[VIDEO] HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA EFFECTIVELY

In the previous video, we saw the importance of social media in your inbound strategy. Now let's look at how to use social media effectively.

Let's recap for a moment: social media is important to your inbound strategy because it helps you at every stage of the methodology. It will help you attract visitors to your website, convert them into leads and close them into customers, and most importantly… it will help you keep delighting them so they become promoters of your brand.

So now let's talk about the steps you can take to make that work for you. Think of social media as writing a research paper. First, you do your research. Then you write. And finally, you get feedback that tells you how well you did.

Social media works in much the same way. On one hand, there's social media monitoring, which should be used during the research stage of developing a social media strategy. On the other hand, there's social media publishing, which consists of posting content on your social platforms. And finally, social media reporting lets you evaluate your efforts and make changes.

Together, these steps help you create an effective inbound social media strategy worthy of the highest grade. Let's talk a bit more about social media monitoring, specifically the research part.

Social media monitoring is an excellent way for marketers to gather information about their Buyer Personas. As you know, Buyer Personas are fundamental to your Inbound marketing strategy.

They allow you to connect with the right audience and start building relationships with people who want to be part of your social network.

Social media publishing is the next step in developing an effective Inbound social media strategy. This is your opportunity to show off your newly acquired knowledge by distributing the content you have developed for your Buyer Personas.

This is an important part of your social media strategy, since what you publish and how you publish it will determine how your audience perceives your brand. Just like getting a grade on an essay, social media reporting lets you understand how to evaluate your efforts against your actual results.

You may be wondering: How do I develop and execute my own social media strategy? Well, don't worry. There are some best practices for each step that will let you get started right away. Let's start with the best practices for social media monitoring.

Social Media Monitoring

Every good project starts with an end goal in mind. And it's no different when it comes to a good social media strategy. This brings us to the first best practice for social media monitoring.

Determine your Inbound goals: First of all, it's important to set SMART goals for the inbound methodology. Whether you're looking to increase the number of visitors, convert more sales opportunities, close more customers or even make them happier, setting a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely goal is the best way to achieve success.

Now, your social media goals may change as you start creating your own strategy, and that's okay. Just make sure you update them as you move through the process. Once you've had the chance to think carefully about your goals, the next step is to define your social media streams so you can monitor the right terms.

Think of social media streams as a school of fish swimming across the web. Simply put, it's a group of messages gathered into a list based on something they have in common. And you can even decide which terms these messages should have in common.

How do you know if you're monitoring the right terms? Well, you could start by focusing on the words your buyers use to describe your company or products.

These terms may change over time as you learn more about your Buyer Personas. So don't be afraid to add or remove streams as you become an Inbound marketing specialist.

Segment Your Audience

The next step is to segment your audience, and it's worth taking the time to do it. You might consider doing it by geographic location, by buyer's journey stage or even by the content your audience has shown interest in.

If you're active on Twitter or just getting started, an easy way to segment your audience is to create a list of your followers whom you can classify as sales opportunities, customers or even promoters.

Another example would be through the use of a Facebook or LinkedIn group. Facebook groups are easy to set up. You can create an open group that anyone can join or a closed group that is subject to the group administrator's approval.

You can get customers to join a group on either of these networks by sending them a link in an email or sharing it with them during a customer-only Webinar.

Creating groups on social platforms is an excellent option your company has for starting conversations that are relevant to your business.

You can also choose the content you want to promote and watch interest grow. This brings us to the last best practice for social media monitoring, which is taking the time to use personalized responses.

Use Personalized Responses

Sounds simple enough. If you understand who your Buyer Personas are and what their buyer's journey looks like, this should be easier, right? Actually, no.

A major financial institution, which will remain anonymous, once caused an uproar on Twitter because its social media support team gave identical responses to almost every customer who tweeted at it.

That is definitely unacceptable customer service. It's important to remember that the people who make up your audience want to feel special. And your job is to make them feel that way at every stage of the buyer's journey.

Keep in mind that personalized responses aren't just for resolving customer service concerns. They can also help you delight your customers.

Now let's explore the best practices for social media publishing. Remember the research paper we mentioned earlier? Well, social media publishing is something like writing the paper. And how does a good paper begin? With your name and an introduction, of course.

Likewise, the first best practice for social media publishing is to optimize your company profile. What does that mean? There are 3 key components of an optimal profile.

1. Your company logo. You can use it as your profile picture, header or even as your company's cover photo. You want your audience to recognize the image. So make sure it's high resolution and has the right proportions for each social media platform.

2. A clear and concise company description. This is your chance to introduce yourself to your future customers. That's why it pays to be clear, concise and creative. And don't be afraid to use keywords in your profile description. This will make it easier for prospects to find you.

3. A link to your website. This link acts as an invitation for members of your audience to learn more about what you do, how your customers feel about your company and where they can buy your product or service.

However, before you start posting on social media, you should ask yourself: How can I unify our social media messaging?

One of the best ways is to create a style guide for social media. A style guide is a book of the rules you should follow on social media; these rules will help you establish a consistent way to respond to customers, share content, create posts and more.

It should answer questions like: How many hashtags should I include in each tweet? What will the tone of my posts be? Will all my posts include images? And what are the rules for including links in my posts? By answering those questions, you'll have reached a point that lets you take your social media publishing to the next level.

The next best practice will make social media publishing fun for you and your audience: Personalize your content.

You need to adapt the content you publish to each platform, and we'll talk about that in our next video, where we'll cover examples of posts tailored to each social network.

That's why I invite you to subscribe to our blog and YouTube channel so you never stop learning social media best practices and strategies.