For business owners just getting started, a
guide to build brand buzz and boost your bottom line.
Leveraging the power of content and social
media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic
way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be
challenging.
It's vital that you understand social media
marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry
points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve
your customers, your brand and -- perhaps most importantly -- your bottom line.
1. The Law of Listening
Success with social media and content
marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s
online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only
then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than
clutter to their lives.
2. The Law of Focus
It’s better to specialize than to be a
jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing
strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than
a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.
3. The Law of Quality
Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to
have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with
their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with
you the first time.
4. The Law of Patience
Social media and content marketing success
doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle,
it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve
results.
5. The Law of Compounding
If you publish amazing, quality content and
work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with
their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.
This sharing and discussing of your content
opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword
searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more
potential ways for people to find you online.
6. The Law of Influence
Spend time finding the online influencers
in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in
your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to
build relationships with them.
If you get on their radar as an
authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your
content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in
front of a huge new audience.
7. The Law of Value
If you spend all your time on the social
Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening.
You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on
creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers.
In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing
for your business.
8. The Law of Acknowledgment
You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out
to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of
the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge
every person who reaches out to you.
9. The Law of Accessibility
Don’t publish your content and then
disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently
publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be
fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or
months.
10. The Law of Reciprocity
You can’t expect others to share your
content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of
the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking
about content published by others.
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