Tips and tricks about specific social networks are useful, but the whole endeavor can seem overwhelming without an overall social media strategy.
It’s tempting to create your strategy based on your internal team’s bandwidth. Some networks are easier to engage with on a daily basis than others, and we all know how important it is to stay engaged once you’ve committed to a network.
Networks that have been around longer and have robust analytics and business tools may seem more desirable. Facebook and Twitter are going to be easier to sell to senior management than Instagram because you can access a huge number of well-documented case studies online. But that doesn’t mean those are the only places you could be posting that have potential to show results.
You Are Not Your Target Market
The most important thing to consider when setting up your social media strategy is your audience. Where is your target market engaging in social? Direct selling is unique because in the majority of cases, sales representatives start out as customers. They have a lot in common with their prospects and can easily speak their language.
But even with this advantage, it’s still important for direct selling organizations to do a detailed study of their customers’ and prospects’ demographic data before deciding which social channels to invest in. It’s usually a good rule of thumb to begin with the assumption that you are not your target market. Your social preferences may turn out to be exactly the same as the customers and prospects your trying to reach. But knowing for sure will help you make decisions based on real data.
Researching Social Networking Demographics
Each year, marketing analysts come out with reports and trends detailing the most recent demographic data for a wide variety of social networks. For instance, Business Insider’s BI Intelligence recently released a report, REVEALED: The Demographic Trends For Every Social Network. It’s important to regularly check in on the latest trends. Things change fast when it comes to the social media landscape. For instance, you can already find some early demographics for Ello, a social network that’s less than a year old, but making a splash. It could flop, but it could be worth paying attention to in the coming years.
Implementing Your Plan – Keeping Up
It’s no small achievement to plan and execute a great social media marketing strategy with consistency. As we’ve explored, each network is different. Simple syndication of the same message to each network doesn’t work. As Jonathan Gilliam says in Blastoff! Creating Growth in the Modern Direct Selling Company:
If you need to advertise, buy ads.
In order to make sure you see results from your investment in social, it’s incredibly important to pay attention to how each network is different, who you’re talking to and how they communicate. Getting it wrong can result in penalties that will make it harder and harder to reach your audiences. For instance, on Facebook, you have a brief window of time during which you can either enchant or lose a new fan or friend. If what they see isn’t interesting, they will ignore it. Facebook’s algorithms will take note of this and it’s not likely that they’ll see many more of your posts in their feed going forward.
Social media is about excitement – and so is this business! If the things you’re posting will not foster an interesting discussion, reconsider posting them.”
– Jonathan Gilliam
Avoid Overwhelm With the Next Generation of Social Media Management Tools
Empower your reps with great content. Be sure your syndication tool allows your reps to be creative – to put their own spin on your marketing messages to share with their own personal accounts.
Enable internal engagement to keep your social media users on the same page. Provide your reps and marketing teams with a mobile app that allows access to company content libraries, training, internal communication with one another as well as ways to compete through rewards programs.
Coach your teams to become truly engaged on social networks by listening to and interacting with their followers and friends.
Let us help
Learn more about Social Partner, a simple yet powerful platform that enables direct selling organizations to deliver an effective social media presence to the field while keeping the brand message pure.