The days of “willy nilly” practices on social media are gone. You have to be on it to get something from it. Finding the right platforms to garner your “social street cred” takes planning, consistency and measure, say Barbara Pender, a certified social media strategist, and Toni Harris, a marketing strategist.
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Starting out, you should be concentrating your efforts on two specific social media platforms, say LinkedIn and Twitter or Facebook and LinkedIn. “Once you become as close to an expert as you can on those platforms, then you want to venture out and use some of the other platforms as you see fit and as you continue to grow you business prospects,†say Pender and Harris.
LinkedIn is a must because people are always going to research you as they network with you and they
begin to do business with you. Your LinkedIn profile should be up to par and then the application or the platform that you are on the most is the one that you should be up to speed on and you can take ownership. Let your network of prospects guide you on what’s the best platforms.Below Pender and Harris provide the five best practices in social media that your business can take advantage of and give you the edge in 2015. These practices are already in place. You simply need to seize the benefits and leverage the outcome.
- Go With The Flow – Everyday there is a trend list, visible on #Facebook, #Twitter and #Mashable’s Alerts. Check out theirs or create your own social velocity alerts (SVA), through subscribing or registering their rss feed or of course Google alerts. Allow social velocity alerts to ping you there is more social media activity than normal.
- Content Is Still King – Of course you have something to say, but you feel like it is a crap shoot to get a like, post or share.  Pay attention to what will get a reaction and when; then go at it. Here is the ranking of response to understand, we all want to be LIKED, and good content will motivate a reply but great content gets SHARED and really drive the social content to viral status. Whatever you do, don’t automate your social media until you are physically consistent on your platforms yourself.
- Pay To Play – Focus on your social media campaigns. You are going to have get strategic and ‘pay to play’ if you want to stand out and take your business to the next level. While you want to be creating great content, you want to boost that content that is getting a lot of attention and great responses (i.e., a lot of shares, retweets, etc). This means paying to create an ad around that content. You want to monitor and measure what you are doing on social media.
- Video, Selfies, Ussies – The whole world has gone viral; not only a picture but also your video is worth a thousand words.  If you think that you can’t produce a video, it is simply taking your #selfies and #ussies to the next level. Start with your family gatherings for practice, send it out and have others critique. Entrepreneurs take for granted information that they know as an expert in their own field. So, many people are in the do-it yourself mod. For example, if as a business owner you have a cosmetic brand, consider posting a video that shows how to do eyelash extensions. Or if you have a men’s apparel company, post a video showing how to tie a bow-tie properly. Your two minute videos should have a “serve†mode.
- Utilize Email Marketing – Here’s the one tool that you should implement, it aggregates with all of your social proofs. It will also allow you to use this platform to network and be the driving force to leverage your funnel. There are many platforms to choose from base on your database and financial need. Constant Contact is the best to launch right after setup. TEXT socialstragies to 22828 and we will help you “get your social act together.” Also, make sure you use an auto-responder tool providing your newsletter with tips on a regular basis. Take advantage of holidays and national occurrences to help build your own community.