By M. Isi Eromosele

Have A Goal

It’s crucial to have a goal in mind as you look into social media marketing. It doesn’t have to be anything audacious like increase sales 25 percent a year. Something more along the lines of improving company/brand awareness; adding a new channel to interact with customers, members and prospects or improving search engine optimization (SEO) will do for a start.

It’s important to keep in mind that the return on investment with social media marketing cannot always be measured in revenues. While your company can offer deals and make sales, the real power of social media marketing is in building relationships and remaining top of mind with existing customers. Plus, the viral nature of social media can help you find and connect with new customers.

If you’re new to social media, set achievable goals and start building connections with your existing customer base. As your comfort level and social media savvy grow, so too can your goals.

Know Who You Are And Portray Yourself Consistently

Social media marketing gives you a unique opportunity to humanize your brand. Before bringing your business into social media, decide what kind of brand image you want to portray through your various social media platforms.

The path you follow is up to you and your business or organization’s culture. However, be sure to stay consistent with the brand identity you’ve already established.

Social media marketing gives you a unique opportunity to show your customers or prospects that there are real people behind the product or service, people just like them. Use a conversational tone to communicate with them.

As people get to know, like and trust you, they are much more likely to share your message with their friends. And it is word-of-mouth (the network effect) that makes social media marketing such a powerful strategy.

Portray yourself accurately in your social media profiles. If you’re using a photo of yourself, try using one that is no more than 18 months old.

Be Where Your Customers and Prospects Are

Social media marketing is important today because customers want choices as to where and how they interact with your brand. Use social media to give them that choice. As such, it’s important for your brand to have a presence where your customers are looking to interact with you. How do you know which sites are right for your business or organization? Ask your customers or prospects.

When they come into your place of business or when you see them at an event, ask what networks they use. If they make a purchase, add a social media question to your feedback survey to collect information about what networks they use.

Another way you can identify where your customers and members are engaging is to look at your social sharing data: On which sites are people sharing your content? After all, it’s one thing for a customer to belong to a social network, but if he’s actually using that site, then that’s the place you want to be.

Search for your business on sites like Yelp, Foursquare, Citysearch, and Gowalla and claim your page so the information about your business is correct. (GetListed.org is a great resource for learning more about these sites.)

Tell Your Customers And Prospects Where You Are

Your customers, prospects and fans need to be told where they can connect with you through social media. Put links to your social media pages on your website, in your email newsletters and in your personal email signature.

Start with your loyal customer base: the people who are already signed up for your email newsletter. It’s your loyal customers who are most likely to find you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter; these are also the folks who will share your posts and help you connect with their friends and connections.

Seed your social media connections with your existing list to give yourself a head start on growing the number of fans and followers. Any place you connect with customers and prospect is a good place to mention that they can connect and interact with you online.

First Listen Then Add Value To Conversations

Social media is about having conversations and engaging with people. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn excel at making conversations easy to start and easy to join.

What you don’t want to do is jump into the middle of a conversation. First, listen to the conversation to get a feel of the topic or issue being discussed.  When you do join, add value to the conversation at hand by sharing your expertise and knowledge as it applies to the subject or issue being discussed.

You can and should reuse content from other sites. It’s highly recommended to share on social media. The key is to share content that provides value to your followers and keeps them engaged. Otherwise, they could tune you out or stop following you all together.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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