18 Proven Ways to Be Successful with a Social Media Plan

Social networking is not about farming followers, it’s a way of cultivating relationships. How many times have you seen companies requesting people to friend them on Facebook? Like farming, followers was the name of the game. Sad but true. The truth is that a social media plan and its marketing tactics are really about cultivating relationships with potential customers. Fan ‘skins’, by themselves, are of very little value.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

What is the importance of social media in your business?  Dialog with customers for sure. What about reading your content and remembering? Appreciating your help? Marketing? Building relationships? We believe it is all of these things, but the bottom line goal is relationship building.

Related post: Social Media Campaign … How to Create an Eye-popping One

In the ever-changing landscape of social networking, you might be wondering if you are getting the most out of your business’s social media marketing tactics?  Here we define social media community engagement as the process of gaining website customer traffic, attention, interaction, and ultimately relationships through social media sites.

Have you ever thought about how to build positive social media community engagement?

This task starts with what customers want and need. Most people want to: feel needed, be valued, be appreciated, be fulfilled, share emotions, laugh and be happy, succeed and be inspired. Make them feel something that feels unique to what other brands are blasting at them. To do this you must know who your community is. You must know how to catch and hold their attention.

So let’s examine our recommended game plan to build positive social media marketing tactics for  community engagement:

Capitalize on major local events

During the Sochi Olympics, Coca-Cola hosted a contest/series called #CokeGames. The gist of it was that they created simple Olympics-inspired games like Bottle Cap Hockey, Coke Curling, Ice Cube Ski Jump.

Then, they asked their followers to play along by filming and uploading short videos of the Coke fan playing the game. The incentive was an opportunity to win a $100 gift card.

Your small business could adopt this idea, using any big local event as inspiration. It might be a local seafood festival or perhaps a local hockey team championship game. These local events happen all the time and offer great opportunities for the attention of your brand and therefore your relationship building.

Tell short stories

Not sure what content your fans want? Prototype and test your ideas! Try posting different types of status updates, related and not related to your product and company. Also, use your social media insights to see what your readers are engaging with the most, and then deliver more of it.

Many brands build TV commercials and then share them with fans on their social media sites. A great example is with the Guinness ad we discussed in our article on Guinness marketing using storytelling. This technique used subtle messaging with a great story to appeal to fans. The story’s light touch made sharing the story seem less like an advertisement

Doing a great job of creating campaigns that tell short stories and have subtle messaging is an effective marketing tactic.

If you’re inexperienced in video marketing, that’s okay. There is a very large variety of articles on the topic, and a good place to learn. But remember the best way to learn is by doing and practicing. Start your video creations with free tools like Vine and Instagram.

Show appreciation to other brands

Sharing company branded media highlights of synergistic partners of your business can be a big win-win. It starts with finding ‘soft’ synergistic partners that could easily help spread each other’s messages.

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Employ user-generated content

Eye-catching photos, hashtags, and tagging are all good ways to support engagement and sharing. They can all be used effectively building on user-generated content.

Dove used the hashtag option with their #beautyis campaign. The campaign was branded but relied on user-generated content like fan pictures using the product to tap into a younger demographic. Their approach was to focus on customer input to help generate traffic and engagement without the hard sell.

You’ll find that brand campaigns permit good consistency in marketing messages across multiple social media sites

Give updates on sales and discounts

Give your fans what they want: a heads-up on sales or discounts. These types of rewards keep them returning to your website. Fans love to see this kind of information on social media. According to a Syncapse study, 42% of respondents said they like a brand  to give “a coupon or discount.”

Stimulate conversation with thought-provoking questions

How do you create fan conversation? One great way we have found is through asking fans a thought-provoking question. Use questions that relate to your brand.

For example, Internet Explorer asked how people imagine the web in 5 years? Remember that you need to be part of the community and give your answer.

When asked to share their vision of the future, fans had fun sharing their thoughts and others used the Q&A as a way to voice their opinions on IE’s products.

Show your fans the fun

It’s always appropriate for a brand to show its personality. If it’s a personality that wants to be a little weird occasionally, go ahead and get a little weird.

Skittles is a great example of this tactic. Yes, most of their posts are silly, but it’s working for Skittles.

A typical day’s posts can include observations such as “Really boring pirates carry pigeons on their shoulders” and shots from the page’s ongoing BFF series, in which it posts photos from users posing with their beloved Skittles.

If you’re a product-based company, ask your users to send photos of themselves using your product or service in exchange for a shot at a prize, or for the honor of being featured on the page.

Share interesting news about your company

Got some great company news to share? If your business just won an award or competition, share the news. Jeep wasn’t shy when the 2014 Jeep Patriot won a Kelley Blue Book 5-year cost to own award. They announced the award on social media. It was a great way to share good news and promote a product without overtly selling.

Post fun facts and popular topics

Not all of your company’s posts should be brand-centric, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be branded. Kit Kat posts fun facts and takes advantage of popular topics, but also includes their tagline, “Break Time. Anytime.” on the images they share.

You should always look to tap into a trending local topic, particularly if it relates to your products and services. Find useful creative visual designs to reinforce the message.

Social media marketing tactics … crowdsource ideas

Always use any and all ways to gain customer insights that you can employ. One way to is to crowdsource ideas from customers. We have written about two companies that have used this technique very successfully. ( See our 2 crowdsourcing articles … one on Starbucks and one on Legos.)

My Starbucks Idea website is at once a crowdsourcing tool, a market research method that brings customer priorities to light, an online community, and an effective internet marketing tool.

Encourage customers to give their opinions and reward the best ideas. It’s a great example of how a business can use social media as a mini–focus group and learn what customers really want.

Use social media as a customer service/ experience gateway

There are many ways a brand can use social media to help manage customer service and experience. Start small, just collecting all inputs, good and bad. And then grow from there.

For example, the Olive Garden showcases their food with “Yum!”-inducing photos to draw attention to their social media as a way to solicit customer service insights. That’s to be expected of a restaurant.

What’s more impressive, though, is that Olive Garden uses their platforms as a gateway to customer service. They encourage customers to chat with their guest relations team about experiences at their restaurant.

Don’t you think you can follow this model? You certainly don’t have to be a restaurant. How serious are you about customer service and customer insight engagement?

You don’t have to make the social network your main source for support, but you should respond and interact with your fans to answer their questions. You’ll not only boost engagement but also show that you’re human and you care about their opinions and questions.

Follow the 70/20/10 Rule

Here is an important guideline to keep in mind for all of your social media sites. Follow the 70/20/10 guideline … not a rule, but a guideline.  Let us break that down for you. The majority (70%) of content that a social media site page puts up should be brand- and business-building, meaning it’s information that is valuable to your followers. Content shared from other sources makes up 20% and the remaining 10% or less (NEVER more) is self-promotional.

Apply the 70/20/10 rule to your own content mix and generate more interest for your social media and increase your customer engagement.

Inspire your community

In any social media site, you need to learn what inspires visitors to visit your site. This means you try many sources of content and visual content and learn what attract the most customer targets. And is sticky enough to keep them.

For example, the Quicksilver brand page plays to their audience with stunning images of ocean waves and surfers and acknowledges sponsors and events. All of their content reflects their mission to “inspire people to seek new adventures.”

In one update, they posted an image from a video of a professional surfer. It would have been easy enough to just post the video on their page, but they chose to help drive traffic to a website they thought their users would like. They were thinking of the customer first and that got them a lot of feedback.

Take advantage of the visual design

First and foremost, prioritize visual design in your efforts. Presenting your content in a visual format has a number of benefits. First, humans recognize and process images much faster than text; this is why visual content has much greater appeal. A study by 3M showed that 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text.

Second, using a diversity of image types makes your content continuously fresh, which encourages readers to explore more. In a visual design, the combination of photography, illustration, videos and data visualization keeps the eyes interested and moving around the page. More time on site means more engagement with your brand.

Employ brand specific APPs

As we move through time, more and more customers are using smartphone technology for everything to do with marketing, shopping, and purchasing. Find some good mobile APPS that could help your business and offer them to your customers, including information about how they could be of help to them.

What to work on now: Creative Tips for Stunning Infographic Design

Social media plan … Build email subscription lists

Like all pages on social media, most brands use their pages to introduce new products, share video, talk about upcoming events, and grow their email and customer base lists..

Here is an example, your business can build their email subscription list by creating a photo album to promote a new product or service.

Another example, if customers want to be reminded when a future product (coming soon) will be available, they can sign up for an email alert. A nice seamless way to engage consumers and move them through the sales funnel.

Respond to everyone

No matter what you do, if you want to build engagement you have to be engaging with all customers and potential customers. What does this mean? Do a great job of responding to most comments.

Tag people in a comment stream to let them know that you’ve responded to their inquiry and/or appreciate their comment.

Social media strategy outline … employ cross-channel incentives

It is vital that businesses integrate their marketing in all channels. Tie your inputs in social media to your newspaper ads and your in-store marketing activities.

Here is an example: Williams-Sonoma, a brand with a full-featured online store and over 250 brick-and-mortar locations in the U.S., invites social media fans to in-store events. Not only will this help spread the word; it’s also a good way to entice in-person shoppers, who may have happened upon the event, to stay in-the-know by becoming social media fans, too.

Certainly local small business doesn’t have this scale, but the example applies to small businesses as well.

Capture customer inputs and insights

An engaged social media audience can serve as an ongoing, cost-effective way to discover what fans like. Wrapping the information up in a quarterly report or more impromptu sharing of information could also help keep fans engaged.

Not sure what content your fans want? Prototype, test, and test some more. Try posting different types of status updates, related and not related to your product and company. Also, use your social media to see what your fans are engaging with the most, and then deliver more of it.

As an example, the Zillow brand uses social media to share real estate in specific regions of the U.S., but that’s not all. Zillow leverages their access to fans to capture a lot of information about preferences for room styles and settings.

The brand uses questions to solicit those opinions. On their page, you’ll notice that they use both open-ended and multiple-choice questions for market research. Certainly a good idea for most businesses, big and small.

The bottom line

In this article, we’ve explored a multitude of creative ways brands use social media status updates to increase engagement. The key takeaway is to know your audience and what they’re most likely to respond to. Give them more of that!

It’s OK to promote your company and products, but do it in a way that capitalizes on your audience’s deepest interests and connects with them on a personal level. Avoid selling.

What do you think? What kinds of social media updates have worked well for your company? What other status update approaches can you share? Please leave your comments below.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Are You Employing the Smashing Value of Creative Stories

How Small Businesses Win Social Media Marketing Wars

The Ultimate Guide to Creative Social Media Marketing

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.