That's All Folks

To wrap up my series of posts, I am going to leave you with a few key points and tips to nail social media marketing. Let me keep it short and to the point:

1. Video is hot
2. Draw in viewers with visual content
3. Consistency over frequency
4. Pinterest is the new Google
5. Post like a fan, not a marketer
6. Love your haters

Pay It Forward

While getting organic likes and shares on your content on social media is awesome, there are more efficient ways of reaching your audience that involve paying to promote your content. These paid options help target specific consumers that will relate to your brand. Facebook and Twitter are the most prevalent platforms that offer a paid option for companies to increase their engagement with their audience. Here are some metrics that improve with paid posts and tweets:

-Page Likes
-Post Reach
-Engagement

At this point in the game, paid social is the only reliable means of building a targeted and effective audience for your brand. There is an abundance of content out there are the algorithms that are used by platforms such as Facebook and Twitter just flat out favor paid versus organic. You can only rely on posts going viral for so long before you finally see that paid is the way to go.

Model Citizens

In my opinion, you can learn a whole lot more about social media marketing by actually seeing some examples of brands knocking it out of the park. So, this post is going to based solely on the content of other people. Makes my job easy. But, seriously, check out these brands and really think about what they are doing and how they are doing it. Do you agree that they are doing it right?

1. Google

2. Target

3. Disney

4. Oreo

5. Amazon

6. Pepsi

Eyes on the Prize

We tweet words. We make Facebook statuses with words. We email with words. While all of that is fine and dandy, sometimes you need to mix it up a bit with some visuals. Today's world is rich with graphics and videos and content that is not text heavy. What our eyes find as pleasing it what we choose to consume. We don't have the time to read an entire 5 page article, so instead we may watch a quick video clip or glance over an infographic. Sounds easy enough, right? Slap a picture into our social media routine every once a while and we're good. Well, its a little more complicated than that. For the content to be successful and transfer to dollars, it has to be done well. Here are 3 general guidelines to follow when considering visual content.

1. Balance
There must be a balance between the background and the text. Whether this comes in the form of symmetry or asymmetry (both are beautiful if done correctly), there must be a balance among the elements. Having a scattered focus may lead the consumer's eye away from where you really want it to be and your objective will not be achieved. Make sure there is an all encompassing balancing throughout.

2. Framing
Framing is very important. It is the process of creating a special white space around the content that no words or elements can be placed. It's a matter of the brain really. You see, our brains immediately look for structure when we see something. If right off the bat we can see structure, we can interpret the message faster and with less stress. This creates a positive end result for all parties.

3. Contrast
This may be a no brainer, but it is still vital. There must be enough contrast between the various elements of the content so that the viewer can identify them without too much effort or strain. With visual content on social media, the purpose is to communicate some sort of message. If that message cannot be identified, you are just wasting your time and money. So, for this element to be demonstrated, there must be a noticeable difference between the background the subject matter.

"Dressing" for Success

Most of the tips I have been giving in helping get you to a solid social media presence for your brand have involved being thought out and doing some planning. Well, for this post, throw that out the window.

Social media is constantly changing. Some platforms, such as Twitter, have posts with lifespans of less than an hour. To stay up to date with trends and topics, you have to be adaptable and able to think on your feet. One of the best things you can do as a brand is stay current. This means posting about something that just broke in the news/is trending in the media/etc. You know where I'm going with this don't you? If you don't, let me give you a little hint: it has a little something to do with a dress that changed the world.

The Buzzfeed Dress. Yes, it has a name now. And it is breaking up families, causing world wars, and making people question reality. Regardless of what colors you see (and the colors are without a doubt gold and white, you idiots), there is one thing that is undeniable and indisputable: Brands that incorporated the dress into their social media posts absolutely struck gold (just like the color of the dress.)

In my opinion, Lego got it right, among many others. But I really appreciate that Lego had the ability to incorporate both dress color combinations as well as including a sort of call to action - "You can have both." Lego tweeted this in the midst of the social buzz surrounding the dress. By inserting themselves into the conversation, they were able to stay current and even provide some entertainment involving a situation that literally the entire world was talking about. Props to them.

Lego, along with the countless other brands that tweeted about the dress, didn't plan this. No one has a magical crystal ball that can tell them about all the things that will be trending and news worthy in the future. Planning tweets and social media posts in advance can sometimes fall short. This is why having a dedicated, creative social media team is VITAL. What would have happened if Lego's social media team would have missed the moment? Nothing detrimental would have happened, but they would have blown a perfect opportunity to increase their social engagement the way they did. Having a creative team allowed Lego to compose an in-the-moment tweet that was entertaining as well as relevant - 2 very important factors in social media.

To sum it up, you can plan your social media posts until you are blue in the face (which just so happens to NOT be the color of the dress, FYI), but that will only get you so far. Being flexible and being able to adapt to the trending topics will put you way above your competition.

Let Me Help You Help Me Help Yourself

Now that you have a good solid foot in the door to social media marketing, it's time to broaden your user base. How to do this? Get the attention of influencers relevant to your industry and get them talking! Like I said in my previous post, it's not all about you. A large chunk of what you put out there on social should be from your customers, and hopefully influential ones. Once you get their attention, you can move on to advocacy, which is a gold mine. In the end, you are helping them and they are helping you help them. Sounds confusing, I know. But it works.

You're a Jerk (I Know)

It sounds like common sense, but just like deodorant, people who need it the most tend to never use it. So, let me just go out and say it: if you want your business to succeed and want to enhance your social media presence, don't be a jerk. The key to a meaningful social strategy is to be genuine with your posts and your interactions. After all, social media is just that: social. By definition, "social" is characterized by "friendly companionship or relations." Interactions among social beings. Engagement between multiple parties participating. We are inherently social. Why can't our Twitters, Facebooks, Instagrams, etc be too?

This isn't the time to pelt your consumers with an overly branded compilation of stuff like they are some kind of human dart board. Companies doing it right have found that being genuine and talking about what the consumers want to talk about drives engagement and results in better conversation.

If you just realized that you are in fact being a slimy jerk with your social media efforts, that's okay. The first step to recovery is acknowledging that you actually have a problem. Here are several steps to save you from the depths of social media suicide and bring you into the light.

1. Give and take. It is a delicate balance between the two. Finding a happy medium is vital.
2. Find a personality. Having a personality to your social media presence will make it easier to turn a non human technology into a human one.
3. Connect and care. You can't always be the center of attention. Make a connection and build off of that. People love to talk about themselves.

Stop, Look, and Listen

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side, but first he had to stop, look, and listen.

Stop. Look. Listen.

Those words have been engrained into my mind better than any Taylor Swift song that the radio insists on playing at the top of every hour of every day. My parents taught me them so I wouldn't die while crossing the street. And guess what. IT WORKED. Because I was able to put those words into use while making the treacherous journey across 4 lanes of overly caffeinated suburban women in SUVs, I survived. And I thrived. Imagine if social media marketers could do the same.

I cannot stress how important it is for marketers to learn to shut their mouths (or rather, their fingers) and listen to their audience. Users are more than ready to share what they are really thinking on social media, and when they do, that's where the real beauty lies. Listening for what the consumer wants encourages a two way communication that will lead to loyalty, engagement and perhaps even advocacy. Sometimes, the most beneficial thing a social media marketer can do is to stop, look and listen.

So, why did the social media marketer cross the road?

Platform Politics

We've all seen it. We have a favorite brand that we follow on every platform of social just so we can stay up to date on sales, new campaigns, new news, etc. We have liked them on Facebook, followed them on Twitter and Instagram and occasionally even enjoy their funny Vines. Then we notice something odd. Well, it may not be considered "odd," since so many brands are doing it, but you know what I mean. We notice that the content put on Facebook is strikingly similar to the content put on Twitter. Oh, that 's because it is!

Social media marketing is adapting from being just a last minute option for growing your business to being absolutely vital to staying up to date and relevant in the eyes of your consumers. With this comes the need for businesses to be educated on how to use each of the platforms to their highest potential in order to attract and retain customers and build their brand. So, I present to you, Platform Politics.

Facebook:
Facebook, despite the rise in several other platforms over the years, is still the most popular social media platform by a long shot. Here are a few things to focus on when using Facebook as platform for marketing:

• Track engagement: Facebook has some pretty awesome features that will help you determine the level of engagement you get with your posts. It will allow you to measure what content resonates with what customers. Want to continue to be relevant in the eyes of your best customers? USE THIS.
• Tag other pages: What 's better than benefiting from someone else's hard work? Just kidding. But tagging other pages relevant to your company can increase the number of people that see your brand. this basically opens up a hidden gold mine of previously unreachable users. 
• Use photos: Posting photos instead of or in addition to text has proven to increase engagement by 120%. BEWARE: Dumb cat pictures are dangerous. Use caution.

 Twitter: 
Though Twitter is second in popularity, it actually comes in fourth when it comes to usage. Here are some good ways to use Twitter for your business:

• Push offers: Consumers are more likely to follow a brand on Twitter than on any other platform. This is where they come to stay up to date. Take advantage of their curiosity and use this platform to advertise deals and offer coupons.
• Develop a personality: Use Twitter to build a human-like personality for your brand. Best practices include talking about trending topics, being cultured, and being entertaining. The best brands act like a real human would on Twitter, not some creepy robot.
• Community management: Twitter is best used when the brand is focusing on building a community of followers rather than just e-commerce.

Instagram:
As social media marketing goes, Instagram is the new guy. While extensive research has not been done, here are some tactics to keep in mind when using Instagram as a platform for marketing:

• Sharing: Encourage the people that buy your product of service to share their own experience. This will build your brand and increase your reach, as your brand will now be visible to your sharer's followers.
• Make a stand: Instagram allows you to create hashtags about anything and everything. Create a hashtag the resonates with your followers and the campaign could go viral.

Noise: What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing.

Let's be honest. We all want to make the sale. Whether it be selling medical equipment to multi-million dollar hospitals or selling a single glass of lemonade to that annoying neighbor who always seems to have a problem with the color you stain your fence, the end goal is to end the day better off than how you started. In a world shifting toward online marketing, the burden to make the sale has become exponentially lower. Gone are the days of door to door salesmen and marketers jamming their product in your face while you're just trying to enjoy the one meal a week that you managed to not burn in the oven (or is that just me?) Today, our fingers spend more time scrolling, typing and swiping looking for things than they do sifting through mail or flipping through the pages of a newspaper or magazine.

It now becomes the marketer's job to adjust to the inevitable and learn to adapt to new norms of online marketing, and more specifically social media marketing. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Vine are taking flight and you can either stay and freeze your butt off or fly south and bask in the heat of the social marketing world.

But wait, it's not that easy. So many brands these days just get it flat out wrong. Joining the social media marketing world does not mean posting a video of a dad getting hit in the crotch with a baseball bat, slapping your brand on there, and then calling it a day. This is what I like to call "The Foreign Exchange Student" of social media marketing. You know, that new kid in your class who is trying really hard and thinks he's doing a great job, but in reality he makes no sense and is just confusing the crap out of everybody. Having a presence on social media is vital, but if the content is just making noise and doing nothing to build your brand, then you might as well move in with Tila Tequila and Paris Hilton in the Land of Irrelevance.

Marketing is all about having an end goal and taking different approaches, some direct, some indirect, in order to achieve that goal. My blog, Know Soliciting, aims to deliver today's marketing professionals with the insight needed to do exactly that. I will help you develop important and necessary tools in creating relevant and meaningful content for the social sphere and maybe even entertain you along the way. So join me or judge me, either way you'll be talking about me.