Social media is everywhere and it can be overwhelming to keep up with it all. How much time should you devote to online marketing and social media? Where should you focus your efforts?
These 6 tips for using social media effectively should help you plan your time.
1. Determine your goals.
Exactly what are you trying to accomplish with your social media? Is it to bring more visitors to your site? Is it to create awareness of a new product or service? Many business really want more paying customers.
2. Find out what your competitors are doing.
Do a Google search and see what your competitors are up to. Set up Google Alerts so you can keep on top of this. If you’re the first one to use a particular social media tool and you do it well, you will have a head start.
3. See where your target audience and customers hang out online.
So many times I hear businesses say, “Oh we need to be on Twitter since everyone is on Twitter.” Well, maybe that’s not where your target audience spends its time. Spend time doing some research and this will save you wasted time and energy.
4. Determine how you will measure success.
The wonderful thing about all the online stuff is that analytics are easily available. You can quickly see what’s working and what’s not.
The measures of success should relate directly to your goals. It really doesn’t matter if you get a lot of visitors to your website if none of them buy your product or service.
5. Test, review and re-test.
It’s been said you should “fail quickly and often.” Keep testing different things to see what works. Your research may have shown that your target audience is on Facebook. So you may decide to not only set up a Fan Page, but to do some Facebook ads. Well you may find out that no one is clicking on your ads. It could be you are targeting the wrong people, your ad may not be worded most effectively or you’re reaching the wrong audience. Experiment.
6. Keep moving.
Just because something works today, it may not work a month from now. Keep trying new things.
I’d love to hear of any other suggestions on using social media effectively.
Photo is courtesy of Aslan Media’s Flickr photostream, under Creative Commons Licensing.
Nancy Loderick's Blog 
Nick Holt
March 9, 2012
After producing a substantial amount of mobile/FB ad creatives at work, I’m amazed at the analytical power of tracking unique URL’s for PPC AND social media actions.
Since I work at a place where our entire market is emerging market cconsumers, it can be incredibly difficult to guage social media behavior. Most of Mashable’s articles are not even relevant to my work (eg., Pinterest).
We mainly use social media to acquire demographics (website integration) and customer service. Then again, we face a challenge again when factoring in low penetration rates of smartphones in these markets AND whether there is enough time for a VC-funded startup to prioritize it.
-Nick
http://Jana.com
http://members.txteagle.com
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Nancy Loderick
March 10, 2012
Hi Nick,
Thanks for your comment and for sharing how your company is using Social Media. With all the hype about Pinterest, it’s important to remember that it is not for everyone or every company, no matter how fast Pinterest is growing.
Nancy
P.S. Congratulations on your job! I know you’ll be a great success.
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Ken Loderick
March 16, 2012
I especially like the last point “Keep moving”. The one thing that is certain about social media is that it is changing all the time. What is hot or works well today may definitely not be the right approach a year from now. Staying current with what is going on in Social Media is vital. Nice post Nancy.
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Nancy Loderick
March 16, 2012
Hi Ken,
Thanks for your comment. Things are changing so fast these days, it is hard to keep up with everything. But, that is what we must do if we want to stay current and use social media effectively.
Nancy
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