When you look at the success of any business and marketing plan (you have one right?) there are four things that we constantly see to achieve success. These are consistency, posting times, strategy, and of being authenticate. This doesn't mean there are only four items. These are four items that appear in every successful marketing campaign. Each together will help you grow your business and your brand to achieve success. During the past several months during our weekly team meetings the talk of "reach" and "engagement" has been at the forefront of the conversation. A lot of this is due to bringing on content writers that have a desire and passion for writing and have the love of small business that we do. It also is happening because we want to make we are providing more value each month. Let's dig into each of these and see why they are important to growing your business brand online.
The first area I didn't mention but one that needs to be talked about is a marketing plan. This can be as simple as:
- what to post
- what not to post
- define both success AND failure
- where you are going to post
- frequency of posts
- who will be posting
- what you are trying to achieve
- define when you will meet and adjust your plan
With the above you can more accurately create your plan for success, adapt for change, and provide consistency across your organization.
Consistency
Consistency is just as it sounds. You want to post consistently (once a week, twice a week, etc.) but that isn't all that consistency is. You may be an "old" company that is trying to re-brand itself as young and vibrant. We have had several of these that have come on over the past year where they were with a marketing company and the results were not what they were expecting. They needed to change things up both in the type of posts but also catering to the "old" style as well. They needed to change but not lose site of their current audience.
Posting Times
We look at when clients reach their optimal reach and engagement. It is amazing how often this change is based on weather, politics, school, etc. You need to look at not only your social media analytics but your website analytics. Both working together can provide you with more insight than just one platform. There is a reason you make these two platforms work collaboratively together.
Strategy
Knowing who your audience is key to success. Many new businesses or small businesses that haven't looked into this truly don't know their audience. Talking with a client last week their entire market was in one segment and has been for their last two social media managers. We started out using the same thought process as it made 100% sense. After tying into their website and social analytics we found that rather than being the 90/10 breakdown they thought it was actually 55/45 as the breakdown. This was not only a shocker for us but them as well. In just one week we changed their entire plan and increased their sales by 10% which paid for an entire year of our services within a week.
You have to start somewhere with your business strategy but you need to be agile and adapt quickly. Sometimes as quick as 24-hours to achieve success. You can't settle that if you are an Italian restaurant that you will only bring in Italians or if you are near a college that your target is college students. It is with analytics and data that you will increase your revenue and grow your business.
Authenticate
This is actually my favorite topic. I read all-to-often when someone writes they make everything "perfect". I am sorry but the only thing we humans are perfect at is being imperfect. On printed content you want it to be perfect but in an article, such as this, that talks about what your company does, how it can help people, etc. you want some small mistakes. Show you are a true human and not a grammar Nazi. Often in the beginning I let my wife read my articles and she laughed. She said this is not you. I went back and "John-e-fide" the article to be more "human". By doing this the engagement and reach of our articles have doubled. This doesn't mean to be wrong, just be human.
For our medical and dental clients, we can't be wrong. That information needs to be 100% accurate and that is where I don't get involved. :) This is why we have people that write for a living (I write beautiful computer code – not content; but I write content still).
Conclusion
By listening to your audience, being adapting to change, and being honest you will grow your brand. Your small business can grow, be better than the box brands, and reach audiences you never thought possible by being authenticate and true to yourself.
