photo credit: Stig Nygaard via photopin cc
Social media marketing is a powerful way to gain exposure for your brand and to increase traffic to your company website. However, you can’t just start up a profile on Facebook or Twitter and expect your sales to start exploding. You have to develop a strategy for making the most of your social media presence so that you can engage your customers, attract new customers, and drive traffic and sales.
Social media marketing is often a long-term play — meaning that it will take time for you to establish your presence and build relationships with your customers before you start to see a payoff. It can make it difficult to know if your strategy is working or not. However, there are a few signs that your social media marketing strategy might not be having the effective you want it to and needs a makeover:
Your Likes are Few and Far Between
New fans and followers will come in spits and spurts. However, if you are only getting a few new likes or follows each week — or none at all — then you might need to tweak your social media marketing strategy. Be sure to check your analytics each week: You should start to see a pattern that indicates consistent growth. If you don’t, it’s time to rethink how you are using your social media presence.
Offering engaging content and exclusive promotions is a great way to attract more fans and followers. You can also promote your profiles through your blog and through contests and giveaways. If your fans aren’t pouring in, try these strategies to see if you can change that.
Your Customers Aren’t Engaging with You
Maybe you have thousands of fans or followers, but your wall or your news feed is like a ghost town. You post updates, but no one “likes” or comments. Your posts don’t get many (or any) shares or re-tweets. No one shares information on your wall or in your feed.
If you aren’t getting must interaction from your customers, how can you know that your message is being received? If this is the case, you should reconsider the types of posts you are sharing. You may need to be creating more compelling content. Consider how you can solve your customers’ problems, or how you can entertain or inspire them. Then share content that does one of those things. You will surely see an increase in the level of engagement on your page.
You Aren’t Getting Additional Traffic to Your Site
While it may take some time for your social media marketing strategy to send significant amounts of traffic to your site, you should start to see some increase right away. At first, the traffic bump will be small (maybe only a handful of people), but your visitors should grow consistently as you establish your presence on social media.
Watch your analytics carefully to check for a consistent growth pattern. If you don’t see one, it’s time to re-evaluate how you are interacting with customers on your social media profiles and to develop new strategies for promoting your site and driving traffic back to it.
You Aren’t Getting More Sales
Like we said, social media marketing is a long-term play. You won’t get more sales right away. You have to build relationships with your customers and establish trust and authority with them. However, over time, you should start to see an increase in your sales and inquiries (or in your ad clicks).
If your sales aren’t picking up, consider how you can tweak your social media marketing strategy to change that. You might consider creating exclusive promotions for your social media channels, such as special discounts or products that are only available to your fans or followers. You could also run a contest in which you give away a top product in order to generate buzz. Get creative and test strategies to find out what works the best.
Social media marketing can help you to drive sales and traffic to your website. However, the impact is often not immediate, making it harder to tell if your strategy is working or not. These tips can help you to determine if your social media marketing strategy needs a makeover so you can get a better return for your efforts.
What other criteria do you use to measure the success of your social media marketing strategy? Share your tips for success in the comments!
About the Author: Sarah Clare is a writer and oversees the site projectmanagementsoftware.com, where she has recently been researching change management software. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys cooking and scrapbooking.
