Below are 3 tactics to maximize your social media campaigns to help address these challenges.
Tactic #1 – Give Your Social Media a Boost with Email Marketing
According to a recent Forrester Research report, 71% of B2B marketers have adopted email marketing. If you currently use email marketing, combining these efforts with social media marketing can improve the results of both!
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If you have an email with a call to action that can generate leads, extend the reach of your message by sharing the email across your company’s social networks. Some email service providers such as iContact allow you to add social sharing buttons to your emails with a simple click.  Grow your social media audience by encouraging email subscribers to follow you or your company on Facebook or Twitter. Entice them further with contests, discounts or other incentives. |
Adding Social Sharing Links from iContact |
Key Takeaway – Use your email marketing (and your other marketing channels) to boost your social media efforts. Social media should consistently be an integral part of your marketing mix, not an afterthought.
Tactic #2 – Use Social Media to Extend the Life of Your Content
It’s easy to post and forget when it comes to social media. According to research from bit.ly, the mean half-life of a link on Facebook or Twitter is only around three hours.
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A good way to generate feedback and ensure your message is seen, rather than lost in the crowd, is to schedule social media posts in advance. For example, if you have a white paper landing page to generate leads, you can tweet a call to action at 8:00 a.m., review initial reporting and then reword the tweet and send out the same link again at 1:00 p.m. Once you see additional click tracking data, you can assess how to modify the text and plan to tweet again next week. |
Scheduling your Social Post from iContact |
Engage your audience by asking, “Did you find this content useful? Please share it with your followers.” This can help spark lively discussion and helpful feedback as well as encourage customers and prospects to share your content with their own audience. Encouraging this sharing will help extend the life of your content and the reach of your message.
Key Takeaway – Use social media to build awareness of your content and, in turn, drive more traffic and leads. Don’t just post and forget it, follow-up and ask others to help spread the word.
Tactic #3 – Measure the Impact with the Goal in Mind
iContact’s recent social media survey indicated that understanding social media ROI was a significant challenge to marketers. If not already in place, establish goals for your marketing campaign.
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Establishing goals for your marketing campaign can help you determine how to best measure the results. For example, if your goal is to get more downloads of your white paper, then measuring clicks is probably the right metric for you. Alternatively, if you are interested in creating engaging content, measuring likes and comments may be of more interest to you. |
Tracking your Social Post from iContact |
Leverage web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to determine which content (as well as which social media platforms) drive the most traffic to your landing pages. If you are using web analytics tools, assign different traffic sources for each social network. This will let you compare all of the sources of your traffic to see how social media contributes.
Key Takeaway – Think about your goals before you jump in to best determine how to measure your results. Without measuring the impact, its just social media and not social media marketing.
Whether it is your company blog, Facebook page or Twitter account, social media marketing is a great way to build a dedicated audience following, engage customers and reach prospects. Think about your goals, measure, test, and in time you’ll see optimal results.
Peter Ghali (@pghali) is a senior manager at iContact, a leader in social media and email marketing for more than one million users worldwide. He can be reached at pghali@icontact.com.
