Surprisingly, a lot of thought and effort goes into creating a social media strategy. If you’re doing it effectively, you’re going beyond just regular posting. Disregarding the mindless posts like “I found a new Red Bull flavour at the convenience store today. Score!”. It’s more thoughtful posts that are fun, funny, engaging, relevant to your business. Driving traffic to your site, getting people to buy your product. Without them actually realizing you’re telling them to buy it. Effective social media marketing is stuff like that.
One thing that I really like to stress to clients is that social goes beyond online. It needs to be supported offline as well. This support is imperative for alerting your community to your online efforts. And it’s also helping them in the long run. Because they love you and they want more of you.
Generally, an offline best practice strategy is recommended for each individual business. But if you want a brief few tips that are just as effective, I have you covered.
Here are my recommendations for offline social media support.
1. Let people know that you have social media
It’s common sense to add your social media icons to your website. But at your office, you can put up signs or just let people know you have social media. Do what you can spread awareness that you have it, and you’re active on it. I was shopping at Lush once, and the store asked me if I was following them on Twitter. I wasn’t. The cashier wrote down the handle for me, and then explained why I should follow them. I thought that was awesome. You want to give people a reason to follow you. So why not explain it to them every chance you get.
2. Put that sh!t on everything
Put your icons on every piece of marketing you have. Labels, products, business cards, brochures. Whatever you print or advertise your social icons should be on there as well. If you want people to benefit from your updates, you need to direct them there.
3. Ask your employees to participate
It’s really important that you get everyone to participate. With social, my goal is always to hit new audience segments. Think a friend of a friend of a friend. For each person you reach, you also reach their following. If your employees are tagging you, mentioning you and sharing your posts. Their audience is also going to see that. It’s the easiest way to get started and a really great way to get more awareness.
4. Direct people to social offline when you are running a campaign or promotion
If you are running a special campaign, contest or promotion on social media. It’s great to get extra attention to it. If you have a community board at your office, add a little blurb about it. Do some inexpensive DIY advertising at the office. Or somewhere where your community is coming to in person and alert them to the campaign. Sometimes online social doesn’t reach everyone. So you should always bring as much attention to it as possible.
5. Provide incentives for following
When Facebook check-in’s launched, a lot of businesses ran promotions. Where they got some sort of incentive for checking into their business on Facebook. Things like this are great for getting people to Like you on Facebook, or Twitter or Instagram. Instagram is a really great platform for something like this. Re-post your photo and give them 10% off a purchase. People LOVE incentives.
Try thinking beyond what you’re doing online. Think about ways you can help to support what you’re doing online with some offline efforts. Support offline can really make a huge difference in your social efforts. So it’s important to keep that in mind. Successful social strategies don’t just live online.
