting guidelines and specs for each network on which you’re active (e.g., share GIFs on Twitter but avoid on Facebook)
    Target audience nuances per network (e.g., the younger segment of your audience is more active on Instagram than LinkedIn)
    Repurposing plans for long-form content from your blog, podcast, e-books, etc.
    Who on your team is allowed to post and who’s responsible for engaging followers
    The companies, publications, and individuals you’ll repost (and those who you won’t/can’t)

    For more on creating a content strategy for social media, here’s a helpful video by HubSpot’s Aja Frost.

    Social Media Strategy Templates
    Social media is overwhelming; I get it. Starting your strategy from scratch is even more overwhelming, which is why we developed 10 free social media templates to help.
    In the free download, you’ll receive:

    Scheduling templates for every channel, since social media channels aren’t one-size-fits-all
    Complete calendar of hashtag holidays, so you never forget to participate with new, fun content
    Social auditing template to track your followers, engagement rates, and more
    A social media content calendar to organize campaigns across every channel
    A social reporting template to track your monthly social successes
    A paid social template to help you manage and optimize your paid budget

    Download our free social media template bundle to manage, optimize, and create more social content without sacrificing quality.
    Time to Get Social
    Still feel like social media is overwhelming? That’s OK; I’m not sure that feeling every fully fades. You can certainly diminish it, though, by leveraging the tips in this guide and the free templates above. Remember: Tackle one social network at a time, prioritize your audience, and focus the content that works. You’ll see results and traffic in no time.

  • Avocado time

    The perfect avocado… Sometimes they’re too hard, and often, they’re rotten.

    But every once in a while, you’ll nurture an avocado until it’s at the peak state of flavor and texture.

    You certainly aren’t going to waste it.

    You’re not going to sacrifice it to some sort of smoothie, or even hide it in a sandwich. That’s for the other kind, the less precious ones.

    And yet…

    This Zoom call we’re on, the precious one, where all the right people are on the call, at the same time, ready to see and be seen–you’re really going to spend the first ten minutes having us go around the room and say our names? Really?

    This gathering we all came to, back when we could, or when we can again–we’re really going to sit at tables for 10, shouting at each other, while we tolerate loud music and eat lousy food?

    This interaction we’re having with the busy professional, the one that we’ve waited for, you’re going to spend it reciting things that we already wrote down on a form?

    Face-to-face is like a perfect avocado. The cost of in-sync time, real-time interaction time, that’s time that we don’t get again.

    Time is priceless. But the moments when we have a chance to connect, to be in sync, to bring out the best in each other–that’s time that’s worth cherishing.

    Don’t waste it if you can. Treat it like avocado time.

  • The Legacy of Don Hales

    After almost 60 years in business and 20 years in the events industry, co-founder and former chairman of Awards International Don Hales passed away on February 25th, 2021.  Don started his career in financial services, after which he quickly qualified as a Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute and finished as Managing Director of Sun Life Unit Services.  In…
    The post The Legacy of Don Hales appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • Market Trends Under the COVID-19 Epidemic. Top Business Gainers

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  • “Count me in”

    That’s the opposite of, “count me out.”

    Either you seek to unite and be part of it. Or to divide and watch it go away.

    Whatever ‘it’ might be.

    We can seek to trigger those we’ve decided are our enemies, undermine the standards and burn it all down. Or we can commit to the possibility that together, we can create something that works.

    It’s not that hard to realize that even if we can’t always see the gunwales on the boat, we’re all in the same one.

  • Benchmark Email vs MailerLite Comparison

    https://szdebrecen1.medium.com/benchmark-email-vs-mailerlite-comparison-cf0ae4eb9fe0 https://preview.redd.it/h1ozxavf61k61.png?width=770&format=png&auto=webp&s=6bcf366af3223cab88fdef674090bdfd894d5d13
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  • Instapage vs Wishpond Comparison

    https://szdebrecen1.medium.com/instapage-vs-wishpond-comparison-c5fae78edf4d https://preview.redd.it/ufaefre8ozj61.png?width=770&format=png&auto=webp&s=4987c3490a555375da860095f7e7080d46f64b8b
    submitted by /u/szdebrecen1 [link] [comments]

  • Tilting at windmills

    The windmills aren’t the problem, it’s the tilting.

    In Cervantes’ day, ’tilting’ was a word for jousting. You tilted your lance at an enemy and attacked.

    Don Quijote was noted for believing that the windmills in the distance were giants, and he spent his days on attack.

    Change can look like a windmill.

    When we say, “the transition to a new place is making me uncomfortable,” we’ve expressed something truthful. But when we attack a windmill, we’ve wasted our time and missed an opportunity to focus on what matters instead.

    When my dad taught at the University of Buffalo, the heart of his MBA classes was teaching about the ‘change agent’. This is the external force that puts change into motion. The change agent, once identified, gives us an understanding of our options and the need to respond, not to react.

    Every normal is a new normal, until it is replaced by another one.

  • No Jitter Roll: In-App Calling for Salesforce, AI Funding

    The post No Jitter Roll: In-App Calling for Salesforce, AI Funding appeared first on UJET.

  • Mailerlite vs AWeber Comparison

    https://szdebrecen1.medium.com/mailerlite-vs-aweber-comparison-b14a9e0afaf3 ​ https://preview.redd.it/w1aryor3cvj61.png?width=770&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba55ff00188a73cb654571170b37c692532e7572
    submitted by /u/szdebrecen1 [link] [comments]