We work with a lot of businesses on Long Island and around the world to develop comprehensive social media strategies that fit, not only their marketing goals but their budget as well. The first step in developing these campaigns and strategies is to meet with each business and gain an understanding of how they operate, who their target audience is, and what their goals are for social media.
Much too often, businesses come into meetings with no goals for social media and just want us to provide them with everything under the sun. With social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, Vine and even old-school MySpace, each having millions and even billions of users worldwide, the temptation is certainly there to try to utilize them all at once.
Jumping straight onto each and every social media site without developing goals and strategies for each is a recipe for disaster. This is a classic battle between quality and quantity. Unless the business has 1 or 2 employees devoted only to running your social media accounts, it is near impossible to have a quality sustained presence on all of these channels at the same time. We often see businesses try to have a presence on so many channels that their brand gets spread thin and none of their channels communicate an effective message. Their pages look barren with potential followers and fans seeing little meaningful content. A lack of strong content communicates a lack of effort and a lazy business, so when social media channels look like this, customers are turned off very quickly.
What we work with our clients to develop is a strong, optimized social media presence only on the sites that are necessary for the business’s unique target audience. This creates a social media presence that is both strong and cost-effective. Every business is very different, and so too are their customers. We work with businesses to discover what sites their target audience is on, and then develop social media strategies based on those sites. This allows businesses to optimally target and interact directly with their target market while eliminating wasted efforts and resources on social media sites that the target audience doesn’t use.
We can help your business too! Head to our resources page to download our Essential Guide to Social Media. This guide explains each social media site and helps businesses determine what channels they should use to target their audience.