An effective Social Networking Strategy is one that can make excellent effect for the brand on the internet. We have seen companies go social in their marketing methods as a result of the growth of internet users and social media especially in the last few years. No matter the Social networking strategy such a brand decides to use, if it does not create an excellent effect for the brand, then it is simply not effective.
Millions of people use the internet daily to share news, information, and mostly socialize. It is crucial for a company to follow the trend and promote their brand, and to do so you have to embark on a social networking strategy that will suit your audience and create an enabling platform to promote your brand and bring it to a brighter light.
The effective Social Networking Strategy.
The effective Social Networking Strategy is one that will achieve the following for your brand;
Brand Popularity: An effective Social Networking Strategy is one that will earn your brand popularity by widening its business contacts by targeting a wide audience. The Social media networks are known to host different types of audiences, you will definitely find exactly the type of audience you need for a product if you use an effective Social Networking Strategy. A viral campaign can change a brand forever.
Communication Platform: An effective Social Networking Strategy is one that can create a perfect communication platform that can enhance the way you communicate with your prospective customers/clients. Make effective use of the social networks to communicate with your potential customers, get to know what they want and what they like, deal with the negative social media comments about your brand and convert new fans.
Awareness of brand: An effective Social Networking Strategy is one that can create an effective awareness of your brand or products. This is important especially if you are starting a new product line. It can help you get words out there to see how your audience can react to it.
Boasting Sales: This is the most important point in an effective Social Networking Strategy. Any Social Networking Strategy that meets all the points above without being able to convert to sales is a failure. An effective Social Networking Strategy should be able to reach different types of consumers using different types of social forms. This will surely improve sales by targeting specific types of consumers using effective social media tools like Facebook and Twitter etc. Imagine you want to target teenage girls for a product, where is best to target such audience if not the social media sites?
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An effective Social Networking Strategy can greatly improve a brand and below is my streamlined road map to an effective Social Networking Strategy that will work.
1. Assessment: Taking a good assessment of your brand on the social networks will give you a great insight into your position against your competitors. Assessment is to evaluate where you are, where you want to go and what the wins will be along the way.
You need to find out where your audience spends their time online, what they talk about and what they want differently. Keep tabs on your competitor’s game plan and use a counter game plan to effectively penetrate the already saturated social media market and carve out your own niche and begin to explore.
Knowing your audience will help you position well in your niche, increase engagement between you and your audience etc. Ask your audience important questions that can greatly improve your brand and products, find out what they could want differently etc.
2. Implementation: Begin to execute your plans in a way your audience will welcome it, use attractive mediums to pass on your message, get them to follow and respond to your commands etc. Effective Social Networking strategy should promote what you offer to the people who believe in your mission. Develop a step-by-step plan for promotion and growth, start promoting and sharing on the social media sites you want to use. This step simply involves doing everything you have to bring success to your media campaigns so as to create an effect for your brand on the internet.
3. Evaluation: Your evaluation periods can be weekly or monthly or quarterly (I prefer quarterly though). This is simply a time frame when you evaluate your process and fine tune the details. To successfully create an effect for a brand, there is a need to evaluate your social media campaign performances from time to time to ascertain your performance. This period will be a guide to know if you are doing well or not, then build on that progress next time. If you continue it that way, then you are on the road to a successful Social Networking campaign.
Different social networking strategy will work differently and produce different results. Depending on what your targets are, you can follow a different Social Networking strategy to meet your target. For example, if your target is to grow your brand’s fan base the best types of strategies will be to advertise on Facebook, run contests on multiple Social networks etc. If you want to show how a product works, then a Youtube campaign will work best. If it is to collect data specifically for a product, you can run a Live Q&As sessions on Google+, Facebook and Twitter etc.
Must Read: Tips to Measure Your Brand’s Social Media ROI
Now it’s Your Turn
Does your brand have a social networking strategy that is effective? What advice do you have for someone putting together a strategy for the first time? Please share your views and opinion about an effective social networking strategy using the comment form below. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feed.
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Hi Mav,
Social media marketing is now an important aspect of online marketing that should not be ignored, but unfortunately most company and people don’t have a social networking strategy and this is a great post that can help one with starting a social networking strategy.
thanks for the road map, it was really helpful.
Hey Nwosu, thanks for sharing your strategy. Here’s what I try to do:
1. Define goals (sales, awareness, image, etc.)
2. Analyse target audience
3. find target audience and connect
4. re-define goals and communicate
5. monitor & evaluate
Sounds a little basic, but I guess it’s obvious that there’s a lot more to it than just these simple steps, right?
Joseph Adediji, i hope posts like this one can teach them to employ social media marketing expert.
Robert Weller, your strategy sounds pretty simple but i am sure it involves a lot of work and how effective is it so i can possible emulate you?
It’s a sustainable approach to anything really. No quick results, but a long-term success guarantee (not really, but chances a very high). I’ve been doing it for over two years now and as I said there’s of course some more details to it, but in general that’s how it works ;-)
Feel free to contact me if you want further details.
As Josylad has said that companies do neglect the social media area not knowing that they can get more and more customers from social media.
Though some companies are really taking social media seriously and they are already seeing the result.
Nice post Mr. Mav
Thanks for sharing this post. The main problem i have into blogging was Social marketing. It really helps in Awareness of brand and communication platform. But it’s sometimes expensive if a person want it to be in a quick way. Thanks
I will definitely do so because i will like to gain more strategy for a sure success. Thanks for your awesome contribution.
Thanks Dami for your compliment, i hope posts like this can change their ideas and show them what they can benefit from social media networks.
Effective Social Networking Strategy may take a long time but will definitely produce desired result.
Awesome post!
As Joseph said, every online business needs social presence and it cannot be ignored.
Learned good stuffs through this post and from Robert’s valuable comment!
Hi Nwosu,
Continually assessing your strategy is the way to go buddy. Smart tips here.
Gauge the effectiveness of your plan frequently, but not too frequently. Quarterly works well, or you may even check a bit more frequently, to see if you are succeeding with your approach.
Thanks!
Ryan
Awesome post on Effective Social Networking Strategy. Well, it’s good to build a strong network around your blog. This can be done by social media marketing.
Thanks for the post.
regards,
Amrik!
Thanks Nirmala for your comment, yes an effective social networking strategy can greatly improve a brand as discussed in the article. I am glad you found it interesting.
I always favored quarterly because even the most effect social networking strategy may take awhile for its effects to be noticed.
Thanks for your comment Amrik Virdi
Great tips, Nwosu. :)
I recently started improving my presence on social networking sites and the results have been amazingly encouraging. It is certainly worth the effort to spend a few minutes promoting your posts. We spend hours creating one and then putting it up there. Why not put in a few minutes everyday and get a better exposure ?
Glad you could say such, i remembered the first day you asked me if it was worth it joining a social blog community on Facebook, now i can see how active you have become and i know it has impacted positively on you. Thanks for your comment.
Hi Desmond, i love this article because it’s well written and its explains in details the effective social media marketing.
I actually agree with your points but there is one thing i want to point out: Carrying out an effective social media marketing takes times though it really pays in the long run for brand awareness, increase in sales volume e.t.c.
Thanks for sharing this article.
To be very honest. After joining CommentDX group in Facebook, my social media traffic increases. And I have found new connections. Social Media connections are very very important
Glad you and i are on the same page on this, an effective social networking strategy may take time but it will definitely produce amazing results.
Google and other search engines consider social media activities as a ranking factor in their algorithm.
hi there nwosu. i have a question. this is about making assessment of my brand..
i am aiming to brand myself in two ways.. as a blogger that offers free information about make money online and as a professional freelance writer..
of course, that would mean two different clients and perhaps two different social networking sites..the masses and other bloggers (for free make money information and affiliate marketing) and the writing companies (as a professional freelance writer)..aside from linkedin, do you recommend any social networks where professionals and potential clients connects?
i think my goal is quite challenging though..
Your goal is not as challenging as you think it to be, if you can find the right path for both goals you will see how easy it will be. LinkedIn is a great social networking site as you already know. But there are a couple of other Social Networking sites for professionals like;
http://www.networkingforprofessionals.com/ – A business network that combines online business networking and real-life events.
http://www.partnerup.com/ – A community connecting small business owners and entrepreneurs.
http://www.perfectbusiness.com/ – A network of entrepreneurs, investors and business experts that encourages entrepreneurship and mutual success.
http://biznik.com/ – A community of entrepreneurs and small businesses dedicated to helping each other succeed.
Maybe you should check them out and tell me what you think, maybe we should keep looking together till we find what you are looking for.
thank you nwosu for sharing those. this is the reason why i really love commenting because it does not only gain us backlinks and increase PR but it also encourages us to share and acquire ideas for free ;)
You are always welcome to ask for anything and i will try as much as possible to help you in any way i can…
Thanks for sharing the effective social marketing strategies