Why Social Media Still Worth Your Time

Create your strategy today.

Social media — still the most popular channel for your brand visibility.

Social media, the phenomenon of recent years. When you type “social media marketing trends” into Google, you will find about 25 million articles. (For a quick comparison, when you type in “Chuck Norris”, there are only 14 million.) But what is the up-to-date situation? Is it still worth spending your time and money promoting your business through social media? Let’s take a look at the usefulness of social media for small and medium businesses.

If you do social media well, it could be a great marketing tool but doing it right is time consuming and time = money. So it’s absolutely not true that you can do social media for free. What’s more, there is no golden rule how to do it right or what works.

However, one thing is for sure — social media are two-way communication platforms and people want prompt replies and interaction. When you are passive it gives people a negative impression of your business. It’s hard to manage social media because it’s open for all people to spread their opinion, experiences with your company or feelings about your brand. Social media is a key part of your marketing mix and has to be used strategically, that’s why the first and most important step is to create a social media marketing plan. If you already use social medium and you don’t have any strategy for it, don’t worry. There is still time to make one.

There are for sure many drawbacks of social media but to be honest, nowadays, it is a necessity for every company. So, you are little bit forced to use it. But don’t be sad — social media can be an incredibly valuable tool if used correctly. And yes, social media platforms are still growing — 10% growth from January 2015 to January 2016 (that is 219 million new social media users in one year!)

So, let’s make them worth it!

Brief introduction to today’s world of social media

There are 2.307 billion people on this planet who have at least one social media account.

Total number of active social media users: 2.307 billion (31% global penetration) — annual growth: 10%

Total number of active mobile social media users: 1.968 billion (27% global penetration) — annual growth: 17%

Social media users by region:

1. East Asia — 769 million
2. Southeast Asia — 234 million
3. North America — 213 million
4. South America — 211 million
5. Western Europe — 201 million

Social networks with the highest number of active users:

1. Facebook — 1.59 billion MAU (monthly active users)
2. Instagram — 400 million MAU
3. Twitter — 320 million MAU
4. Sina Weibo — 212 million MAU
5. Pinterest — 100 million MAU

Interesting stats:

• Mothers with children under the age of 5 are the most active demographic on social media
• 47% of Facebook’s 1.59 billion monthly active users were mobile-only, meaning they have never used Facebook on a desktop computer
• 71% of consumers who receive a quick response from a brand on social media are likely to recommend that brand to other

Social media marketing plan

Create and follow your plan. It makes your work easier.

Whatever you do, remember the plan is essential. It’s the summary of everything you want to achieve, you believe is good for your business and what will push you forward. Yes, you’ll always be changing your plans, but that’s the signal you are working effectively and you’re learning from your mistakes and getting a better idea of what you really want to achieve. All of that means you are moving your business forward.

And what should your social media marketing plan include?

1.Where are you now?

Prior to creating an actual social media plan it is necessary to realize the current situation. Are you already using social media? How does your current method work? What are the pros and cons?

2.What are your goals?

When you know your current position it’s time to set your final destination. What are your expectations, what do you want to achieve? Look at your company’s goals and your marketing efforts and decide what you are capable of achieving through social media. How could they be useful for fulfilling your business strategy? Don’t forget to integrate social media goals into your overall marketing plan and remember to keep them SMART — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

3.What is your target group?

You should know who your ideal customer is and also who is not relevant to your business. It’s great to create a few personas and identify their typical characteristics in areas such as age, gender, income, occupation, interests, problems, habits, likes, dislikes, motivations, etc. Try to be as specific as possible. It is essential to know to who you are talking through social media.

Do you talk to the right audience?

4.What are your channels and tactics?

Now, when you know your target group, you have to choose social media channels that are worth spending your time and money on to promote your business. You should use the networks which fit your goals, audience and strategy. It’s better to choose a few of them (depending on your capacity and time options) and create good content and engagement than to a have wider range of networks and not be very good on any of them. Every network has it’s own style, type of content and audience. So let’s start with a short reflection:

First, how much time (=money) do you want to spend on social media marketing? For the beginning it’s good to spend daily at least 1.5 hours per social network.

Second, do you have enough resources and which resources do you have? Content, photos, videos? It will help you to better decide which social network is right for you.

And third, the most important question is — where are your customers? What are their favorite social media platforms?

By answering those questions you will get better insight into which social media platforms you should use. Find the best analytics tool that helps you track your visitors across all the sources you use.

5. What is your competition?

It is very useful to make a list of your main competitors — it will help you get a picture of what they are posting, what their activities are and what works for them and what does not. You can get inspiration and also warnings about what not to do. Make also a list of those who do social media marketing in a way you like (not depending on the field of business) and a list of the leaders in your industry. It will help you to get inspiring new insights.

Learn from you competitors and go ahead!

6. What is your content strategy?

To succeed at social media it is essential to have a great content strategy. There are three main components: amazing content, perfect timing and ideal frequency. It’s not easy to create great content, but it’s absolutely necessary. Before you start thinking about content itself, start by deciding what the tone of your posts should be. Define the persona of your company by answering questions such as:

If your brand was a person, what kind of personality would it have? What is its relationship to the consumer? What is your company’s personality not about? Find the words which define your brand and think about if your brand is a male or female, if it’s young or old, or should be light or serious.

Imagine your brand as a person. What it would be like?

Now move on to the strategy — as I said before, there is no golden rule. You have to try what works for you and what doesn’t. However, there are a few hints that could help you:

• People love pictures — on Facebook, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts. On Twitter, photos average a 35% boost in Retweets.
• It is said that the ideal frequency of posting is:
• 5–10x a week for Facebook
• 5x a day and more on Twitter
• 1x a day for LinkedIn

But it really depends on what resources you have. If your followers still love your updates, you are doing a great job! Keep posting!

• Here are some nice stats about the times that are considered to be the best for posting:
• Twitter — 1–3pm weekdays
• Facebook — 1–4pm
• LinkedIn — 7–8:30am and 5–6pm Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
• Instagram — 5–6pm weekdays and 8pm on Mondays
• Pinterest — 2–4pm and 8–11pm with weekends being the best
• Google+ — 9–11am weekdays

7. What is your budget?

Social media marketing is not free and you have to set up a reasonable budget. It’s great to make a list of tools you need — social media monitoring apps, graphics, videos, human resources, paid advertising, campaigns, etc. It really depends on the activities you choose to be the best for your overall business strategy. If your strategy execution fees exceed your budget estimate, prioritize your tactics according to their ROI timeframe. The tactics with the fastest ROI take priority because they generate instant profit you can later invest into long-term strategies.

8. Get feedback and do adjustment.

It’s crucial to check in on the success of your plan. You have to analyze it and do adjustments. Listen to your target group and interact with them. Do you remember that 71% of consumers who receive a quick response from a brand on social media are likely to recommend that brand to others? Sometimes, or maybe very often you discover that some strategy is not working, but that’s totally normal, just be quick, do some changes and introduce new tactics. And, have fun.

Social media is an absolutely amazing tool for finding interesting facts about your customers. It’s important to know how to analyze your data and make good use of it. Don’t waste your time (and money). Test your strategies and make a final plan for your successful existence on social media.