Understanding and using Social media

Popular social sites and apps include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest and WhatsApp.

Learn all you can about your audience and what their needs are.

Keep these points in mind when you want to develop good social media content. You will certainly find them important and useful.

You need to be passionate about your product so as to be able to connect with your customers and make it sustainable in the long run.

You need to know who your audience is, their interests and how to engage them. Build content that your audience actually wants to see and buy.

Be consistent. Do not give up when you initially do not get the likes, shares and comments you required. You need to remain active and competitive to succeed.

Be creative by having different content from that of your competitors. Be unique, authentic and original.

Be professional by adapting new styles, editing your articles, doing your research well and staying focused.

Be clear by checking your presentation style, format, links and comments.

Have some humor because humor provides an effective way to connect and build trust with your audience.

Have market experience because this will ensure your audience is well guided and able to find what they are looking for.

Do not make demands but instead be human, generous, helpful and responsive.

Have good design and create a site that is usable and functional.

Build relationships and ensure that you do not just have followers.

Finally, it is important to note that social media channels are not totally 100% free.

Let’s now discuss six easy steps on building the right social media plan:

Step one: Develop your objectives. Objectives in this case include increasing leads, increasing sales, increasing the quality of sales, increasing brand awareness, increasing brand loyalty and/ or increasing ROI.

To be successful with social media you will need to have set objectives.

Step two: Choose your best platform. You do not have to be on all platforms but you can choose a platform that best meets your objectives.

Passion and Digital marketing is currently on Facebook. Twitter is another platform I will in future consider going into since it has a large number of users and LinkedIn because it is a platform for professionals.

Learn all you can about your audience and what their needs are.

Know where your audience hangout and spend most of their time, their shopping habits, social media preferences and demography. Develop a product and brand that they will prefer and choose a platform where you can best reach them.

Research, analyse and listen on your competition as well since they too are using social media.

When choosing your best platform, consider where can you best find your audience? How much money can you spend? How much money are you required to spend for an effective social media campaign? How much time can you spare? How much time are you required to spend for an effective social media campaign? What skills do you have? What skills are required for an effective social media campaign? What platform is working or not working well for you? Who is trying to reach you on social media? Compare your social media presence to that of your competitors and what can you change or improve on and do better than your competitors?

Step three: Create your profile account. Fill in your personal details, business details, images required and improve on already existing profiles. Ensure you make use of your keyword.

Step four: Create and collect content that you are passionate about, content that will help you achieve your objectives, content that is useful, interesting, relevant and valuable to your audience.

Step five: Have a plan and optimize your posts. Social media provides an easy, fast and free way to engage audiences.

Social media can also be complicated to use.

Try developing different content and posting them at different times then develop your plan. It could be one post per day, per week or per month. The audience does not like being spammed while you could also very easily be forgotten having one post each month. Only post at the best time to engage your audience.

Try using plain text, mixing images and videos in your posts and see how your followers, leads and customers react to your different posts.

Make time to engage your audience and respond to their comments and questions.

Your plan or calendar will include what to post and the content mix, when to post or a posting schedule and how frequently should you post depending on your audience, business market and channel used.

Step six: Test and evaluate using tools to track and measure your results. Adjust and improve on your strategy and make use of a strategy that best works for you and helps you meet your objectives.

Social media can be used for sharing of passion, talent and interests, social networking and connecting with people from all over the world, media sharing and allows for sharing of text, videos and pictures, holding discussions and sharing of news, data and information, sharing new and innovative content, shopping online, carrying out business reviews and finding new business prospects and partners and also blogging, book publishing and book selling.

Social media is important and cannot today be ignored because social media platforms are dynamic and can be used to gather news, business information and other social content, social media allows for multimedia content sharing such as sharing of GIF, videos, photos, audios, documents and links and social media provides useful tools such as SEO, hash tagging, profile backgrounds and locations. Social media is used by professional and business persons. Tumblr is also a blogging network where users can interact and exchange opinions, knowledge and information. Social media can be used to follow market trends, create brand awareness, carry out market research, engage with customers, build relationships and generate leads, it can be used to find, share, buy and sell products and you can make use of advanced tools to automate your posts, listen to your audience and engage your audience by responding to their comments and questions.

Cheers,

Peter Kirimi Mburugu.

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