How To Max­i­mize So­cial Me­dia Mar­ket­ing For Your Brand And Business

Ef­fec­tive so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing is much more dif­fi­cult than most peo­ple think. 

Un­like us­ing a per­sonal ac­count on a so­cial me­dia net­work, so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing for busi­ness re­quires a pre­formed plan of action. 

• First and fore­most, a so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing strat­egy for busi­ness should in­cor­po­rate all of the nec­es­sary as­pects of mar­ket­ing a busi­ness on any plat­form, on­line or offline. 
• Your busi­ness needs to have a clear iden­tity along with a mis­sion state­ment and state­ment of purpose. 
• You need to have a com­plete un­der­stand­ing of what makes your brand unique as well as how your brand will re­late to your tar­get audience. 
• Fur­ther­more, you need to iden­tify spe­cific de­mo­graphic data for your tar­get au­di­ence such as age range, gen­der, in­come, in­ter­ests, val­ues, etc. 

Once you have that set, the dy­namic world of so­cial me­dia will al­low you to con­tin­u­ally reeval­u­ate and op­ti­mize your cam­paign and keep your au­di­ence engaged.

Turn­ing brands into communities

The gold stan­dard of brand­ing is to build a widely-known per­sona around a name or symbol. 

For ex­am­ple, most peo­ple know what a Rolex watch is and the sta­tus as­so­ci­ated with own­ing a gen­uine Rolex.  One of the most loyal com­mu­ni­ties is built around Ap­ple prod­ucts.  For many loyal cus­tomers, Ap­ple has turned lap­tops and smart­phones into a persona. 

In some cases, brand names have taken over cor­rect ter­mi­nol­ogy in every­day speech. 

For in­stance, many Amer­i­cans hear the word “tis­sue” re­placed by the brand name “Kleenex.”  It is hard to build a com­mu­nity around peo­ple that pur­chase tis­sues for sneez­ing, but the name recog­ni­tion for Kleenex pro­motes the brand by dom­i­nat­ing the mar­ket in every­day semantics. 

How to make so­cial me­dia the per­fect plat­form for your on­line community

First, it is im­por­tant to rec­og­nize that your so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing cam­paign cen­ters on your brand and your busi­ness.  So­cial me­dia plat­forms give mar­keters a great op­por­tu­nity to use dif­fer­ent kinds of on­line me­dia to help con­vey the per­sona be­hind the brand. 

When com­ing up with a plan for so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing, ask yourself:

• “What kind of in­for­ma­tion does my tar­get au­di­ence want to know?”
• “What type of me­dia will my tar­get au­di­ence best re­spond to?”
• “How can I build an en­gaged com­mu­nity around my brand?”
• “Is there some­thing re­lated to my brand that is part of some­thing more mean­ing­ful than my prod­uct line?

Al­most all peo­ple have that mid­dle school kid in­side of them that wants to be part of a big­ger group or com­mu­nity, what­ever that com­mu­nity might look like. 

Whether your tar­get au­di­ence wants on­line so­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­volve­ment in phil­an­thropic ef­forts, up-to-date in­dus­try in­for­ma­tion, or to be a part of a niche com­mu­nity that they feel can bet­ter iden­tify with how they per­ceive them­selves, you need to find a way to weave your brand into that over­ar­ch­ing theme. 

Build trust within your brand’s in­dus­try and niche

Es­tab­lish your­self as an au­thor­ity in your brand’s spe­cific niche by giv­ing your au­di­ence what they need. 

Many com­ments com­monly used on so­cial me­dia net­work­ing sites for per­sonal use are fine in that con­text, but your au­di­ence might see them as spam when used for business. 

You need to act as the per­sona be­hind the brand, and you need to make your au­di­ence feel like they are part of a mean­ing­ful and ac­tive com­mu­nity that they do not have ready ac­cess to elsewhere. 

For ex­am­ple, ask­ing your friends or fol­low­ers ques­tions that are com­monly asked else­where (e.g. “What did you do last Fri­day?”) does not typ­i­cally pro­vide value or en­cour­age conversation. 

• In­stead of pos­ing generic ques­tions, fo­cus on con­tent rel­e­vant to your niche. 
• Share re­sources from other no­table peo­ple in your niche or a closely re­lated industry. 
• Keep things fun, fresh, and rel­e­vant to your niche. 

Af­ter all, that niche is what your brand and your so­cial me­dia com­mu­nity at large is based off of.  Fo­cus on it. 

Stick to your brand and your mis­sion statement

Be the go-to brand for your spe­cific niche. 

Be the best in the world at pro­vid­ing parental con­sul­ta­tion for chil­dren with Autism, be the best auto me­chanic in your met­ro­pol­i­tan area, or be the best cen­ter for cor­rec­tive vi­sion surgery in the world. 

In­stead of try­ing to please a large au­di­ence, build a com­mu­nity around a spe­cial au­di­ence with com­mon in­ter­ests and spe­cific needs. 

A well ex­e­cuted so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing strat­egy will rep­re­sent the voice of your brand and your val­ues as well as ed­u­cate and en­gage your au­di­ence, ex­pand your foot­print and pos­i­tively im­pact your bot­tom line.

[rms] Ralf Skir­r’s com­ment: Ex­cel­lent ar­ti­cle and highly rel­e­vant for small biz own­ers. Small biz own­ers are more likely to strug­gle with their brand­ing than big busi­nesses, with 7 fig­ure mar­ket­ing bud­gets and brand agen­cies.

Defin­ing what you stand for and who you want to reach needs to pre­cede your so­cial me­dia activities.

The re­al­ity is dif­fer­ent, of course. More of­ten than not we find our­selves vis­it­ing Face­book, Twit­ter, and Pin­ter­est brows­ing ran­domly and post­ing ran­dom updates.

This Blog, In­ter­net­Busi­ness­Mas­ter­mind, is an ex­am­ple, too, for how not to do it. While I have a gen­eral idea of where it is go­ing and who it is sup­posed to talk to, my read­ers prob­a­bly have not.

My ‘in­tended’ brand­ing has­n’t yet trick­led down into the choice of ar­ti­cles, or the about sec­tion. As a re­sult my so­cial me­dia strat­egy and con­nec­tions are un­fo­cused as well.

As read­ers you will see a fo­cus in brand­ing in the up­com­ing weeks, and you might just use the chance to re-think your own brand­ing and so­cial me­dia strategy.

• What do you stand for?
• What does your busi­ness stand for?
• And who, ex­actly, are you talk­ing to?