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Social media is the cool kid on the inbound marketing block right now. Most members of the marketing community are obsessed with the toipc and are moving fast to develop new social media strategies. The problem with many social media strategies though, is that they are bloated and overstuffed with "social media junk."
The problem is that, as marketers, we have limited staff time and budgets. Social media strategies overloaded with junk that doesn't help drive business objectives use up precious resources and ultimately lead to the failure of the entire strategy.
Let's end the days of bloated, junk-filled social media campaigns by making a few important changes.
7 Tactics to Remove From Your Social Media Strategy NOW
1. A Bloated Strategy Doc - Having a clear strategy is important for any aspect of marketing (or business for that matter). The problem is, some businesses use bloated, 50-page strategy documents as a way to avoid actually doing anything or accomplishing real results. Stop this today. Set a deadline for the review and approval of the strategy document and be ready to move forward. The web moves quickly, and being agile is more important than having a document that outline every "What if?" situation.
2. Product-Centric Content - Social media can provide value in all phases of the buying cycle. That said, many marketers primarily use it as a tool to build reach and generate leads at the tip-top of the funnel. At this stage of social media strategy, product-focused content should be avoided. Social media connections are often only just beginning to learn about your business. Therefore, use social media as a tool for building trust and credibility early in the buying cycle.
3. Guessing - The goal of using social media is not just to get your feet wet. Instead, it is about achieving meaningful business result in a defined period of time. A great social media strategy has clear and quantitative objectives. Another key aspect is to plan for data collection and analytics. How will you get the data to know if you've met your objectives?
4. Multiple Social Media Profiles on One Network - Social media marketing isn't easy. Adding multiple social media profiles for your business on one social network makes your job exponentially more difficult. For example, don't create a different Twitter account for each of your products. Instead create one, single account for your business so you can consolidate your reach and influence in one, centralized place. It is much easier to build a community on one profile instead of 10.
5. Useless Links - When it comes to distributing links in social media, the links you share should serve a specific purpose. Don't send people to your home page. Instead, send them to a landing page or a blog post that will solve a problem they might have. Don't make prospects do extra work. Make it as simple as possible for them to learn and become a lead.
6. Jargon - Using acronyms or industry jargon can be an instant death nail in social media. This type of word choice demonstrates you don't care enough about your community to use words and terminology that resonates with them. Additionally, search engines like Google and Bing are using social media signals for ranking search results, so you want to make sure to use words in your social media efforts that your prospective customers are looking for.
7. Assumptions - The social web isn't linear. Just because you shared a blog post on Facebook last week, doesn't mean everyone saw it. As a business using social media, your reach is expanding every day. You can't make the assumption that just because an idea, blog post, or ebook is old that everyone knows about it. Instead re-share content over time to reach new fans and followers.
What else would you add to this list? What makes a great social media strategy?
Photo Credit: PedalFreak
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