Social Media Strategy
Why does no one see my Facebook page?
In the last decade using social media in advertising has gone from an important part of a company’s strategy to a necessary part of any successful company’s strategy. Almost every small business starts with a Facebook or Instagram page. A lot of small businesses even put more emphasis on their social media than their own website. Social media is free, everyone is on it, and both the smallest and largest organizations around the globe are using it. It should be easy to generate revenue from it, but it’s not. Why?
Social Media Usage in a Competitive Digital Landscape
Since almost every company has social media, an individual company’s social media page needs to emphasize quality content. The content needs to be posted regularly, but, just as importantly, social media content should link back to relevant pages on a website. It is on an individual website page that potential customers will take a specific action that will lead to revenue. Creating off-topic posts, sharing pictures with no intent, or sharing another company’s content and directing to that company’s website are strategies that will achieve few results.
Social media accounts are vehicles to drive traffic to a company’s website and make a conversion. This is not to say a company cannot post a funny picture or two, or reshare another company’s content, but the emphasis should be on internal company-created and topic-oriented content.
Winning Social Media Strategies
Other industry-winning social media strategies include:
- Creating a budget. It is invaluable, essential, to run paid ads or boost organic posts to get potential customers to see a social media page’s content.
- Developing customer-oriented content. Content should provide value to potential customers.
- Upgrading to a business manager account. The more tools that are available to accurately create and track goals, the more successful a company is going to be.
- Setting goals. Ads should be built for specific objectives. Goals can include filling out lead forms, phone calls, or purchases. It is important to know the customer profile of site visitors, so that content can be tailored to meet specific goals.
Organic Social Media Strategies
If a company’s social media strategy involves random, infrequent posts to an audience of 100 people, with half of that audience being employees and friends of the business, then that company is leaving a lot of money on the table. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become pay-to-play platforms. Even seemingly good social media pages with thousands of followers can improve. Without boosting posts, only 3-5% of a page’s followers will see that content in their feed. While social media is often looked at as a free tool, to truly maximize the service, companies need to put some money behind it.
It is not enough to just have a social media page and account. It needs to be regularly updated with relevant content. Goals need to reflect company priorities and be optimized periodically. Posts should link back to a company’s website with calls to action. A budget should be allocated to create ads and boost posts to ensure that hard work is being seen.
Social media marketing might look simple and easy, but to get results it must be done properly.
