The temptation to jump into social media and start shouting your message is strong, but the real key is taking a step back and listening. Before you write and publish a single post, take time to listen to your future audience, and understand their language, interests, and concerns.
Active listening will guide your social media strategy, ensuring you deliver content that resonates and builds meaningful connections.
Social media isn’t about quick wins. It’s a long-term game. Building a strong presence requires patience, dedication, and a focus on providing value. Every interaction and every piece of content contributes to your social media success, one step at a time.
I always stress the importance of listening via social, before attempting to jump right in.
Engaging on Twitter is usually the hardest skill to master for some. Once accounts are set up and tweaked, many are ready to sit and twiddle their thumbs. Twitter (and other platforms as well) is only as valuable as the user makes them.
Search topics on Twitter to find posts related to Social Media Marketing in general as well as other favorite topics.
Once you have ‘clicked’ around on Twitter, or any other social media network for that matter, they begin to see thought leaders and trending topics while absorbing the curated and original content. Then, start following people of interest to add value to your Twitter streams. The content of your streams is dependent on who they choose to follow. The value they get from Twitter is directly related to who they are opting to “listen “ to.
Listening is key
Accept and embrace the importance of listening before you speak and having a social plan/strategy in place before jumping on the social media roller coaster.
Brands that choose to explore the capabilities and possibilities of social media must listen before they speak. Not listening before engaging is the equivalent of walking into a social gathering and blurting out everything and anything in the room.
A more strategic approach might be to circle the room, watch interactions, see what topics are being discussed, identify thought leaders, and then try to remember names. The same is true of social media.
Listening can be done in several ways and it can be used for many purposes. Primarily it can be used to further understand a target audience to ensure that each Tweet your brand sends out provides value.
Delivering ‘value’ is of course quite subjective, and very industry-specific. It could be in the form of industry news, humor, tips, financial incentives, etc. The strategy of delivering value to create and nurture relationships must be backed by set business objectives. This leads to concept 11 below.
Don’t Expect Quick Results
As a social media professional, you must have the patience to go the distance. Social strategies are not short-term, they are made of long-term goals with specific objectives that have been identified first, and followed by specific tactics.
Before undertaking any type of social media initiative, an organization must begin by identifying specific organizational objectives that will be translated into social strategy objectives. Then, social media activities that address those objectives explicitly should be coordinated appropriately.
Content with value will drive social influence. However, content must also directly relate back to the business goals and objectives, and be relevant to your target audience. Great content can be a source of Internet traffic as well as assist in building authority and trust that ultimately leads to social influence. With this social influence, an organization can leverage it to drive growth and sales.
Take your time to create a recognizable brand identity on social media. Use tools like Linktree or alternatives to set up a consolidated web presence and build all your channels together.
This all takes time, significant amounts of time. Remember the old saying, “You get out what you put in”, nothing could be more true about a social strategy.