The situation is this: You know you need to start using Twitter to raise the profile of your website. To get started you start firing out tweets with links to your service or product page but no one seems interested. What’s next? You could search for people actively looking for similar products on Twitter and send them some information – but this isn’t a great approach for an effective social media marketing strategy is it?
If people don’t know you, you’ll be considered spam
The Tweets you send could actually be viewed as spam rather than helpful titbits of information. They haven’t actively asked for your information after all, they were interacting with their online friends instead. To them you are just a random company that seems to be stalking people for a bit of business. When they then go to look at your other Tweets it will look as if their suspicions were well founded as all your previous communications are self-promoting.
No idea about social media marketing?
If you fall into this category then you are not alone. For many the above scenario is a true reflection of their company SMM strategy. Most people know that they need to tweet content to promote their business but many will have no idea what that actually means. Twitter and other sites, such as Facebook, will only offer advantages if you tailor content for to appeal to their online communities. You will need content that delivers more than a description of the products and services you sell. Content needs to be amusing, unique, interesting or engaging. The best content educates users, causes them to think or inspires a reaction. Your content should be relative to your products or services but shouldn’t be highly promotional.
You need to tell a story. To create a story that engages you’ll need the resources to give to it and again many businesses just don’t have the time or money.
Traditional SEO can achieve only so much.
Often, once the basic website optimisation has been done and improvements made to a site, traffic will start to go up but possible not as high as you’d like. You’ll need to drive brand awareness and build up links. A great way to achieve this is through social media marketing. However many people think that SMM is just about setting up profile on Facebook and Twitter. This in fact is the easy bit at the beginning – it’s how you use that profile that makes all the difference.
Thought needs to be given to the content that you put on your site. Twitter and Facebook should be used to signpost to interesting content on the site. This may be a blog section, videos or images for example. Brainstorm ideas for unique and appealing content on your website but also consider how these ideas will be put into action. Either you need to allocate time yourself or you need to find someone else to do the work for you. SMM is about promoting something far beyond products and services. You need to be creative and provide something that appeals to your target audience.
At www.searchengineoptimization.co.uk we offer advice and expertise on all aspects of social media marketing.
