Learn how to revamp your social media strategy for your business with these innovative and effective tips. Blow away your competitors and impress your customers with these techniques

1. Crafting a Stronger Social Media Strategy For Your Business http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/advertisement/cra...
Home About Us Services Portfolio Case Study Articles Media Testimonials Contact Us
Crafting a Stronger Social Media Strategy For Search
Your Business To search, type and hit enter
By LUCIA SASTRE | OCTOBER 21, 2012
Are you having a hard
time integrating Social 8
Media into your
business plan? Fret no
more. Craft a Social
2
Media strategy that
works according to Share
your industry and
resources using this 4
writing as a guide.
Tweet
First of all, it’s
6
important to state the
impending problem. Many businesses’ Social Media efforts fail because their Like
social media strategy lacks a coherent structure, strategy and even a genuine
commitment.
As a result, when they fail to see any positive changes, they get discouraged and just let their
accounts wither.
Sound familiar?
The good thing is that crafting a realistic Social Media strategy is now a possibility. It’s not in
the amount of time you put in, nor the number of Social Media accounts you create. The
secret lies in the organization of your plan and ideas as well as in your ability to conduct
productive competitive research.
But most importantly, creating an effective Social Media plan comes from patience and
perseverance. You cannot expect to create a Facebook account and have 100+ likes the next
day. Social Media takes a certain amount of effort and strategy, as well as time.
Most of us are driven by instant gratification. Therefore, before you start constructing your
Social Media plan, take into account that this might not happen the first couple of months, but
reassure yourself that you’ll be working towards that goal. Services
Commitment SEO COPYRIGHTING SERVICES
First and foremost, you must make a genuine commitment to your Social Media plan. My Search Engine Optimization
recommendation is to delegate this task to someone in your Marketing team who can Reputation Management
incorporate it in his/her everyday schedule. It’s important to keep track of changes. Therefore,
Search Engine Marketing
this individual must do more than just post material to a Social Media site. Have a schedule
ready to record your Social Media updates and report on them at your staff meetings. Giving Conversion Optimization
priority and attention to your Social Media efforts will ensure that your staff participates and Social Bookmarking
integrates it into their daily schedule.
Pay for Performance
1 of 5 10/22/12 9:17 AM

2. Crafting a Stronger Social Media Strategy For Your Business http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/advertisement/cra...
Copyrighted © 2012 by Optimum7.com. All Rights Reserved.
goals with your team. Come up with a master list and forward it to everyone in the office. Set SEO Copywriting
loading prizes and giveaways for those employees who share the most or who obtain the most
up
likes in their shares. Motivate your employees to participate by giving out food vouchers, gift
Fresh Posts
cards or simple recognition. Remember that a great Social Media campaign starts from within
your walls.
Crafting a Stronger Social Media Strategy
For Your Business
You can also work on reaching your Social Media goals with these tips:
Introducing New Clients to WordPress
To a business owner, ROI is the most important aspect when embarking on a Social Optimize Your Blog Using Google Analytics
Media campaign. Unfortunately, this is often hard to measure. Instead, focus on your fan & Webmasters Data
base, daily activity and mentions. These will eventually bear fruit in sales. Reputation Management 101: Do You Need
If your goal is to reach a certain amount of likes in your Social Media profiles, state it. For It?
instance, you have 180 likes on Facebook but your goal is to get to 200, include posts
Good vs. Bad in Lead Generation &
such as “Help us reach our goal of 200 likes!” and then provide something of value like a
Management
weekly joke or an interesting story. Why does this work? It’s just psychology. We are
bound to feel compassion and to help those who work hard. In addition, many people
will respond well to requests for help and your openness is asking directly what you are Browse Categories
seeking.
Pay attention to reviews. Sign up for an account on Yelp or Citysearch if you haven’t Select Category
already and focus on those sites. Thank those customers who gave you approving
reviews and apologize to those who where unhappy with your services. You could
potentially turn them into loyal clientele.
Here’s an example
Emphasize giveaways. I can’t stress this enough. People like free stuff, especially when
they have to enter a name and an e-mail to qualify for a chance to get it. If your prizes
are average, don’t expect for everyone to jump at once.
Here’s how Falken Tire executes a giveaway,
2 of 5 10/22/12 9:17 AM

3. Crafting a Stronger Social Media Strategy For Your Business http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/advertisement/cra...
Avoid posting:
Commercials. Your audience is looking for conversation and insight.
Forged Comments. Bragging about how great your company is can often be
frowned upon. It won’t get you very far.
Sales statistics. That should be restricted to internal reporting. Your audience
wants insights on new approaches, news stories, events, etc., not your sales goals
or your statistics
According to the Social Media Examiner, “A good rule of thumb is to talk about your
customers and your industry 80% to 90% of the time, and then discuss your own
business. That means you need to start a blog, write white papers, explore trends,
release case studies and create infographics.”
Practice smart posting. Posting material like a maniac will only end up overwhelming
your audience, eventually driving them away. Instead, let at least an hour pass between
posts. Never let more than a week pass without posting.
You can schedule your posts with the Buffer application. It guarantees a reasonable
amount of time between postings. You can download the Firefox or Chrome extensions,
and trust me when I say this will make your employees’ lives easier.
Take a look,
It’s better to focus on one Social Media site and make it dazzle than to create multiple
sites and give them average attention. Look at this as if it was a relationship. The more
you give, the better the end result. Well, at least most of the time.
Time Management
Make a schedule that is visible and easy to manage. In other words, it helps to cross tasks off
because it gives you an instant feeling of accomplishment. If you are in and out of the office,
another way to manage your Social Media tasks is to create a system of alarms and updates.
For this you can use Memo to Me. This program allows you to record and save alarms, which
are sent to your e-mail minutes prior to its due time.
3 of 5 10/22/12 9:17 AM

4. Crafting a Stronger Social Media Strategy For Your Business http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/advertisement/cra...
User Engagement
You can post constant material and have the most interesting leads, but without user
engagement you can kiss your Social Media goals goodbye. Taking part in Social Media is
often about usefulness, help and advice. How can you be useful to your audience? What can
you provide for them?
Those are questions you must ask yourself when delegating tasks and creating new
approaches. I’m not saying you must stare at your Twitter account like a hawk, but take some
time out of your day to respond and interact with your customers. For this, you can also
create alarms with Memo to Me. Another option is to have your Tweets/Facebook/Google+
likes sent to your e-mail. Save those e-mails in a specific folder, and attend to it once or twice
a day to demonstrate responsiveness and care.
The Biltmore Hotel in Miami has done a great job of keeping track with user engagement.
Take a peek,
You must remember that user engagement is often time sensitive. What I mean by this is that
Twitter moves at a rapid speed, which means that often Tweets can become irrelevant fast. If
you plan to have time restrictions, opt to spend your efforts on Facebook. Facebook updates,
posts and graphics have a longer staying power.
There is no denying the importance of using social media as part of your marketing efforts. It
allows you to reach out to and interact with your audience in new and innovative ways. The
important thing is to have a clearly defined goal that describes exactly what you want to do
with your social media account(s). So make a commitment, work toward your goal (remember
that it takes time!), manage your time – how long it takes you to respond to your audience,
how often you add new posts and remember that user engagement is the key. Be a valuable
resource of information about your industry as well as a source of entertainment.
For more help with your social media strategy or your other online marketing efforts, contact
Optimum7 today for a no obligation consultation. We can help!
Written by Lucia Sastre
Lucia is an SEO Specialist with a true passion for Social Media
and Public Relations. She has dedicated her efforts to
researching and implementing new Marketing techniques for
innovative technological trends. Prior to her induction to
Optimum7 she successfully served in the Marketing Campaigns
at Telefonica, Coastal Construction Company and Cleveland Clinic Hospital. She has
also written for several newspapers including the South Florida Times, the Beacon
Newspaper and the Examiner. Lucia graduated from Florida International University
with a Degree in Mass Communications and a Minor in Art. With a passion for cultures
and languages, she also completed four years of French at the University of Iowa. Lucia
is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, but spent most of her life living in the United
States, Mexico and South America. In her spare time, she is a freelance photographer,
4 of 5 10/22/12 9:17 AM

5. Crafting a Stronger Social Media Strategy For Your Business http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/advertisement/cra...
teaches tennis and enjoys the outdoors.
This entry was posted in Advertisement and tagged Effective Social Media strategy, innovative social
media strategy, Social Media Marketing. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a
trackback: Trackback URL.
« Introducing New Clients to WordPress
Post a Comment
Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *
Name *
Email *
Website
Comment
You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym
title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q
cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Post Comment
5 of 5 10/22/12 9:17 AM