Mediaboss Marketing

Social media was often seen as the wild child of the marketing departmentthe place where interns started their careers and brands could say random things with little to no repercussions. But times have changed, and the industry has matured.

Yes, social media is still a wonderful place for brands to have a little fun, but it also has a real and measurable impact on a business bottom line. Thus, social media can no longer live in a silo; it must be workin tandem with the rest of your business strategy.

To ensure that your social media marketing campaigns contribute to your brands greater business objectives, weve put together a 7-step guide to coach you through the process. Weve also incorporated a checklist you can use to make sure youve done it all right. Click here to jump right to it.

Goal setting is a staple of all marketing and business strategies. Social media is no exception. Of course, with a range of socialcapabilities, it can be difficultto determine exactly what your objectives should be. For guidance, look to the challenges before you.

A smart social media marketing campaign can answereach of these questions. Prove your teams worth by tackling them head on. To get you started, we pulled together a few common business obstaclesand social objectives that can help brands overcome them.

The world is online. A brands website, therefore, is one of itsmost important marketing tools. Low website traffic canmean fewercustomers and lowerprofits.

To combatthis challenge, your social team should focus itsgoals on creating links directly to the website (whether theyre from your own social posts or influencers). Link to useful content, subpages and company images to position your website and your brand as a resource rather than just another cog in the corporate wheel. This traffic should increase leads and, in the long run, revenues.

According to The Chartered Institute of Marketing,it costs 4 to10 times more to acquire a customer than to retainone. To keep your customers around, use social as a tool to support, communicate and engage. A good social relationship with your customersshouldtranslate into a better perception and offline relationship with your brand. By developing a strong social bond, customers will be more likely to stick with your brand time and time again.

People turn to social to engage with businesses. Therefore, it is important for your brandto be ready to help customerson any channel they can contact you through. Arm your social media team with the materials, education and authority to respond to customer questions and issues. When you do so, youll be equipped to respond to your customers in a timely and accurate way, regardless of how they reach out to you.

Social allows you to reach a broadaudience. Buthoning and perfecting that message takes brain power and time. To create authentic and lasting brand awareness, avoid a slew of promotional messages; instead, focus on creating meaningful content and a strong brand personality through your social channels. Determine relevant hashtags andindustry influencers you can engage with,and tap into those resources to extend your brands overall awareness.

Social has longlived within the marketing department, but that doesnt mean it cant (and shouldnt) have a hand in nearly every business function, from human resources to research and development. To create a fully integrated social media marketing campaign, youll need to involve and integrate multiple departments, especially if your goals have a direct impact on them. Work with all yourteams to determine how you can best support theirgoals and what key performance indicators are important to them (weve outlined some ideas on both below).

Social selling is a term that has grownin popularity since the riseof social marketing.By searching for sales opportunities and then engaging in a helpful and authentic manner, social media can be a great way to prime the sales funnel and find new leads.

For example, someone started a LinkedIn chat, asking aboutsocial media tools. Sarah Nagel, Sprouts Community Manager, jumped in to provide insight and offer a recommendation.

Social media is quickly becoming one of the most importantchannels through whichcompanies interact with their currentcustomers. Social is an easy and very public way for customers to air their grievances with your brand. If you arent responding, it can hurt your reputation and customer relationship.

GrubHub is an example of a company thatis really succeeding in social customer care.

@kayreimz Were sorry to hear about the trouble! Can you DM us that order #? Well take a look.

GrubHub (@GrubHub) February 25, 2015

By taking the time to engage with a dissatisfied customer, GrubHub was able to turn a negative experience into a favorited Tweet!

Whilethe HR team probably spends a good amount of itstime on social media looking through the profiles of applicants, itcan also use socialas a way to increase overall application numbers. Showcase job postings on social media and encourage your employees to share them to their networks as well. Beyond just job postings, social is a useful tool in showcasing your company culture to the world. Highlight some behind-the-scenes images of what it is like to work for your company so you can improve the perception of your brand among candidates.

Your brands social audience representsa group that is highlyengaged, invested and interested in your product or service. Why not leverage that to serve as an online focus group for your company? Asking for and listening to customer feedback on social media is a nimble and easy way to get instant feedback. Additionally, social media can help expose gaps in a product or service.

The marketing department, specifically advertising and PR, traditionally hasa strong role in the social media strategy. But there are always new ways to ensure people are aware of and excited about your brand through social. Whether youre debuting a product, ad campaign or initiative, ensure that social has a strong hand in spreading the word.

Just because a network has billions of users doesnt mean it will have a direct contribution to your brands objectives. Instead of trying to be everything to everybody, focus your efforts on networks that hold the key to your target audience and objectives.

Each network has itsown strengths and weaknesses, and each social media marketer should carefully pick and choose which networks they want to take advantage of. Here are some of the most popular networks as well as what theyre best at.

With an audience of1.23 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers an opportunity to reach a broad range of customers and potential customers.The chart below breaks down Facebooks demographic representationyour target audience is most likely represented in some way.

But how can Facebook contribute to your overall goals? Because Facebooks News Feed is a very visible place for social posts, its one of the best places for you to distribute your content in order to increasebrand awareness, drivewebsite traffic and distinguish yourself as a thought leader. This strategy is even more effective when you take advantage of Facebooks targeting capabilities that allow you to tailoryour messages to users with certain interests.

Where Facebook has the volumeof users, Twitter has the volume ofmessages. In fact, there areover 500 million Tweets sent every day.With all those social messages, there is a great chance that someone is either mentioning your company or starting a conversation that you would be interested in joining.

Thats why Twitter is best to use as a customer service and business development channel. Monitor the network for inbound messages from dissatisfied customers, and quickly turn them into happy interactions. At the same time, look for prospective customers.

LinkedIn has a robust network of over 332 million users, most of whom frequent the site with a working mindset. The advantage with this is that LinkedIn isan amazing network for B2B social media marketers. Whereas sites like Twitter and Facebook catch users more or less on their personal time, LinkedIn gives you access to customers when theyre at their professional best. Use this to build relationships with future customers.

One of the great things aboutGoogle+ is that if you have a strong presence on the site and someone searches for your companythroughGoogle,a snippet of your profile will appear on the results page.

Another greatfeature of Google+ is the ability to hyper-target your potential customers by Communities. Communities are groups of people who get together to discuss specific topics, so if you can find one that your customers are likely to be in, you can post content there that mightinterest them.

Once youve involved the right stakeholders, department and networks, its time to start building engaging content for your social channels. This contentwhether a video, tip sheet or simple Tweetshould all ladder up into your business objectives. Below arejust a few examplesof good content for social andhow to use that to support your goals.

Get ahead of the game byplanning your content in advance, using a social media editorial calendar. Weve put together this 4-step guide forcreating a social media editorial calendarthat should help you get started. Sprout also has a full suite ofsocial media publishing featuresthat include the ability to schedule and queue posts.

With millions of messages being sent across social channelseveryday, there is no doubtconversation happening around your brand. Social media monitoring, therefore, should be an essential part of yoursocial media marketing strategy. Below aresome ways you can monitor social media to identify larger business opportunities for your brand.

People who are mentioning your brand on social are some of the highest quality leads you can drive. Theyve already proved they knowyour product/service and have an interest in reaching out to you. Engage with them, foster that relationship and potentially create a brand advocate. If the mention was less than positive, use the opportunity to showcase your stellar social customer care and prove that you are listening.

Think of some of the words you use when discussing your brand, and look out for them on social. By monitoring these terms, you can identify relevant hashtags you should be using, conversations you should be having and influencers with whom you should be engaging.

Keep a pulse on the competition. Social media can give you insights intoyour competitors marketing plans and help you identify gaps in yourproduct or service.

We cant say it enough: Whether someone is commenting on a post youve made, writing on your wall or mentioning you on Twitter, its important to always stayengaged. Shockingly, oursocial study shows that 5 in 6 messages on social requiring response are not answered by brands. If customers are consistently ignored, theyll eventually ditch your brand all together and look for an alternative.

Be sureto respond to customers who have left negative feedback about your brand as well. Too many companies have lost favor with theirfans by trying to delete the message and sweep it under the rug.

Heres an example of how Jimmy Johns social team handled one such situation.

This was a situation where Jimmy Johns reached out to someone a bit frustrated with the stores hours and turned it into a positive experience. Taylor even favorited the final tweet from Jimmy Johns!

You wont be able to really begin analyzing and improving your efforts until youve successfully got steps 1-6 operational. This final step is actually a step back, letting you figure out whats working and whats not.

Sprout Social was created with social media marketing in mind. Sprout offersa full suite ofsocial media analytics, which help you pinpoint exactly which of your messages perform best. You also can use tools like Google Analytics, which integrates with Sprout, to see which of your posts are driving traffic, conversions and overall revenue.

Once you have a good understanding of which content is driving the most engagement, site visits and conversions, you can use that knowledge to increase your success. Write content and social media posts that are similar to the ones that have worked in the past. This is an ongoing process that will help you honeyour unique social voice.

The last step is to let the company know about the successes youre findingespecially those whohave a stake in the strategy. This allows you to prove the worth of social media and showcase itsbroader implications across yourentire enterprise.

Plus, it doesnt hurt to show off how hard youve been working. Need help? Use the checklist below to make sure youve got all your ducks in a row.

We wanted to give our readers a few resources that they could use moving forward. First, wed be remiss if we didnt mention our ownplatform which includes robust tools forsocial media marketing.

Second, we thought that this 7-step social media marketing checklist would be a great way tohelp all of our readers creating and auditing their own strategies.We encourage you to share it with colleagues or use the embed code to put it on your own site!

Michael enjoys writing about all things social media, and his insights can be found on Adweek's SocialTimes, Social Media Today and Social Media Examiner. When he isn't pouring over blog posts he can usually be found exploring Chicago's unique neighborhoods and breweries.

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7-Step Social Media Marketing Strategy | Sprout Social