Social Media Strategies: 4 Ideas on How to Engage and Grow Your Fanbase
Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend one of Kivi Leroux Miller’s free webinars on social media strategy. Although only an hour long, a lot of great ideas were shared, including statistical data on which media channels were best for marketing. Unhinging the myth that Facebook is the number one place to deliver your message, the two best marketing channels are actually your own website and e-newsletter. You have to remember that Facebook and Twitter are only secondary outlets for information, and your website is the most important part of your company.
But, don’t ignore your social media channels just because they are secondary. Here are a few tidbits that I’ve gathered from the webinar:
1. Update your social media channels regularly
Just having a Facebook and Twitter page are not enough. You won’t get a following by just having a page. People will follow you when you offer them useful or fun information that they can share with friends. It may be hard to come up with content sometimes, but you can always retweet someone, or share a link that someone else has posted.
The frequency of updates depends on where you are posting. For Facebook, once or twice a day is perfect, it gives time for others to comment, and reassures that you are not posting spam. Twitter can be updated several times day, depending on how many people mention you, and the types of trends you want to participate in.
2. Deliver “snack-sized” information
I found this to be one of the best tips from the webinar. Kivi used a very sweet metaphor comparing the amount of information to snack-sized candies. No one wants to read a two page long e-newsletter, or a 2,000 word blog post. The information may be interesting, but people want to read and understand it quickly. Having small chunks of information at several intervals is easier to digest than having one large informational package in one sitting, perhaps why social media has grown so rapidly.
For your newsletters, focus and frequency are the things to remember. You can try to create more focused content, while sending more frequently. So, split your content and send a bi-weekly newsletter instead of a monthly one. Yelp does an amazing job with their newsletters. They usually send out bi-weekly newsletters, and instead of having an array of popular places to go, they focus on a specific category. So, their first newsletter can be Greek places around Manhattan, and the next one will be Spanish food in Queens.
