Social media is a new path for advertising and marketing professionals. Unlike traditional advertising and older online marketing methods, social media experts haven’t had enough time to develop a reliable formula for reaching goals and getting a good return on investment. However, the demand for a strong social strategy is increasing as the platform’s impact expands. While we haven’t discovered a single strategy that works for all brands, research and expert testing have provided insights into where, when, and how content does best on social media.
Where can you find useful advice from experts who really understand how to build a successful custom strategy? Online, naturally! Each platform varies, so I’ve gathered and listed the best resources available to help you develop a strong, varied social strategy. Take a look!
1. LinkedIn
10 Data-Driven Steps to Dominate LinkedIn Publishing
Hands down the BEST LinkedIn marketing resource online. This infographic provides data-driven tips for optimizing a B2B social content strategy. I’ll let it speak for itself (Click to view larger):
2. Instagram
The Marketer’s Guide to Instagram
Never one to disappoint, the Kissmetrics blog published an awesome post on understanding, building, and carrying-out a solid instamarketing campaign. Complete with facts and figures on everything from filter use to user engagement, this post offers a killer opportunity to capture your Instagram audience.
3. Facebook
Guide to Facebook Reach: What Marketers Need to Know
You’re posting great stuff, so where’s the engagement? Thanks to FB’s Edgerank, only a small handful of your followers actually see the content you distribute. The best way to counteract this? Implement a variety of tactics to boost organic reach AND allocate a small portion of your ad budget toward paid reach. Social Media Examiner covers the details in this article on Facebook reach.
4. Twitter
A Quick and Dirty Guide to Setting up Twitter Ad Campaigns
Twitter offers an awesome opportunity for brands and consumers to directly connect to one another more quickly and concisely than ever. The downfall is that it can be difficult to build a quality following without putting in some serious marketing effort. This is where a Twitter ad strategy makes the difference. If you’ve yet to check out twitter ads, this resource will guide you through the process of selecting the right form of ad, creating the ad content, and effectively distributing to your target Twitter audience.
5. Pinterest
All social platforms are unique, however, Pinterest really stands on its own in terms of audience demographic and layout. This is great for users, but can make it difficult for marketers to answer the question “What should I be doing with Pinterest?” Whether you’re a savvy pinner or not, if your target consumer belongs to the Pinterest audience, optimizing your efforts on the platform is a must. Thankfully, awesome pinners have collected stats and info to guide the rest of us through the process of appealing to engaged Pinterest users.
6. Google+
How to Improve Engagement on Google+
Google + is a great tool for connecting with users. More importantly (from the biased POV of an SEO enthusiast), it boosts your appeal to the most powerful search engine in existence. That is, if you play your cards right. Yes, your Google+ activity has the potential to make a positive impact on your site ranking too. So how can you take advantage of the benefits this platform has to offer? By finding out where and how to share your content for optimal reach and brand relevance. This infographic has the stats and info to help you get started. Check it out! (Click to view larger)
Getting Started
There you have it, all the online resources you need to hit the ground running with an awesome social strategy. To get started, I suggest you pick 2 or 3 platforms that are most relevant to your target demographic and focus your energy/ad budget there. The rest you can choose to either post less frequently on or drop from your strategy completely as a large portion of your target will more than likely not be found on every platform. Google+, however, should be posted on every time you post on another platform as it can be used as a helpful SEO tool.
Have an additional resource you’d like to share with your fellow social gurus? Let me know in the comments below!