Do you feel like you want to scream when you think about another article on how to create a social media strategy? Sarah Mitchell says she does in her article Why Creating A Content Marketing Strategy Is A Big Waste Of Time. Sarah says that social media isn’t worth anything without content unless you like to shoot the breeze. If you feel like screaming at yet another social media strategy blog, you are not alone. I don’t see how anyone can separate social media and create a strategy for it without connecting it to the other arms of the triumvirate--content and Search Optimatization (SEO), which all go everywhere or should. All three need to be interconnected to come up with a social media strategy that’s worth anything. Then you need to consider that social media has become a sales tool and a search tool in your social media strategy.
Social media grew up with other marketing channels, but it has largely remained isolated. But there’s one big problem with that separation: a fragmented customer experience. That’s why we cannot consider social media as a stand-alone strategy. SEO used to be a stand-alone strategy, but hasn’t been since Google Panda. Original content isn’t one either. There isn’t any reason to write wonderful, original content if you don’t optimize it and don’t know how to distribute it. What good is the best content in the world if no one sees it? You need the entire triumverate to turn a potential into a buying client.
Once you have set your strategy about content and SEO, then it’s time to consider how to promote your content on social media platforms. One thing I would like you to consider it that businesses use social media as a marketing and communications tool, but social media is also a part of the sales process. Here is some information to help refine your idea of social media strategy as a sales tool from Meghan Keaney Anderson posting a HubSpot’s blog, Six Ways Social Media Marketing is Changing for the Better.
How companies can use social media as a sales tool:
- Set up alerts and monitoring: Set up some form of social media monitoring and alerts to notify you of relevant conversations happening around your company and industry's SEO keywords in social media.
- Keep it useful and 'inbound': Treat social like an outbound promotion channel and you’ll end up alienating your audience. Instead, set time aside to thoughtfully respond to questions or share helpful content.
- Pull social media intelligence into your sales calls: Before calling up leads, make sure you’re aware of the content your leads are sharing on sites like Twitter or LinkedIn. Using a tool like HubSpot's Social Contacts, your salespeople can go into their calls equipped with information about what leads have found interesting, and how often they’ve clicked on your social shares.
Social media as a search tool
In the old days a few years ago, if you wanted to know something or look for a plumber, you searched in Google, Yahoo or AOL. But now people are using “social search,” which is an evolving term for the way search engines are factoring content from a user's social network into the results they get for their search queries. Marketers started taking note of social search with the development of Google+ and the launch of Bing’s social search engine last summer. But the social search trend has continued to grow more and receive more attention from search engines. Recently, Facebook joined the ranks by announcing Graph Search, a search engine that uses social signals to elevate more relevant, personalized results. Just days after that announcement, we also learned about Bing's initiative to add 5x more Facebook content to its search results. Bing has also upped the ante in recent new Bing ads.
What this means is that you need to make sure that you use SEO information on your social media since it is now being used to locate your business on traditional and new searches. Social media blogger Jeff Bullas thinks we'll be seeing more social media marketing strategies incorporating social search in the coming year. He writes that we should “expect to see more content marketing tools, tactics, and strategies that accept the fact that social, search, and content are increasingly integrated and intertwined."
Take it away
The take-away from this article is that your social media strategy needs to be considered in conjunction with your content and SEO strategies. The latest trend in social media strategy involves seeing social media as a sales tool and that search engines are searching your social media platforms as well as your content and website. So you need to be sure your social media strategy involves SEO, too. So, long live the triumvirate as it grows in unexpected, but interesting ways.
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.