Your Business

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. We’ve all heard this saying before. The problem is, all too often women don’t pay attention to what little gems like this are actually saying. Venturing into social media marketing is no different. As a woman small business owner, you would also have heard of a thing called a marketing plan.

Deciding how you are going to let people know that your business exists. Your social media campaign requires the same amount of planning and forethought as the rest of your marketing activities. Before you run out to register on Facebook or get your wings on Twitter, take a little time to consider some of the following points:

1. Have a plan
You cannot improve on that which you do not measure. Another gem! Now think about what it is saying. If you go on a diet, what is one of the first things you do? You measure your current weight to work out how much you need to lose to reach your target weight. If you don’t set specific goals for your social media campaign, how will you know if you are successful? Also, how will you know that your message is getting to your target audience? Are they even on Facebook? If they aren’t, you could be wasting a lot of valuable time.

2. Create a Presence
Once you have defined your goals and know where to find your audience, you need to create your presence online. This means, taking the time to create a dynamic, interesting representation of you and your business, so that your profile will appeal to your audience and entice them to follow you. Also, optimising your profile is crucial to ensure that you are found in relevant searches, depending on the keywords you have used to describe yourself and your business.

3. Develop Your Reach
So now you’ve registered and set up your profiles on Facebook etc. How are you going to get people to join and thus listen to what you have to say? More importantly, how are you going to reach the people who you KNOW would be interested in what you have to say? You need to approach people strategically. Always aim for a quality crowd, not a quantity crowd. Joining and creating groups is one of the main strategies in social media marketing, because you can leverage a captive audience.

4. Cultivate Connections
Once you have established connections with your audience, how are you going to keep them interested? The world of social media can be a very fickle one. If a person doesn’t like what you are saying, they can leave the conversation with one tiny click of a button.
Think about what your audience would like to hear about and provide them with informative, educational, entertaining content.
 

5. Preserve your Presence

In social media, consistency is key. You need to make sure that you can keep up with the level of activity that you have
committed to. Schedule some time on a daily basis, to allow you to remain consistently active on your profiles.

Link your profiles together so that your updates are filtered through. Be systematic in your approach and get an accountability partner if need be, to ensure that you’ve done your homework.

The point is that if you start out properly, you have a higher chance of being successful in your social media marketing campaign.

Abigail Klopper

Social Media Marketing Facilitator 

T: 076 129 7631  F: 086 548 3294  

  E: info@learnsocialmediatoday.co.za

W: www.learnsocialmediatoday.co.za