Let’s face it-who has time for social media? Well, let me rephrase that…we all seem to have hours on end for our own personal social media, but who has time for social media marketing?
I’ll bet the answer you landed on is “NOT ME!” But if nobody takes this responsibility, social media marketing will continue to get pushed to the backburner, and you’ll miss out on some prime opportunities for lead generation!
I bet you’ve already come up with a list of excuses to defend why you can’t be the one held responsible for social media, and I bet I’ve heard them all before. Here are three of the most common excuses I hear:
Excuse #1: I don’t know where to begin
You’re like that little kid that’s standing at the end of a diving board, too scared to jump. What’s the worst that could happen? Nobody likes your photo? You have to start somewhere, and these tips will help:
1) A great place to start is by creating a social media style guide referencing your strategy, goals, and plan of action. Yeah, this is a lot of work on the front end, but it will make your life a whole lot easier once it’s in place.
2) Know your audience! Think about the personas you’re reaching and where they hang out on social media. It’s not a one way street! You have to engage them in conversation if you want to get noticed in the first place.
For example, we recently had a group of students from the Ferris State AMA group in our office last week for a presentation so we posted about it and tagged them in it. Who doesn’t feel special when they’re tagged in a post?
3) Choose the channels that are best for you. This will depend first of all if you are B2B or B2C. For B2B, professional channels like LinkedIn will be more effective than for a B2C company, who will see more success on channels like Instagram.
As a B2B agency, we use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. On LinkedIn we strive to be more of a thought leader, whereas with Facebook we try to show our laid back company culture and sprinkle in some thought leader content. Each channel should have a different goal and strategy surrounding it.
Excuse #2: I just don’t have time for it.
That’s fair. I know you’re busy; I’m surrounded by busy people here at MINDSCAPE. Here are some recommended fixes for you:
1) Hire a rock star intern! (like me 😉 ) That’s right. We do more than just get coffee now-a-days…we also get to tweet, and post the weird things our co-workers do in the office to the company Facebook page. And once we prove our genius, they even let us write a blog or two!
2) Share the responsibility by making multiple employees admin on your social accounts. For maximum engagement and creativity, social media needs to be a team effort. With the social media style guide that everyone can reference, anyone can get an idea of what to post and what not to post. The style guide will cut the time you spend debating what to post in half!
3) Set aside a couple of hours at the beginning of your week to schedule out your posts. Half of the battle with posting is getting in the social media groove. For me, it’s way easier to sit down and knock it out at the beginning of the week than to start cold every day. Of course some of the best posts are ones that happen at the time of the event, so stay relevant with your timing.
Excuse #3: I’ve tried social media marketing with my company, but we don’t get much engagement.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, people! The most important elements in social media marketing are time, consistency, and creativity. If you put in the time to create the social media style guide and push out consistent posts, I promise you, you’ll see growth…IF your posts are creative.
1) Give it time! Believe me, building a solid base of followers is no easy feat, and is something we’re still working on at MINDSCAPE. Each company will have its own struggles to overcome in engaging their personas.
2) Be consistent. Set goals for how frequently you are going to post, and commit to it! Don’t be that guy that buys a gym membership on January 1, goes for a week, and then retreats back to his couch and potato chips. Nobody likes that guy.
3) Get creative or get out. In 2014, there were1,500 stories competing to show up in your personal Facebook News Feed at any given moment. We are exposed to so many marketing messages, that creativity is crucial to catching our persona’s attention.
At MINDSCAPE, we’ve had to get creative, because we sell an intangible service. While our thought leadership posts have experienced success on LinkedIn, our company culture posts have seen success on Facebook. Check out a few of our latest top performers on Facebook:
I’ve found that our followers love it when we let our hair down and show them the personality of our brand. They also love it when we talk about Grand Rapids, because Grand Rapidians are proud of and loyal to their home…not to mention they love to complain about the weather on social media.
Find what works for your company through lots of creativity, experimentation, and most importantly patience. Don’t be crushed if you don’t experience any engagement at first. Learn from your failures and celebrate your successes, no matter how small they are!
What excuses do you have that I didn’t address? Comment below and I’ll see if I can’t defend my point that social media marketing is not only a nice thing to have for your company, but a NECESSARY thing to have for success in the world we live in today!
Social media is a tough responsibility, but a necessary one! Schedule and organize your posts with our free content calendar template to make the responsibility a little bit easier.
