As a business consultant, one of the most common scenarios that I had seen is: most companies aren’t aware if social media marketing is right for them or not.
Do you know that social media isn’t a one size fits all marketing solution?
Social media is a good digital marketing strategy but it is not the only strategy that every company would need to implement.
In this post, I’ll go through several critical checklists that you should be doing, if you are undecided if social media is right for your company.
How To Know That Social Media Isn’t Right For Your Company?
Target audience
Do you know who is your target audience?
If you have no idea who is your target audience, chances are social media isn’t right for you at this point in time. Not knowing your target audience would mean thousands of dollars wasted on social media marketing.
Social media marketing is expensive and can be very time-consuming.
Lucky for you, you don’t have to jump right into social media marketing now (even though I recommend you to do so as soon as you are able to). You should consider your target audience first before you start focusing on social media.
How to find your target audience on social media?
- Know where your target audience is spending their time on
- Find the type of content that attracts your audience
- Facebook may be a good place to start
- Work on your video marketing, and see what it leads you to
There’s no plan
Want to use social media marketing but have no idea why you should be using it?
If this happens, you should really think if social media is right for you. When you have no idea what social media is used for, then you should be thinking of your digital marketing strategy.
If your plan is to use social media simply because everyone is using it, then you need to stop and start thinking of your plan.
There must be a plan and here are some ways you can start:
- Choose a social media platform
- Consider the type of content that your potential customers may be interested in
- Consider a schedule to work on (number of posts in a day or week)
- Measure the success and results from it (by using URL parameters for example)
People are not engaging with you
This is very common for those who have started social media marketing. You felt that no one is engaging with you. Tired and frustrated, you start to curse social media. Well, you get the point.
When people are not engaging with you on social media, you will get demotivated really, really fast and I totally get it.
If you have a plan and it doesn’t work, chances are you and your business are not ready for the social media game.
“Do you post on a regular basis and get no likes, retweets, +1’s, or whatever other engagement terms the next social sites have come up with”
And when this happens, here’s a tip from Hubspot: “Build an audience by reaching out to them; don’t expect them to just come to you. It takes a while to build an audience and nobody expects you to have 50,000 Facebook likes right away”.
You see, brands don’t get famous overnight. They do crazy things to get the attention and that’s how it is always done.
If you need some boost in social media marketing, consider using paid advertisements. Of course, this is only possible if you have a strong understanding of your audience and what’s needed to get the momentum running.
Your content sucks
Sounds familiar?
I bet! Most companies I work with experience the same challenge. Their content is not attractive enough to attract the crowd.
Having the right content is important because that matters a lot in social media marketing. In this context, content can easily the form of words, video or even graphic.
There is no one size fits all in social media marketing and content.
So, how to start having excellent content for social media marketing?
- Share relevant content
- Listen to what your competitors are doing (and copy/improve the content)
- Share timely content (not just evergreen ones)
- Consider using evergreen content to add variety in your marketing
Time is a luxury
Yes, social media can be very time-consuming. More importantly, it takes up a lot of time (roughly 4 to 6 hours if your brand is really popular and you want to keep your audience engaged).
When you don’t have the time, you will do the job ‘half-baked’ style. In this case, social media marketing is not the right mix for you.
Doing it without proper planning is not going to make your brand grow in the social media industry. It will just add more blunders and possibility of having more work for your entire team.
If you want to have to start social media marketing, consider having a team who can do a lot of work effectively and efficiently for you. And more team members are needed when you are trying to target a wider audience and more social media platforms.
Lucky for you, technology is here to save you. With the use of technology and tools, you can easily save more time and effort in social media marketing.
Here are some powerful tools you should consider using:
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- Buzzlogix
- Sprout Social
These tools don’t only save you time, but they give you one-click reporting which gives you a lot of ability in creating even better and powerful social media content.
Of course, all of these come at a small expense of money (in this case, you need to consider opportunity cost for either spending money or having more time).
Summary
Social media marketing is not for everyone and every brand. Sure, it does help a lot but make no mistake by jumping straight into social media. It doesn’t work that way and will just waste your time and money!
See also: 24 Marketing Expert Predictions For This Year Digital Marketing Trends
