Social media and business, what you need to ask yourself in order to be successful

Social media and business, what you need to ask yourself in order to be successful

Everyone knows they need to be active on social media if they're going to be as successful as possible online.  No company can solely be successful with just SEO or PPC campaigns in place, you can definitely get a lot of traffic, but you will always need social platforms in order to be as successful as possible.

You need Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, SnapChat, YouTube, etc. if you want to be successful online.  You may not need all of these platforms, but hitting a few hard will never hurt your profits in the long run.  You can build a dedicated following with just one platform, so hitting 3 of the bigger ones can triple your followers, and will likely boost your profits enough so you can target more platforms and keep going

Below are 8 questions you need to ask yourself before you get into social media marketing, and they are:


Question 1: Why does your business even exist?
If you don't know why your business exists, you likely don't know what you're supposed to sell or write about.  Now, if you do know why your business exists, you likely know who you should be targeting, what you should be talking to them about, what they would prefer to read or purchase, and how to convert them into a sale. 

Question 2: How did you get started?
People will buy your products or services for various reasons, but they will always be encouraged to purchase from you if they can see where you came from.  A lot of major companies around the world will have their journey typed out on their "About Us" page for everyone to see.  They might even make a few videos and show where they came from to where they are now, and that will always increase your sales because you are now inviting people into your past and see you through your journey.  They will begin to trust you more because you're opening up, and we all know that trust can increase your sales, so figure out where you came from and let people know

Question 3: How do you measure your success?
Are you measuring how many likes you get per post, how many sales you're getting, what your net profits are, how many recurring buyers you're getting, or all of the above?  If you don't know what you're supposed to measure, you won't know if your social media campaigns are actually working.

With email marketing, someone needs to see you in their inbox an average of 6 times before they actually make a purchasing decision, and the same goes for social media marketing.  If you can get noticed more by people, they will be more willing to purchase, so stay active and know what types of metrics you want to measure in order to see if your campaigns are successful

Question 4: What do you sell online?
Dive deep into what you're actually selling and understand how your customers are viewing them.  You may need to edit your images or your descriptions in order to please more of your targeted demographics, but this means you need beta testers or just step into their shoes and see what they see.  If you can do this, you will be able to push it through social media and watch the traffic roll in.

Question 5: Are you aware of what is happening within your industry?
The industry around you will essentially be your greatest teacher because people will react to new product launches and services of your competitors and that's what you need to watch.  If you can monitor what they're doing, and how the customers and community is responding, you'll know what you should be doing.  You won't have to worry about launching a new product and promoting it on social media just to be ripped apart by the community because they hate it.  Let your competitors be the first through the wall, while you play it safe, and always know what will work and what won't before you even think about posting.

Question 6: Who are you trying to bring into your website?
Know who you want to target before you start any sort of social media campaign.  If you aren't sure who you should be targeting, and you just start posting or advertising through Facebook or another platform, you could likely be wasting your money on visitors who won't convert into a sale or subscriber.  If you do your research, you'll know who to target, and that will save you money as well as bring in more profits along the way.

Question 7: How many competitors do you have, and can you beat them?
It's inevitable, you'll have competition, but can you beat them at their own game?  So many times I've seen people start up a website and then complain because they can't beat their competitors, but it's usually because they're copying them word for word and expecting the same results.  Be unique and the community will see you as another authority, and they will flock to you just like they did you, competitors.

Question 8: Can you sum up your branding strategy in a couple of sentences?
If it takes you a few paragraphs to write up your branding strategy, it's likely too complicated right now and needs to be reworked.  Yes, a detailed branding strategy will likely be a few pages of content, but you need to focus on the Now and not the Later because you're just starting off.  Know what needs to be done first, focus on those few tasks, then start evolving your branding campaign off of the initial results you've gotten.


In conclusion
Social media, SEO, Branding, Marketing, and Sales are 4 different beasts that need to be tamed if you want to be successful online.  All of them take time, and all of them require dedicated work, but if you go into social media without knowing the answers to the 8 questions above, you'll be lost and likely waste a bit of money before you realize the direction you should be going in.  Play it safe, understand what you're doing before you do it, and profit more in the long term


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Thanks!

Tommy Carey