The Secret to Social Media Marketing Success

Let’s face it, marketers and business owners can easily spend countless hours engaging in social media marketing in an effort to gain website traffic, leads, and new customers. Social media marketing has become the new gold rush, with many rushing in, but few striking gold.

With countless social media options in play, constant changes and refinements to core channels like Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and with significant new offerings like Google+, keeping up with social media marketing can seem a truly daunting task. That’s why every marketer and business owner needs a clear social media strategy designed to make every hour count toward achieving real results.

If you are a results-oriented marketer, then you should embrace the idea of focusing your social media marketing resources on a small group of key social media channels before moving on to other channels. The goal is to reach a tipping point of placing well-crafted social media content in these key channels before moving forward into other channels. Without this focus, many a marketer will be doomed to mediocre (or worse) performance due to spreading their social media content too thinly.

Here’s a practical formula for business owners and marketers to follow if they are willing to devote at least six hours per week to developing social media content:

1. Identify the keywords used to find your types of products and services (based on actual national or global search statistics).
   
   
2. Rank your keywords in terms of traffic or opportunity.
   
   
3. Brainstorm to develop a series of blogging topics associated with each keyword.
   
   
4. Create a blog and imbed it into your website (or make it a sub-domain of your website) to insure the search engine ranking benefits of your blog are shared by your website.
   
   
5. Write a blog post once a week , focusing the content of each post on one keyword, and containing at least 300 words per post (the more the better, but keep it engaging). Tag each post with the relevant keywords, but don't over-tag.
   
   
6. Link to your posts on your company Facebook page, Twitter feed, and LinkedIn page if applicable.
   
   
7. Create a YouTube or Viimeo channel, and learn to create short, informal (unpolished) videos using a FlipCam, smart phone, or other simple video camera, again, focused on your keywords, and tagged with your keywords. Link to your videos in Facebook posts and on your Twitter feed and LinkedIn page if applicable.
   
   
8. Consider using Facebook ads to build your fan base.

You may be wondering why Google+ is not listed above, or other relevant social media marketing channels. Again, our goal is to focus on the most influential media first in an effort to reach that tipping point. As of this writing, Facebook has surpassed 800 million users, and Google+ has over 90 million, and growing rapidly. Focusing on the above list FIRST leverages the 80/20 rule to ensure success with the 80% before moving on to the 20%. Once completed, you will be well-positioned to move on to Google+ and other important social media channels.

Need help in developing and executing a solid social media marketing plan? If so, check out our video for more information on how we can partner with you to achieve social media success. Then contact us if you'd like our help. Our greatest satisfaction is your success!