Rons How to I-Marketing

Too many people jump into the social media bandwagon without any consideration of their ideal goals and outcomes. If you want to develop an efficient and effective social media strategy, read these tips first.

1. What’s your pitch?
   Elevator Pitch? Forget about 60 seconds. In the world of social media you have only 120 characters to describe what your company is about? To ensure consistency, especially if you have a team working on your social media strategy, figure out your pitch before you start implementing your strategy.
2. What are your goals?
   Any well planned project starts with the end in mind. Therefore you should plan your ideal outcomes first, and find the right strategy to get you there second. Your ideal outcomes should be the prerequisite to your social media strategy, not vice versa.
3. How are you going to be measuring social media marketing?
   New research shows that marketing online, for example through social media, returns better results than the more traditional way of advertising and marketing. Have you heard of this saying? It’s all B.S. until you test. Not tracking your results? Let me be frank. You’re insane. Every case is different and you just won’t know what works for you unless you measure the response.
4. How are you planning to connect with others?
   Businesses want to be where their customers are – not question about it. Just because you’ve added your business / brand to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc – it doesn’t mean that people will be interested in it.

If you’re going to be effective at planning your social media strategy, you need to work out how to engage customers before you start. You might provide incentives by giving away discounts or freebies, or you might have a loyalty program or give rewards for referrals. Whatever your plan, make sure you develop your social media marketing (along with your goals, tactics and measurement plan) before you start jumping on the social media bandwagon. You really don’t want to be embarrassed and invest time and money just to find that you need to start over again.