Overview

In my previous post, I shared with you “How to Optimize Social Media”. By Optimizing your Social Media Profiles, you are in good place to improve rankings with search engines. However, if you really want to market your products and services on social media platforms by building a strong fan base,? you have to consider launching social media marketing campaigns. Once you have SMO plan in place and you have resources to manage the profiles on a regular basis and to respond to fan base in a timely manner, you can engage in Social Media Marketing activities.

Social Media Marketing Checklist

This list gives you a list of important items to jump start Social Media Marketing campaign. In addition to these, you can come up with other creative ways to market on social media, once you have run the campaign for a while.

Across Platforms

• Before starting your marketing campaign in one or more social media platforms for your business, find out where your target market is active.
• Have a social media policy in place for employees who are allowed to participate in online conversation about your brand. This is critical to set a standard for responding to fans & to avoid any negative publicity. If you do get into such situation, be proactive to handle in a timely manner to avoid major damage to your brand.
• If you are going to use in-house resource to manage social media profiles for your business, be sure to train them for doing the job effectively. You also have the choice of outsourcing the effort.

• Always plan ahead. If you are planning on running a seasonal promotion for holidays and other occasions, have your marketing road map in place ahead of time, so that your are ready to launch the campaign at the right time, when consumers are ready to shop.
• Be sure to measure the results of all the activities and adjust strategies as needed.

Facebook Marketing

• Try to set-yourself-apart from rest of the crowd. Customize your facebook business page with nice graphics consistent with your brand and promote your products and services through these graphics. Always encourage fan page visitors to “Like” your page and become a fan, to receive offers on promotions.
• Take advantage of paid campaigns such as Face Book Ads to build brand awareness and build your network. This is great way to build your fan base.
• Explore the option of running contests that are available on Facebook, to create excitement and actively engage your fans.
• Explore the new? “Deals on Facebook ” feature to offer discounts on your products and services, to encourage fans and their friends to Buy from you.
• Always encourage your fans to share news about your products and services with friends and family.

LinkedIn Marketing

• 100% profile completeness recommended.
• Ask for recommendations/endorsements from your colleagues and managers.
• Join groups that are relevant to your industry.
• Support Non-profit organizations and involve in community activities.
• Respond to queries posted by members in your network that are relevant to what you do and show that you are an expert. Always post your opinion on topics started by members in your group.
• Follow news in your industry and share with your network. Comment on news shared by others, if you find it valuable.

Twitter Marketing

• Setup/Skin twitter profile for your business
• Start following tweets relevant to your industry. This will help you make yourself visible to other followers and they may start following you.
• Retweet news that you find valuable.
• Reply to Tweets that you find valuable .
• Follow news relevant to your industry and share with your followers.
• Be visible in the network with valuable information and show that your are an expert.
• Don’t connect your twitter profile to facebook profile. Use them appropriately

Blogs

• Choose blogging platforms such as wordpress, which are easy to manage. Install plugins for SEO, Spam blocker, & RSS feeds
• Constantly gather content. Write bits and pieces of content as and when you come across something new you learned and that you would like to share. Once you have enough content (300-400 words), convert it to an easy-to-read format it and post on your blog.
• Optimize the post with Search Engine Friendly description and keywords. This makes your post to be found on search engines and drive traffic to your blog. If visitors like your style they subscribe to receive feeds from your blog.
• Follow other bloggers in your industry and comment on blog posts that you find valuable. You can share other blog links in your posts as well, to add more resources to your content.
• Syndicate your blog posts on other social media platforms & social bookmarking networks.

YouTube Marketing

• Setup/Skin youtube channel for your business.
• Keep your videos short (<5 min) and authentic. Video testimonials from your customers are an excellent way to promote your products and services.
• Use keywords in title and descriptions to optimize the video for search engines.
• Start and end video with your logo & link with contact information.
• Syndicate same video on multiple video portals.

Kriti Web Solutions

Digital Marketing

www.kritionlinemarketing.com

About the Author

Kalpana Murthy, President/CEO at WSI Plano, DBA Kriti Web Solutions, LLC. is a Digital Strategist, Consultant, Speaker/Trainer, & Software Engineer who is passionate about bringing affordable technology solutions to businesses to build online presence. Kalpana Murthy is a certified partner with Google, HubSpot, Sharp Spring, SEMRush and other digital solution providers.